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MSI and ASUS Accused of Sending Reviewers Overpowered Graphics Cards (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the intent-to-deceive dept.

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.

5 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Shills, Shills Everywhere... by negRo_slim · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A lot of times this is a whole non-issue, and not for the shill reasons you'd expect. They come out saying right at the start that these are "review samples" and those have almost always have a different bios flashed on to them then the run of the mill retail cards, especially since those review samples are selected cards that have a more stable and higher base clock rate in the first place and have already been used internally for testing. If a site doesn't want a "review sample" they only have to tell the company that's sending them the hardware they would prefer to have retail boxed copies of hardware.

      That of course means the reviewer will have to wait for a retail version to become available to them in most cases instead of getting their review sample a few weeks early. I'll bet you already know what the site will want anyway, they'll still want that review sample so they can get people in the door and looking at their site.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    2. Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      Video card reviewer here.

      No, we do not appreciate this. We want to test the out of the box, retail performance of a card. This means I have to go to the manufacturer and chase down a clean BIOS, because due to how GPU clocking mechanisms work, factory overclocks may have altered the voltage table and/or maximum boost clock differently from how the base clock has been modified. Shipping these cards with the OC BIOS makes things harder for us, not easier.

      Truthfully, we don't even want to test these OC modes. They're generally a sub-2% overclock. Due to the aforementioned complexities in how GPU clocking works (high loads can be throttled by power or temperature), 2% is within the margin of error anyhow. So all it does is create more testing work for a trivial gain. When we actually want to test overclocking, we go in and manually overclock, which for most cards is going to net a much larger performance increase than these baked-in OC modes.

      Instead manufacturers screw with the BIOSes in a misguided effort to end up at the top of the performance charts, beating their competitor by 0.1%. When in reality, everyone would just be better off if they made the OC mode the default mode to begin with.

    3. Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... by sexconker · · Score: 3, Interesting

      These cards are specifically built and marketed for overclocking. There are profiles on the cards, and the OC profile is on all retail units, it's simply not the default. Why they made it the default for reviewers or not the default for retail I don't know. But it really isn't an issue. All the cards will reach those clocks.

    4. Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Most of this kit can easily be resold quickly for only a small loss in actual value as long as they don't hold onto them for too long. e.g if you bought a Nvidia 1080 or 1070 based card at launch you could have easily reviewed it and then resold it for what you paid even though it was slightly used. Computer components devalue fast but brand new computer components, especially with scarcity at initial launch don't require the reviewer to take any sort of financial hit from reviewing it.