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MSI and ASUS Accused of Sending Reviewers Overpowered Graphics Cards (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: TechPowerUp discovered that the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X card they were sent for review was running at faster GPU and memory clock speeds than the retail version. This was because the review card was set to operate in the OC (overclocking) mode out of the box, whereas the retail card runs in the more regular Gaming mode out of the box. This may result in an unobservant reviewer accidentally misrepresenting the OC performance numbers as the stock results from the card, lending MSI's product an unearned helping hand. The site found this was a recurring pattern with MSI stretching back for years. Fellow Taiwanese manufacturer ASUS, in spite of having better global name recognition and reputation, has also show itself guilty of preprogramming review cards with an extra overclocking boost. Needless to say, the only goal of such actions is to deceive -- both the consumer and the reviewer -- though perhaps some companies have felt compelled to follow suit after the trend was identified among competitors. The Verge notes that TechPowerUp revealed its finding on Thursday of last week, and has not received any official response from either MSI or ASUS. They did update their story to note that MSI addressed the matter, in a comment provided to HardOCP Editor-in-Chief Kyle Bennett, back in 2014.
I've seen this endlessly excused on sites like reddit by people claiming that it just saves the reviewers time since we'd all go into the drivers and overclock them anyways and other variations of that. I don't buy that one bit personally.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Ship with better tires first 6 months of a new model release while car magazine review cars, then change to cheaper tires.
A good reviewer should buy things anonymously for their review, lest they tempt the producer to send them a higher quality product. Of course, it's harder to buy things anonymously when you want the producer to gift it to you. This has been obvious for a long time.
And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It's not "sites like reddit" claiming it.
It started with techpowerup article, mentioning exactly what was wrong: cards running at higher frequencies than normal retail versions: Here is it:
MSI and ASUS have been sending us review samples for their graphics cards with higher clock speeds out of the box, than what consumers get out of the box. The cards TechPowerUp has been receiving run at a higher software-defined clock speed profile than what consumers get out of the box. Consumers have access to the higher clock speed profile, too, but only if they install a custom app by the companies, and enable that profile. This, we feel, is not 100% representative of retail cards, and is questionable tactics by the two companies. This BIOS tweaking could also open the door to more elaborate changes like a quieter fan profile or different power management.
http://www.techpowerup.com/for...
In before bug/feature fight and fanboy warfare.
These two respectful companies have no need to cheat, their records stand for themselves.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
are marketers, not reviewers.
Well, at least racismguy mixes it up a bit, eh?
Well, at least racismguy mixes it up a bit, eh?
Just ask yourself: when's the last time you recall a city full of white people rioting because a court decision didn't go their way? When did you last remember hearing about masses of white people looting and pillaging because of a natural disaster? In the last few decades can you think of one white equivalent of Ferguson, Katrina, or L.A.?
I'm not asking if you can do a Google search and find such a reference someplace in the world. I'm asking if you can remember any such event off the top of your head, honestly, using an honor system definition of "honestly".
Do you think that's because white people like and agree with every court decision? No, lots of them are bullshit. Do you think that's because natural disasters never affect whites? No, the Mississippi floods rural white people all the time, and hurricanes don't give a shit about race (in fact most ocean-front property is owned by whites). Do you think that's because white youth never get gunned down by blacks? No, that happens all the time, so much so that it isn't considered newsworthy, though you can find examples if you search for them. In fact many of them catch stray bullets from blacks shooting other blacks. It's still unjust.
Still you don't see masses of whites rioting. destroying property, pillaging, looting, and starting fires over this shit. You don't see riot squads called in to deal with white crowds when the same things happen to whites. Why, it's as though one race is more civil, less savage, more lawful, less tribal than the other. That is a theory that fits the facts. Feel free to come up with your own, but beware, lying to yourself to feel good about adhering to a narrative is not mentally healthy. It's a form of mind-fuck.
I'm not some hick redneck or uneducated yokel. I'm acquainted with the facts. I don't like the facts. I wish they weren't true. But facts are facts. They don't ask for my approval before becoming facts. They just are. See that's the thing - I don't like the current situation. I'm not "consumed by hate" or whatever. If I "hate" anything it's the way things are now. I would love change. I wish blacks would better themselves and stop being the bottom of the barrel. But only the black community can fix its own problems. Kissing their ass just makes them more comfortable the way they are, and the way they are needs to change. Kissing their ass and pretending they are equal when they are not, well in other contexts, this is called "being an enabler". They are sort of like the alcoholic who must first admit that he has a problem before there is any hope of change.
Review cards (as in the same hardware) are often sent out to multiple publications, was this a case of the cards being left in the mode set by the previous reviewer?
Pessamist much? A prowd person would agreed with this smilley but facts showed this pessamat vue to be way up firm and high.
just wait for the DMCA to shut down bad reviews
Wait... why do these cards have a "good mode" and a "shitty mode" in the first place, and why is the shitty one called "gaming mode"?
I'm going to guess that for power and thermal reasons that die yield of the chips support a performance envelope range, where one cards "good mode" can never be relied upon to be the same as another cards "good mode", but based on minimum burn in acceptance criteria, all cards are capable of operating in "shitty mode".
And further: that at the bottom of the barrel, "good mode" asymptotically approaches "shitty mode".
The fix would therefore seem to be: disallow overclocking.
(now listen to the gamers scream louder than they were screaming about "overclocked by default" in the original article...)
What kind of money do you think those review sites make per review? It is going to be a real problem staying in business if every review is predicated on being able to purchase one (or more) of a piece of high end hardware that can cost in the real of $700 in this particular case. It might be a nice idea to think they'd do it out of the goodness of their hearts and just spend their own money to help people but that isn't how things work. They need to get paid and they all have to cope with the rise of adblockers dropping revenue. So ya, review samples are pretty important.
Also in some cases samples are sent prior to public launch, so reviewers have to to get their review ready for when the public can purchase the hardware, so they don't need to sit around waiting for a review or go in blind. These things take time to do right, getting them hardware early is the only way to make that happen.
If you have a solution where people can still get the hardware early enough time to meet release day reviews and can do it cheaply enough to be able to pay their people to work on reviews for a living, I'd love to hear it. However the reality is I don't think there's a way.
Dunno if you've ever played with overclocking but the relation between speed increases past a chip['s normal limits and heat increases are not linear. So if you don't need/want the extra power, it is not a good idea to run your card harder than needed, particularly since those fans can get noisy when they spin up.
Support and stability are another reason. If a company rates a chip to a given level, they'll support/replace it there. Past that, maybe there's problems, maybe there's failures.
There can be a difference between what you normally design for and what something can actually do. Like my processor is spec'd to 140 watts TDP. What that means is Intel certifies that at standard operating frequency and voltage it will never dissipate more than that amount of heat, so if my thermal solution can handle that, I'm good. However the chip itself can survive more power, if there's a good enough solution. I can push it past that limit, if I want. If I do though, it is on me with regards to cooling and stability. If the chip messes up, they won't replace it.
"though perhaps some companies have felt compelled to follow suit after the trend was identified among competitors."
Strange none of the competitors may have felt compelled to make the whole thing public after seeing the first competitor trying to deceive the market.
Sounds a bit like, it would be acceptable for anyone to steal/rape/kill/..., provided they saw someone else do it before them.
It's standard practice that hardware reviewers are sent 'golden samples', or chips determined to be the most stable and functional. They tend to be the most overclockable, thus leading to exaggerations of how overclockable the chips are in general. Can't find it now but I recall a site having an image macro of Fry with the caption "Not sure if golden sample or super-fast video card".
A few years ago, AMD was found to be sending out video cards (the 290x IIRC) that ran hot and were heavily affected by thermal throttling, yet sent cards with modified firmware to hardware reviewers. This modified firmware caused the fans to spin at a faster RPM than consumer versions of the card, which made the cards cooler (and louder) and thus throttle less due to overheating.
Any reviewer worth their salt will know the stock and boost clocks for the part they're testing, and use software to check current clock speed. Pre-overclocked hardware is only a problem for lazy reviewers who didn't check.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Oh shut up. it's not like you WON'T buy the next thing you make.
so it's all just noise. yeah mfgs cheat. they all cheat.
stfu already and go buy the newest thing or you're not a real gamer.
Although most TVs in stores are very badly set up, it's almost universal now that they have a "shop mode" that makes the colours more vivid and the picture brighter. This would simply seem to be an extension of that practice.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I remember the days of yesteryear, when Asus put wallhack in their drivers, not once, but twice. Not that those are the previous incidents Asus has been involved with, but those are the ones that made me never forgive Asus.
And MSI has been making crap from day one.
The review of a laptop will say something like "HP Mobile 2300" but there'll be about 200 variations encompassing cpu/gpu/ram/display tech/hard drive size-speed-architecture/northbridge/etc/etc/etc. You'll never find the one which was reviewed for sale in your country and that's assuming the review actually mentioned the various product id which would enable you to even look for it. So yeah, great, thanks for the 3dbench scores and "this was faster than that pc" but I have no idea what you just reviewed.
It's not like they're sending out products regular people can't buy.
It's not like someone buying the product can't enable this option and get the exact same experience.
If they didn't enable this option by default, a slack reviewer may not enable and then the product gets mis-represented.
Just ask yourself: when's the last time you recall a city full of white people rioting because a court decision didn't go their way?
Man, white people riot when sports results don't go their way. Also, they riot when they do go their way.
Maybe you should read real news instead of getting all your articles from Stormfront?
I've seen this deception before in the car industry!
CR should start reviewing video cards (in case you don't know, they anonymously retail-buy everything they test).
It would also probably drop their demographic age by about 10 years in one fell swoop.
Tux racer is going to look fabulous on this!
How is this different than when car companies provide review vehicles with all the bells and whistles pre-installed? Most will purchase a mid range trim level vehicle so the review may not adequately reflect what the average car buyer will experience.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
So MSI (not that one) sent overclocked GPUs to reviewers whose job is to publish performance ratings. That's a lot like showing up with an RPG to a shooting competition and asking the judges, "Is this okay?". At what point did they think this would be an 'advantage'? It's not like getting the best dish in a restaurant because you're the critic, there is no incentive here. This must be an advertising campaign.
Like a month or so old by now.
Good thing Slashdot repeats news on average 2 weeks old so if I miss anything I have a place to find it.
The clocks vary by 1-2% between the review and retail products. I can think of far more important issues to froth over on the internet.
The retail products even have an option to kick up to that performance level. Granted, it's not the default, but it's supported and very easy to change.
Manufacturers make far more outlandish claims by carefully selecting benchmarks, and no one even pays attention to that anymore.
Is it bullshit on some fundamental level? Yeah, maybe it's dishonest, and I'm not going to give corporations the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their motives. But it's barely a blip on the bullshit meter.
If the user didn't have the ability to adjust the clocks, then I could understand getting angry. At a 1-2% clock difference, it would still be a minor point. We can adjust the clocks though, so we get the same level of performance at home.
I'm in the market for a video card during this product cycle (waiting for Vega details), and this just doesn't matter enough to affect my decision at all.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
How about instead of sending cards, the manufacturers send rebate forms (worth 100% of the total price) to the professional reviewers. Assumedly the reviewers are getting some revenue, so they'd only have to cover the gap between card purchase and rebate submission.
That or have a buy-back program for cards used in reviews where the cards can be returned.
You mean the cores that resemble an American companies cores? Yea they stole the spec sheets and made a bootleg version.
They've been doing this for years and living the realm of deny, deny, deny. I suppose this classifies as false advertising in the legal sense, since benchmarks are based on these reviews.
I smell class action lawsuits?