MSI and ASUS Send VGA Review Samples with Higher Clocks than Retail Cards

[audioslaaf]

Because they made it look like you did not need to install it to enjoy said performance. Its deceptive.

Fair enough, though I still find it strange how according to this article, reviewers apparently choose to not install any software besides the drivers. Doesn't that mean you're missing out on certain functionality and features?

Why would you not install the software provided with the product in the first place?

 

[Air]

Anyways, why is VW known to do these stuff? I don't follow cars but I just don't get it.

VW case was a lot worse. They cheated on emissions tests, automaticaly changing performance to reduce emissions while being tested.

Fair enough, though I still find it strange how according to this article, reviewers apparently choose to not install any software besides the drivers. Doesn't that mean you're missing out on certain functionality and features?

Why would you not install the software provided with the product in the first place?

Many people doesnt like installing extra stuff. Myself included.

Also, most sites review cards using their default clocks and maximum overclock. Its fine like this, and consistent.

If they did install it, should they try all profiles and post results for all 3 of them? And if not, which one should they choose? I would say the default, "gaming" one. Which you can get without the software.

 

[Rahmat Sofyan]

the score should be down to much lower then now, for their card that already reviewed on tpu.com if this all was true or shouldn't ?


I wonder, how about the all review for other cards on the past..?

is this the first time?

 

[laszlo]

not surprised at all

i'll would be surprised if other consumer electronics won't suffer from same "illness"; same shi.... like VW emission scandal.... one catched and the rest are coming...

this is the ugly face of competitiveness between companies... but let's not forget that behind any companies are people who implement their own way of thinking

"in $ we trust"

 

[GC_PaNzerFIN]

Hi. What's going on here?

I do have a beef with you guys as well.

I have seen some Gigabyte products get new revisions during the product life cycle. There is nothing wrong in this in general, but sometimes the new revision is more like a new product, arguably changing the used components so much (sometimes to worse as well!), so what is sold no longer reflects the initial reviews done with REV1.0.
Pretty much all manufacturers are doing this, what could you do better to distinguish the differences to consumers who are buying your products? At the moment you can't know whether you are getting lets say REV1.0 board or REV1.1 which could have some significant changes.
At least some of the revisions are listed on your product pages with photos of the boards, so you are already ahead of others.

--

Worst guys in this gimping over product life cycle thing are arguably XFX and TUL corporations like PowerColor. I have also seen MSI products with cut down reference design components advertised as "Military class quality", ofc in that case its complete BS copy paste on product page. And Asus conveniently removing significant part of VReg bulk capacitance by leaving "unnecessary" components off the board after initial samples. List is long...

 

[mcraygsx]

I don't install manufacturer's apps anyway. Rarely do they do anything besides using system resources.
Also, those overclocks are downright pathetic. Three profiles all within 100MHz from each other? And a required app to enable "superior performance"? It's insulting, imo.

Exactly what was a fan of bundled software. MSI Afterburner works just for overclocking needs.

 

[danbert2000]

Okay, I understand why this is an issue of honesty and that it's annoying that MSI makes you install their gaming application to enable the listed clock rates. They really should just send the cards out with the default clocks set to the advertised speeds. The issue is that their gaming app is used to change the LED lights and switch between three profiles, and I guess they are assuming that people want the middle of the road profile most of the time (bad assumption).

The workaround for people in the know is just to dial in the advertised clock rates as OC'ing in Precision X or Afterburner is going to have the same effect as the stupid gaming app. That's what I did, I have a profile that is the standard "OC" profile that was listed on MSI's website, and a profile where I crank it up, and one where it's just at the default rate.

I guess my opinion is that anyone reading all these reviews is going to install the app or overclock on their own anyway, and the ones that just buy the card and throw it in are fine with the "Gaming" profile that is default in the VBIOS. Sure, it's stupid to try to force people to install your stupid gaming app to get the full guaranteed speed of the card, but if the only change to review samples were to dial in the advertised speeds ahead of time so that the reviewers don't mess up the testing setup, I think it's understandably non-malicious. MSI just really needs to reexamine why they are adding barriers to get their card's top speed in the first place. That gaming app is useless and robs people of performance unless they aren't stupid, but MSI was not maliciously inflating performance past what any owner of the card is guaranteed to achieve.

 

[ShurikN]

Someone metioned a workaround in regards to OCing, profiles and software. I have an even better workaround. Dont buy MSI or Asus cards anymore. I know i wont.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Credibility lost... cheating is cheating. This is not something minor in my opinion. Even a few hertz can matter in benchmarks and it is important to get a hold of the card's true performance at stock. This is an attempt to fool would-be buyers, making their cards look better than the competitors with better scores in reviews. All tests should be re-run using the stock frequencies of the retail board IMHO.

Its 30mhz. Any user that has 2 brain cells and knows how to change a slider in Afterburner can get that clock.

 

[Fluffmeister]

These modes were advertised on the back of the box of the MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G OC.

Yep, Silent, Gaming and OC, now whilst my 970 like every other card defaulted to the Gaming clocks (1114 base, 1253 boost), it would boost far higher than the OC mode (1140 base, 1279 boost) clocks by default anyway, like 1367+

Looking @ overclockers.co.uk just as an example it's sold @ OC clocks for what it is worth.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...ddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-259-ms.html

 

[jaw shwaa]

Hmm this reminds me of when the 6850 was sent to reviewers with more shaders enabled then stock..green team , red team.. "Shady" stuff on both sides of the isle

 

[ShurikN]

Hmm this reminds me of when the 6850 was sent to reviewers with more shaders enabled then stock..green team , red team.. "Shady" stuff on both sides of the isle

This has nothing to do with Red or Green. MSI cheated on both...

 

[Basard]

Most of the software that comes with the hardware I buy is utter garbage. It's always a third party's software that I end up installing.

Geforce Experience is wretched, uninstalled that a day after installing it. Gigabytes software for this motherboard I have is god-awful, uninstalled it almost as fast as I uninstalled it. They are always so clunky and bug-ridden.

Now they want you to install it so you can have your extra 30Mhz.... lol. Sad...

 

[qubit]

NVIDIA back to their old review tricks again!

Those of us old enough will remember the benchmark tricks of 2003 when NVIDIA deliberately took rendering shortcuts with the likes of fixed 3DMark benchmarks to get a significantly higher score. When the view was changed, a corrupted scene was rendered (the sky I think) revealing the trickery, resulting in a scandal which changed how reviewers benchmark to this day. I know ATI wasn't totally immune from this either, but NVIDIA was worse.

And I'm a long time NVIDIA user, so no fanboyism here.


@W1zzard Will you be updating your reviews to take this into account? I'm thinking running the cards at the same clocks as a customer would get and inserting the benchmark into the results, plus a short writeup about it, with an adjustment to the review score if necessary.

I thought it was odd how the Founder's Edition cards were hitting their thermal limits like that. An unofficial overclock could explain it.

 

[chinmi]

I dont see anything wrong with this. Everybody always want to send their best to be reviewed by reviewers.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Hi. What's going on here?

The problem was discovered with MSI GTX 1080 GAMING X and ASUS GTX 1070 STRIX, so might want to take reviews of those cards with a grain of salt. Gigabyte on the other hand does not use such practices with its G1 GAMING Series.

Hey guys. Thanks for posting this article. I have already compared the BIOS on my card (older version than retail) to the retail cards and also see the same discrepancy in "out of the box" boost clocks. I am being sent the retail bios from a follower and will flash my card with it to compare the results.

One thing that this article didn't mention is that the latest version of Gaming App is still not available to the consumer who already purchased these cards and so they don't even HAVE access to the OC button. That's why the issue of end users being able to achieve the same clocks with the click of a button is a big deal, especially when they don't have access to it.

 

[moproblems99]

I don't get what all the fuss is. Everyone should know what these three modes are available for the card they are purchasing. If they don't, then too bad they should pay attention to what they are buying. The simple fact that OC Mode is enabled when sent to reviewers and retail has gaming mode enabled is a non issue for me because these modes are available to the end user with relatively no extra work.

Now, if they had sent cards with a special bios that allowed a higher power envelope, or higher temp limit, or something that is not attainable to a consumer than that is different. While I think the 970 memory stunt was ridiculously douchey, people were still buying it based on the reviews which showed the card performed exactly as it should.

 

[Fluffmeister]

I don't get what all the fuss is. Everyone should know what these three modes are available for the card they are purchasing. If they don't, then too bad they should pay attention to what they are buying. The simple fact that OC Mode is enabled when sent to reviewers and retail has gaming mode enabled is a non issue for me because these modes are available to the end user with relatively no extra work.

Now, if they had sent cards with a special bios that allowed a higher power envelope, or higher temp limit, or something that is not attainable to a consumer than that is different. While I think the 970 memory stunt was ridiculously douchey, people were still buying it based on the reviews which showed the card performed exactly as it should.

Marketing for ya heh? Not all cards boost equal, and Fury X isn't an... you get the point.

Hell as it stands you'd think AotS is the best game ever made.... meh.

 

[Ruru]

NVIDIA back to their old review tricks again!

How anyone can think that Nvidia is responsible what the AIB's do with custom cards? Point the finger on MSI and Asus, not on Nvidia.

 

[moproblems99]

Marketing for ya heh? Not all cards boost equal, and Fury X isn't an... you get the point.

Hell as it stands you'd think AotS is the best game ever made.... meh.

This might be the first time I have ever agreed with you.

 

[Sam008]

MSI gaming app does give us features like display settings for movie, gaming & eyerest mode.

The new ones get leds control with them but using afterburner is better because whenever i run gaming app it makes the clocks for my r9 270x go to 1050/1400 (silent mode) by default & when i close it my idle clock is 300/300 not 300/150.

I oced my card to 1200/1500 with afterburner & there is no option for us to run custom profiles from gaming app.

So yes avoid that software & use afterburner.

 

[Dethroy]

Even though the performance differences are negligible and the software has its merits, shady business practices like these shouldn't go unpunished.

 

[jtl]

Thanks for the integrity. It goes without saying other reviews may have tried to ignore it/cover it up.

 

[Frick]

I agree with the sentiment that it's BS even if it's simple enough to achieve on your own. Normally I don't bother with overclocking, and I hate having to install software. So therefore I get a marginally lower performance than expected.

As @danbert2000 said, they should think hard about why users have to jump through hoops to get the extra performance.

It does depends though. How well advertised is the feature?

 

[RMX]

Thanks for mentioning this TPU, although I think it's not such a big deal as the performance numbers reviewed are also available to me or any other 1080 GAMING owner and any company ever would send in a product for a review optimized to deliver the best performance. Never a fan of extra software but I've now installed the Gaming app and enabled OC mode for some more performance, so I guess this news is not so bad for me