NVIDIA To Re-Enable GeForce 900M Overclocking

jones_supa writes: One week after NVIDIA disabled overclocking on their GeForce 900M mobility lineup, a representative of the company has reported that NVIDIA will be bringing back the disabled feature for their overclocking enthusiasts on the mobility front. On the GeForce Forums, he writes, "We heard from many of you that you would like this feature enabled again. So, we will again be enabling overclocking in our upcoming driver release next month for those affected notebooks. If you are eager to regain this capability right away, you can also revert back to 344.75."

Comments

So how are they dealing with the overheating?

[MetalliQaZ]

This started with the (valid) concern to prevent overheating damage to laptop hardware. Are they just going to let someone fry their GPU and turn it in for warranty repairs now? That sounds unlikely. The new drivers will probably set a fuse to void warranty.

Re:So how are they dealing with the overheating?

[pla]

Are they just going to let someone fry their GPU and turn it in for warranty repairs now?

Perhaps just more aggressive thermal throttling in newer driver versions? "Sure, overclock all you like, but at 80C core or 40C ambient, you may a well have an IGP".

Though as I understood their original announcement, they hadn't so much seem a wave of outright DOA returns, as much as expressing concerns that prolonged pushing of the envelope would lead to reduced lifetimes. In that case, as long as the parts can outlast their warranty, NVidia may simply have come to the conclusion that earlier death means earlier replacement.

Smashing!

[Retron]

Hurrah!

The lesson here is that people who own a cool, overclockable GPU in a gaming laptop may want to overclock it. Goodness knows what came over them when they removed it, but at least they've seen sense now.

FWIW, the GM204 chip runs cool and is easy to overclock. I overclocked my 980M from 1,038 MHz (core), 1,253 MHz (RAM) to 1,228 MHz (core), 1,373 MHz (RAM) and received an 8% boost in my 3DMark scores. The GPU temperature didn't go above 70C either.

It makes a noticeable difference playing games at 3K, which is the native resolution of the panel.

For those who are unaware btw, if the chip gets too hot it'll simply downclock until it reaches a stable temperature. In some brands of laptop that happens at stock speeds, whereas others (such as the Clevo I have) have plenty of headroom. It's not the sort of thing that's going to lead to warranty repairs.

Re:Smashing!

[tlhIngan]

You hope. That's the idea, but components with thermal throttling still die the death of heat. The thermal throttling is controlled by software, and each card (or laptop) vendor has the opportunity to dick around with the maps.

No, software controlled thermals are never working alone. The software one allows a more gentle performance rampdown and fan control, but there's always a hardware override because software to control temps can go missing or simply not be present at certain stages.

In this case, if it overheats so badly the hardware kicks in, they basically kick the fan into high speed and halt the GPU (usually by blocking the core clock). Usually that's enough to cool it down to a safe zone where it re-enables the clock, so what was once a nice super smooth gameplay turns into a horrendous slideshow.

Or, sometimes if it gets really critical, it disables the clock until reset, which basically halts your PC as the busses lock up.

Re:Smashing!

[mupuf]

You seem knowledgeable and this indeed could be how it could be made to work but in this case, you are not entirely true. I would know because I reverse engineered thermal control for the Nouveau project (Open source Linux driver for NVIDIA GPUs) from the Geforce 8 to the Kepler. They may have changed it for Maxwell but I have not found the time to have a look. I also think it is unlikely they changed it since they basically never changed it since they introduced it in 2006.

You hope. That's the idea, but components with thermal throttling still die the death of heat. The thermal throttling is controlled by software, and each card (or laptop) vendor has the opportunity to dick around with the maps.

No, software controlled thermals are never working alone. The software one allows a more gentle performance rampdown and fan control, but there's always a hardware override because software to control temps can go missing or simply not be present at certain stages.

Perfectly true! You must have worked on this before ;) However, in the case of NVIDIA, fan management is done by a "microcontrol" running inside the GPU.

In this case, if it overheats so badly the hardware kicks in, they basically kick the fan into high speed and halt the GPU (usually by blocking the core clock).

NVIDIA has a more graceful way of dealing with this. I explained it in my PhD thesis (page 128 of the pdf: http://phd.mupuf.org/files/the...). In short, at different thesholds, they change a clock divider's value. But you should have a look at the page since there are some pretty graphs :p

Usually that's enough to cool it down to a safe zone where it re-enables the clock, so what was once a nice super smooth gameplay turns into a horrendous slideshow.

That could indeed happen if there was a catastrophic failure in the cooling system.

Or, sometimes if it gets really critical, it disables the clock until reset, which basically halts your PC as the busses lock up.

NVIDIA does not rely on shutting down the clock. Well, it does so .... by shutting down the entire power of the board. There is a GPIO that controls the voltage regulator. Once set, the GPU needs a reset command from the PCIe port and needs to get POSTed again to become usable again.

Re:Who really owns your graphics card?

[Richard_at_work]

You do - you can stay on the version of the software that works for you, you don't have to switch to a new version. And they don't have to put new versions of the software out.