MSI Releases Official Statement on VGA Review Samples OC Mode Controversy

Recently, revelations emerged regarding MSI and ASUS automatically setting their graphics card review samples to a faster mode than retail versions. While there was some confusion about this topic, it’s important to remember that consumers can access these faster speeds with each vendor’s graphics card’s software. According to MSI and ASUS, the OC mode is set as default because a reviewer’s time is extremely limited and they want to ensure every benchmark is set using the maximum performance preset. Of course, this hasn’t been handled that well and consumers should have the same opportunities as reviewers and be able to cycle between modes without software. From my experience, the average user rarely installs optional software and simply installs the graphics card. Anyway, here is the official statement from MSI detailing this issue:

“MSI Review samples and MSI retail cards are identical in terms of hardware and performance. Both have the exact same performance profiles available through the MSI Gaming App. All information about these performance profiles is clearly communicated and can be found on the respective product pages. 

Retail cards are set to ‘Gaming Mode’ by default, which offers the best Performance per Watt, while still giving close to ‘OC Mode’ in-game performance. In order to enjoy the best performance and all features of MSI GAMING products, we highly recommend to use the MSI Gaming App which is available for free on MSI.com and the driver CD. The MSI Gaming App allows you to apply one of three performance profiles with a single click, instantly giving you the desired performance.

As several reviewers have stated, software like the MSI Gaming App is often not used in reviews. This is why review samples of the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 GAMING X graphics cards are set to ‘OC Mode’ to ensure that reviews demonstrate the same performance available through the MSI Gaming App. The award winning TWIN FROZR VI cooling is designed to handle each performance profile flawlessly, giving you the lowest noise in the industry and consistent performance so gamers can focus on their gameplay.

For those who prefer not to use the MSI Gaming App but still want to enjoy the same ‘OC Mode’ performance by default, we have released an alternative vBIOS with ‘OC Mode’ enabled by default.”

 

Consumers who want to access the OC BIOS for their GTX 10 series X graphics cards without software so can do via the following links:

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G OC Mode vBIOS

MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G OC Mode vBIOS

Does this statement address your concerns?