Recently, many publications discovered certain GTX 1080 review samples featured higher clocks than their retail counterparts which sparked a heated discussion if this was misleading. The opinion from what I’ve seen has been mixed with some users feeling it’s been overblown while others believe it’s a breach of trust. Honestly, there’s been a lot of confusion regarding this controversy and it’s important to note that the cards in question are set to an overclocked mode. ASUS, one of the companies involved in this have released an official statement to the press explaining the situation:
“ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards come with exclusive GPU Tweak II software, that provides silent, gaming, and OC modes allowing users to select a performance profile that suits their requirements. Users can apply these modes easily from within GPU Tweak II.
The press samples for the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 OC and ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 OC cards are set to “OC Mode” by default. To save media time and effort, OC mode is enabled by default as we are well aware our graphics cards will be reviewed primarily on maximum performance. And when in OC mode, we can showcase both the maximum performance and the effectiveness of our cooling solution.
Retail products are in “Gaming Mode” by default, which allows gamers to experience the optimal balance between performance and silent operation. We encourage end-users to try GPU Tweak II and adjust between the available modes, to find the best mode according to personal needs or preferences.
For both the press samples and retail cards, all these modes can be selected through the GPU Tweak II software. There are no differences between the samples we sent out to media and the retail channels in terms of hardware and performance.”
As you can see, the faster BIOS mode is available to consumers providing they use the correct software. According to ASUS, they enable this option to save reviewers time and let them get into the testing without having to cycle through different modes. Evidently, reviewers are going to use the fastest mode to determine the maximum potential of a particular sample.
Do you think this is a fair response or are you upset about these revelations?
I call bs on this.
Reviewers are supposed to test the default, baseline, and out-of-the-box experience. Instead, ASUS is forcing an “optimal” scenario that only happens after you fiddle around with settings and custom bloatware that nobody installs.
If you care about that 20 or whatever Mhz difference then you’re dumb not to install MSI Afterburner or whatever to overclock it yourself.
Maybe every customer is dumb because they don’t want the extra heat, noise, power consumption or voiding their warranty. Nice logic Sherlock.
20Mhz is 20Mhz. If it was that important for ASUS, then they should clock ALL their cards at those speeds by default, not just the reviewer samples.
My card is overclocked and quieter than the stock setup. It’s called a custom fan profile. Overclocking doesn’t void your warranty.
Yeah, that isn’t going to void your warranty. Also like SmokingCrop has said, a custom fan profile will keep your GPU cooler and quieter than the factory fan profile.
Wait, if doing *custom* speeds and *custom* fan profiles is so much better than what comes out of the factory, why are we even buying these faulty products?
Last time I checked I bought a car and started driving it right away, I didn’t spend any time at all testing different gas, oils, additives, tires, brake calipers or tuning the engine. And yet, I can do all that with a car because it’s there to be played with. Is every car owner dumb because they don’t tweak their car? BUT WAIT! VW was caught cheating environmental benchmarks and got a huge backlash. And yet, customers could have also modified their cars to match the performance curves exposed for the environmental tests.
The problem is simply that you can’t submit one product for reviewers and a different one for the regular customers, even if after some tweaking they result in the same thing. It’s called false advertising.
People want different things out of their cards. I don’t care if my GPU is at 0 RPM’s up until a certain temperature. I’d prefer having it run at 40% at idle/low temps where I still can’t hear it but will get cooler temps. Then when I’m gaming I have headphones on so I can have the RPM’s raise quicker and not have to worry about the noise which once again results in cooler temperatures.
Other people may like the factory settings but they don’t fit my needs.
This is being blown completely out of proportion. The margins were tiny and they even give you the software to do it yourself with one click. It’s even stated on their site that those are the numbers you will get by going with their OC profile. Comparing it to the VW situation is a complete joke and destroys and merit you had(what little you did have).
Smokingcrop did you get so smart by smoking crops?
Blocked as well. Not wasting my time on you.
Reviews should reflect what the consumer is getting, So the Reviewer should state they are using a specific setting prior to showing a result otherwise said result is of no value to anyone.
they didn’t allow the reviewers to see this and that is where the problem is.
The only fault in this are the reviewers. It’s very clear on the product pages that these cards have multiple modes.
BIOS’s change all the time for whatever reason. They didn’t do special binning and they didn’t implement a feature that isn’t available to consumers.
It’s a feature that’s not available *by default*, you have to specifically opt-in. Do you know the concept of “path of less resistance”? That’s what default options are for.
Options are there to be used, if you don’t like the default then either use the freaking program or return your card and buy a different card that doesn’t give you options. Blocked because I can’t stand your stupidity.
You blocked him because you disagree with him, and you think he’s the stupid one..
BIOIS do NOT change all the time, are you on drugs?
according to wikipedia ASUS is the “emminence of the Chinese people” well I wouldn’t want cheaters to claim to represent me if I was Chinese.