Karl Bode over at techdirt brings the story of how things should work in the business world.
Graphics card powerhouse Nvidia hasn't been having very much fun lately. First, the company took an Internet wide beating from gamers after selling a 4 GB graphics card (the GTX 970) that wasn't really a 4 GB graphics card, resulting in the $300+ purchase choking on high-end resolutions (or when using, say, Oculus Rift). After months of complaints and a false advertising suit, the company finally took to its official blog to acknowledge that the company "failed to communicate" its graphics card's limitations to the marketing department and "externally to reviewers at launch." Yeah, whoops a daisy.
Perhaps a bigger deal was Nvidia's December decision to roll out mobile graphics card drivers that prevented paying customers from overclocking the cards they own. The ability for consumers to do as they see fit with their own hardware, Nvidia claimed at the time, was a bug in the company's driver software that needed to be removed for the safety of the consumer (read: Nvidia got tired of processing returns and calls from idiots who didn't understand things pushed to work harder get hotter than ever when in confined spaces).
The good news is that after being absolutely pummeled in the media for weeks, Nvidia has issued a statement in its forums saying that the company has had a change of heart and will reintroduce the "bug":
"As you know, we are constantly tuning and optimizing the performance of your GeForce PC. We obsess over every possible optimization so that you can enjoy a perfectly stable machine that balances game, thermal, power, and acoustic performance. Still, many of you enjoy pushing the system even further with overclocking. Our recent driver update disabled overclocking on some GTX notebooks. 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."
It's nice to see a company really listen to its customers once in a while.
(Score: 3, Informative) by SlimmPickens on Thursday February 26 2015, @07:12PM
I gave up big overclocks when I replaced my K8 system which had 2GB of RAM running about 500 mHz. The system I replaced it with didn't get overclocked straight away and I was pretty shocked to see my power bill go down by $150 per quarter. Some of that would have been that I was cooking less (electric stove) and having less long showers (electric flow heater) but I reckon the bulk of it was that computer.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday February 26 2015, @07:24PM
Electric flow heaters are gigantic power hogs. Your reckoning may be right, but only in the technical sense.
In comparison, stoves and computers are tiny.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by draconx on Thursday February 26 2015, @07:28PM
At an estimated average cost of $0.15/kWh, reducing your electricity bill by $150/quarter means reducing your average power usage by about 450W.
So yeah, a beefy desktop PC running 24/7, especially with an absurdly power hungry GPU (or two), could represent a good chunk of that. Replacing it with a more energy efficient PC can save you money. Alternately, turn the PC off when it's not in use (which is probably most of the time).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2015, @08:35PM
Gaming desktops are idle or off most of the time. The bulk was definitely not the computer.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Thursday February 26 2015, @08:49PM
This was with couldn't quiet turned off (you had to to get a decent overclock then) so no dynamic under-clocking, a fair bit of voltage in the CPU, and the RAM at 2.8V (instead of 1.5). When I googled i at the time someone said that the current increase is the square of the voltage. It seemed within the realm of possibility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2015, @08:49PM
The OP's K8 would be around 10 years old now or older. They are not nearly as efficient in idle as a modern PC, and "overclocking" may have involved disabling some of the power saving features that did exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2015, @11:08PM
I guess you're right. But then replacing it with an overclocked modern system with a modern OS, even with a power-hungry card, would still produce power savings due to much lower idle power consumption.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Thursday February 26 2015, @08:53PM
Also, these are Australian dollars
(Score: 3, Funny) by skullz on Thursday February 26 2015, @11:54PM
I replaced the red LEDs with green ones and my power bill went down. Science, man.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday February 26 2015, @07:22PM
1) Set max die operating temp in the hardware
2) Throttle when reaching that temp.
2a) ask user three times if they really mean to exceed the temperature, at the cost of warranty.
2b) if 3x yes, remove throttling and set hardware write-once flag
3) support only cards with flag unset
Is it really that hard to figure out?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2015, @07:23PM
"drivers that prevented paying customers from overclocking the cards they own."
what did you windows + nvidia proprietary driver using slaves expect? transparency and fairness? preposterous.
"we are constantly tuning and optimizing the performance of your GeForce PC"
these extremely stupid, but power mad manufacterers are disgusting. when will you degenerate scum understand that you are supposed to be selling hardware? oh, probably when the slaves stop standing in line to be whipped...
"It's nice to see a company really listen to its customers once in a while."
would you just STFU with your moronic braying?
(Score: 0) by Balderdash on Thursday February 26 2015, @07:28PM
I am waiting for side-by-side driver releases, one set for overclockers and one set for ordinary users.
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by glyph on Thursday February 26 2015, @11:19PM
This is good news, but listening to their customers is not how I would characterise the reversal of anti-consumer practices in the face of public revolt. Businesses sometimes make mistakes, but a business that listens to it's customers would not make such fundamental ones.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Wootery on Friday February 27 2015, @06:31PM
Still good to see the public outrage (rather than apathy), though.