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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.

4 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 msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Shouldn't some blame be placed on the review sites, for not purchasing cards at retail? That's SOP for reviewing products in many industries.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Shouldn't some blame be placed on the people that rely on other people's advice/research instead of doing their own?

      What? So I am supposed to buy all the cards, and test them myself, so I can decide which one to buy?