Nvidia recently confirmed on their forums that the mobile versions of Nividia’s 900 series chips no longer support overclocking thanks to the newest drivers.
Nvidia’s reason for doing so according to Customer Care associate ManuelG, is that overclocking can harm mobile processors because of limited cooling. This is true for many laptops and overheating can reduce the lifespan of the chip over time or even quickly damage it. Not all laptops are created equal though and many overclockers even create their own coolers for their devices.
Many users are upset by Nvidia’s decision to lock out overclocking on their chips, because they had this ability upon purchasing their devices. Maybe Nvidia will decide to reverse their decision here in the next few weeks. Only time will tell.
What do you think about that overclocking fiasco? We’re you one of the many mobile users affected by this decision? Let us know in the comments below.
Matt Followell is another contributing author here at DSOGaming. A long time fan of PC Gaming and a huge supporter of the open source and homebrew movement. You’ll see him interacting with the community from time to time going by the user-name of Radapples.
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It should be up to the user but I can see why Nvidia did it
well, seeing my GT 450M on my laptop died of overheating, i can see why.. as long as they don’t advertise the cards to be overclockable.. i dont see any harm.. unlike the 3.5Gate eh?
problem is many OEM’s did advertise their notebooks as overclockable, especially Asus which even provides their tool preinstalled in the laptops and standard set to a 5% overclock, much like their desktop cards. Cooling has vastly improved since the GT 450m aswell.
A lot of people on tech sites are bashing Nvidia for this. But I think I see what Nvidia is trying to accomplish in the log run. Get Asus, MSI and various gaming laptop designers to make better thermal standards for gaming laptops in the future.
Say what now? I’m not sure if this is sarcasm. All brands you mentioned have great cooling capable to keep the GPU’s in the 70 °C way below throttling. This is just a pathetic excuse of Nvidia to just rebrand the chip and overclock it themselves, selling it as “new”. Just imagine car constructors blocking the exhaust pipe of a new car, praising it for low pollution, then removing the obstruction a few years later and yipping “more power! New engine!”. From 800m to 900m there has been a drop of 10°C in average temperatures.
I don’t think newer mobile gpu’s are suited for what is used in modern laptops to begin with. Or maybe just maybe Nvidia is hiding something we don’t know about the 900 mobile series gpu’s? I guess we get to wait and see if anybody looks deeper into this then just speculation on why Nvidia would make such a move.
Can you please rephrase your first sentence? It contradicts itself.
no it don’t…
Nice grammar, but yes it “do”. I can’t understand that gibberish.
Even if our desktop brothers are not currently affected by this, please do realize that it can happen to you too at any time since it is a driver lock. Nvidia giveth and Nvidia taketh away, just like that. Many of you were upset in the past with Green Light program and Titan when Nvidia tried to lock down desktop cards, so you can understand why we are angry that Nvidia would take away control of our own hardware.
If you identify at all with our plight or are afraid of what the future of Nvidia GPUs may hold, please sign this petition and show Nvidia we won’t stand for this nonsense: https://www.change.org/p/nvidia-re-enable-overclocking-on-geforce-equipped-notebooks?recruiter=20925400
I’ve been overclocking both my desktop gaming PC’s as well as my laptops for years and have never encountered a single issue with the desktop cards and overclocking, but I have had an nVidia GPU fail in a Dell XPS m1530 notebook with g92 chip, which was overclocked moderately. Additionally, i’ve had around a dozen or so customers bring me laptops for repair over the past decade that had the integrated graphics fail due to overclocking. The laptops were split about 50/50 between having nVidia and ATi/AMD chips.. so from my experience neither stands out as being more problematic.
I’ve disassembled hundreds of laptops over the years and while a select few have decent cooling systems, the vast majority are absolutely horrible. A few of the good ones are the Asus ROG laptops like the G750JS G751JS, any alienware (super expensive), or the MSI GT72. I’m sure there are others but off the top of my head that’s what i can give you.
IMO, this features should not be disabled on actual gaming laptops with decent cooling. Perhaps in the future nVidia should require cooling designs be submitted to them for approval to ensure quality.
I can totally see where nVidia is coming from though. I’ve seen so many laptops not branded as “gaming” with integrated GPU’s that are overclocked to hell by some kid who read a forum post about overclocking thinking nothing bad can happen. Combine that with the fact that they’ve never blown out the cooling system with compressed air and the heat-sink is 90% blocked with cat hair… and it’s a recipe for destruction.
The best advice I can offer to those who want to game on PC…. build a desktop computer. It’s easy, you’ll learn the basics on how computers function, and possibly save yourself a lot of money by doing a self diagnosis than having someone like me fix problems.
This is total crap. I’ve been overclocking Nvidia GPU’s since the 8600m GT and that was the most prone to failure, but it never did. If you look at my dozens of models that I’ve reviewed and ones I’ve owned personally, I’ve done vBIOS mods and pushed the GPU clocks by as much as 50% without ever a failure.
But sure, if you aren’t careful, same with desktop cards, they’re prone to failure. Run it at 99C all day it’s going to fail. I can run my 970m at near desktop 970 speeds at < 80C all day long..
Don't forget about Clevo laptops which supply the chassis and construction for Sager, Mythlogic, Origin, among others that are more than capable of cooling and managing faster than stock clocks without problem.
Limiting overclocks should be left up to the OEM, not the manufacturer of the chip, because the OEM actually fabricates the boards and cooling system and warrant's the GPU and machine. It'd be like the maker of a fuel injector in a car artificially limiting how much gas can pass into the engine limiting performance that the car manufacturer would rather not be limited. It's just dumb.
I've built dozens of desktops in addition to modding and pushing the limits of laptops too. "Build a desktop" doesn't suffice. It's not a cookie cutter solution. Laptops have been more than capable for the last six or seven years, so educate yourself. People want the power on the go, not stuck to a wall in the corner of their home.
The fact that you mentioned Clevo not once tells me how much you know about gaming notebooks. HTWingNut has reviewed a wider selection than you’ve ever gotten your hands on. Of course most laptops that come your way suck. Those are precisely the low-quality pieces of junk that high-end gaming notebooks are not.
This is kinda a crap decision to be honest. If you bought a gaming laptop and a power user of course you’re gonna fiddle with the gpu clocks. If you’re telling me that casuals are destroying their mobile GPU’s then they deserve it because they didn’t do the proper research to overclock their GPU’s right.
Unless you have a custom cooler on there, mobile GPUs are not overclock worthy, and in most cases trying to overclock them will do more harm than any good. Power users know not to waste money on “gaming” laptops and buy desktop hardware to tweak to their heart’s content.
Haha peasant laptops! If you want to game seriously, you should buy a desktop period.
But no, thats not the point here!
A company which previously offered a feature, doesn’t offer it anymore. That is the more pressing issue here. Nvidia wtf is wrong with them.
First they lie about 970 fix driver, then ‘fix’ it with the 347.52 driver. Now this. I think you can still use hacked quadro/desktop or other drivers to unlock overclocking right?
I think both Nvidia’s actions and your perception of gaming notebooks are wrong. 😉
Just look at the user name and it’s obvious this troll is a poser wannabe stooge that got bored under his rock and needed to generate some emotion to enhance his meaningless existence.
Well if you are a laptop user I apologize, but the first sentence is being spammed by literally everyone.
That is why I wrote the second sentence, its really not an option which should be in nvidia’s hands.
I know that in today’s age some manufacturers are going the extra mile for laptops, providing thicker laptops with better cooling, the rest of my point reflects what people should be really angry at.
On the contrary I think this is contradictory. While I had my 970s, they would undervolt & destroy stable OCs just at 68c! Given the excellent GPU Limit 2.0 algorithm, I don’t see why they’d have to completely disable OCs. The only way of removing GPU Limit 2.0 in 900 series is to change the minimum boost voltage in the bios to be constant.
I know you were being tongue-in-cheek, but the sheer volume of ignorance and condescension regarding notebook overclocking is appalling. Whatever happened to the tinkerer/hobbyist spirit and keeping an open mind, esp. about things you may lack knowledge/experience in?
This move has to be a cover-up effort on NVIDIA’s part. Anyone that believes they are doing this as a service to protect their customers rather than an effort to cover their own butt for engineering incompetence is nuts.
But dang, some of the ignorant comments by people that know absolutely nothing about how outstanding the right kind of laptop overclocks the CPU and GPU is amazing to me. I had no idea there were this many uninformed morons out there. Pay attention… visit HWBOT.org a little more often. Comments to the effect that there are no laptops capable of handling overclocking is reflection of pure ignorance.
Wake up dummies and stop making troll comments. There are more extreme laptop overclockers out there than one might realize, and TONS of casual laptop overclockers. Some of these machines are engineered and advertised to support it. I love tearing up gamer-boy desktops with my amazing extreme overclocked laptops with fully unlocked Extreme processors and SLI that overclock like a banshee and still run nice and cool.
What NVIDIA did here is unethical and potentially illegal. If they do not reconsider, there will be a reckoning. Remember the “Bumpgate” Class Action? Get ready to rumble.
That NVIDIA would message this when we see examples of NVIDIA employees overclocking their own laptops and posting benchmark scores with them is outright hypocrisy.
Not only the overclock but the underclock was blocked aswell. F**k off Nvidia.
Yes, heat can hurt the electronics in a laptop because of insufficient cooling, but locking people out of an overclock is ridiculous. A person should have total control over their purchase and do as they please with it. If you own the laptop then it’s yours to break if you so wish.
They simply need to create a warning that if you decide to overclock you can void your warranty.
Atleast I can still overclock my 780m. People aren’t stupid, if they can overclock a laptop they can defenitely also watch the temps. If the thing shuts itself down at 92C, starts throttling at 90C, but doesn’t even go above 75C, then what’s the problem?
What happend with NV? They wanna spit again and again on users&gamers head?
3 major issues (Gtx 970 3.5 Vram & 1.7 L2 cache, G-sync lies, chip 900m driver locked OC) from last months and they continue.
Not a single word from that CEO to say: Im sorry Loosers!