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Last week, news hit the web that MSI and Asus had been sending out graphics cards to hardware reviewers featuring seemingly higher out of the box clock speeds than what was available at retail. We have already heard Asus's side of the story and now, MSI has also released a statement on the situation, explaining their side of things and also promising to release the alternative vBIOS with OC Mode as the default.
In summary (full statement below), MSI's statement explains that many hardware reviewers don't use companion apps, like MSI's ‘Gaming App', which contains access to different performance profiles like Gaming Mode and OC Mode. To get around this, MSI sends out review samples with the OC mode on by default. All hardware though, is identical to what is available at retail and customers can obtain the exact same level of performance as reviewers.
“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. 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”.
If you want to ensure that you are running the exact same BIOS version as hardware reviewers, then MSI is also releasing an alternative vBIOS for the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 that makes OC Mode the default profile. The download links will go live tomorrow.
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KitGuru Says: Now we have heard from both Asus and MSI. From the sounds of things, reviewers will continue to receive GPUs with OC Mode activated by default, but in MSI's case, that BIOS mode will be made available to all customers if they want it. What have you guys thought about this whole story?
funny things:
1. this MSI Gaming App doesn’t work in Linux – if you are a Linux user, you’re fckd
2. the review sample has increased power limit over the retail, and the Gaming App doesn’t allow altering power limit
If it’s available to all etc why not just make it the default?
I cant find a reason why linux should be used for gaming.
why?! because MS – biggest reason of them all
But this is a reason to play on windows not on linux! LInux distributions are great for programming and scientific purposes. I use arch linux on public pc’s of university with i7 running under the hood. I had linux ubuntu on my main home system. I did learn many things but it is not for gaming!
Let’s blame reviewers now
I asked that question in the Asus thread and was told because some people like quiet fans. Something inside me died, I uttered a big sigh and went back to watching the birds in the trees outside my window. Don’t come in here asking sensible questions you’ll just lose a little more faith in humanity.
BULL POOP……average gamer does not overclock their card. Or use Afterburner.
They just said that in their statement themselves.
I can but usually don’t OC, I usually sli/crossfire and don’t need the FPS.
Reviewers are not getting the same card as retail customers are.
If you bought a standard BMW M5 and reviewers were provided a chipped M5 that provided extra performance and reviewers were not told, you can assume there wood be trouble. Say that you could chip your new M5 too is no comfort.
Essentially they wanted to look good in the FPS benchmarks, if by default you’re leading even by a few FPS it gets you somewhere (similar to having higher megapixels in a smartphone camera, or a 4K smartphone screen – some consumers tend to gravitate to those numbers due to lack of knowledge on the whole thing, or the abject laziness of understanding or sifting through countless reviews to get that purchase decision pegged down, market brand loyalties aside.)
When consumers no longer have the time nor the patience to go through serveral benchmarks and articles regarding chipset make, memory type, or try learning about PCI-E 2.0 vs. 3.0, 6-pin vs. 8-pin power connectors, phase power designs, etc., they tend to just go for something that tops the colored charts, and that sticks in their heads.
And, considering how limited the Pascal cards are when it comes to its overclocking headroom due to heat throttling issues, manufactures wanted to maximize performance by using custom BIOS that wouldn’t readily throttle under the standard environment of benchmarking them. Standard “usable” OC for the GTX 1080 seems to result at around a 10 frames-per-second advantage (give or take) at QHD & 4K gaming, which suggests that only the water cooling aftermarket variants will allow greater end-consumer-grade, out-of-the-box OC minus the throttling hassle.
Very valid point, at least msi is making up for it by making available the bios but will that include the power restriction or not? I have a few systems(5 of them) running different gpu at the moment all generations except fermi and 3 of them have msi based on what was price convinient and space required at the time of purchase but i only used msi software for maintance purpuses as i do not see the point of overclocking more then what the factory did…and i have to say that software goes unistalled 10 min later or the same day. Gaming in linux is viable this days not like 10years+ back… It all depends of needs.
WHAT!? QUIET FANS!? Screw that noise! Crank the headphones up to ELEVEN!! Then you can no longer hear those fans xD
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asda
Agreed. It’s a great way of sucking in the lazy and/or gullible.