Originally Posted by
EVGA
"First, we value the relationship that we have with Rivertuner Alex/Unwinder since Feb.13th, 2008. With EVGA and Alex/Unwinder mutual efforts, Precision has became a very popular overclocking utility since it launched. Afterburners first release was in Oct. 2009.
It was originally EVGAs idea to provide the worlds first simple overclocking GUI designed for NVIDIA cards that utilizes some of the Rivatuner technology for free. Due to some misinformation floating around about EVGA Precision recently, we would like to clarify several points. Also, EVGA wouldnt have any interest to develop our own version if Alex/Unwinder had showed his interest back then like weve seen today!
1. The EVGA Precision main GUI (main Window) and format was fully designed and owned by EVGA, that means Alex/Unwinder did not design the Precision GUI at all. The Rivatuner technology was used for the backend like GPU reporting, OSD and overclocking. Other features like voltage tuning, pixel clock control and Bluetooth function were coded by EVGA. We want it to be clear that Rivatuner source code has never been released to EVGA. A year and half after Precision was introduced, Afterburner was released, that shared a lot of the same ideas and concepts originally set by EVGAs Precision, and also used Rivatuner technology.
2. Most gamers knew that some of the key features that have been requested and missed such as 64bit OSD, voltage control and video recording in the early versions of Precision, yet Afterburner had it. You probably dont know that some of those ideas were initiated and requested to Alex/Unwinder by EVGA to implement into Precision well before it was available in Afterburner, but Alex/Unwinder had no intention to add it. One year later they showed up in Afterburner exclusively without any notification and/or offer to EVGA. We felt that we became Alex/Unwinder and Afterburners free consultant if we continue this route.
We like Precision, the interface and the features, just like most of the gamers in the community, but under these circumstances, it became clear that in order to provide more features that are requested by the community, we needed to recode the back end from the ground up, using our own existing Precision skin designed as merely inspiration, that is why today we have the new EVGA PrecisionX 15. In the latest PrecisionX 15 we have put in some features like 64bit OSD support, Steam achievements and more. We want to make it clear that EVGA PrecisionX 15 is
100% coded in house without using any code from the older Precision due to we dont have the source code since day one!
EVGA will continue adding features to support the community on PrecisionX15 for free as usual, and hope to inspire other overclocking utilities to be better for the entire gaming community.
The bottom line is that EVGA doesnt want any third party to dictate what features the community should or should not have!"
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Originally Posted by
Unwinder
"Well, Ill give my official statement on it as well. First, let me summarize the terms of our business relationships with the company. According to the contract I had to develop very simple overclocking tool for the company, take the following features from original RivaTuner and fit them into the concept art of EVGAs skin design:
* Core / Shader / Memory adjustments
* Ability to link/unlink Core/Shader clocks
* Fanspeed adjustment
* Monitoring utility (Monitor temps and all 3 clockspeeds, like Rivatuner monitoring)
* Ability to save clocks / fanspeed on reboot.
Couple years later we extended the list of official contracted product functionality with advanced fan speed control (ability to define curve) and power target / thermal target adjustment support for modern NVIDIA GPUs.
My business obligations per contract were to provide the following support to the product: launch new versions of software to add support for new NVIDIA cards when they are released and fix bugs in the code if the company reports any. No new functionality development in any form was ever assumed. Thats it as it is defined by contract signed by both parties. Thats the functionality we included in the development budget and in royalty fees. Thats how you had to see original EVGA Precision if it was designed by EVGA. And if the company is brave enough to call it a lot of the same ideas and concepts originally set by EVGAs Precision let it be so.
Yes, I know I did huge mistake myself, overclocking tools development is a passion and hobby of my life so I tried to combine the hobby and business and started adding new and new things to the project on top of commercially functionality licensed by EVGA. Now I learned the lesson, you cannot do it with business because the companies lose self-control because of greediness.
Anyway, this way Precision was powered up by other advanced features from original RivaTuner: G15 monitoring features, screen capture support, entire On-Screen Display support module, tray icon monitoring and so on. No development budget or royalty fees were ever requested for those features and additionally bundled applications like RTSS and it was absolutely OK for me to develop and support those things freely simply because I liked coding them. So Im certain that I followed the contract 200%, but if the company thinks differently I see absolutely no problems in terminating the contract. But it is not OK for me to previously licensed things stolen. Especially, if the company got free license on them like it was with RTSS. Sorry, EVGA, but it is not OK.
And by the way, the company PR said at least a part of truth: EVGA indeed requested me to add 64bit OSD to Precision before it became available in Afterburner, but did it in rather interesting form. The company expected to add new free feature to RTSS they got freely to use it in commercial product. Bravo. With Battlefield 4 launch both MSI and EVGA users wanted to get 64bit OSD badly. Both MSI and EVGA knew that it is rather time consuming task, both vendors perfectly realized that it is big job and ut is not covered by the contract. MSI preferred to make users happy and invest into development of it. And other vendor preferred to sit and wait while some crazy Russian programmer code it for them freely due to his coding passion. So once again, if the company believe that they can call it we became Alex/Unwinder and Afterburners free consultant let it be so, I can only sadly smile on that."
