Overclockers.com: NVIDIA Says No to Voltage Control

This voltage control problem is kind of a strange situation. On the one hand we all want as much tools as needed for pushing the maximum out of a card, but on the other hand several community members have pointed out that these tools are taking the skill out of overclocking.

If Nvidia forcing vendors to no longer include voltage tools, then so be it. Just like with the GTX 680 Lightning, we still have the manual method!

[...]

From this quote, it’s obvious that NVIDIA does not want their partners to supply any means of voltage control with the GK100 series of GPUs. This is a slap in the face to many of the enthusiasts and everyday overclockers who enjoy pushing hardware for that extra performance. That leaves the extreme, warranty-voiding modders that hardmod their GPUs with the ability to increase voltage for the Kepler cards and have a stress-free overclocking experience

The only fault of EVGA throughout this process of removing EVBot ports is that there wasn’t an official announcement before cards without EVBot ports were shipped or listed on their site. Also, a EVGA forums member pointed out that the picture of the GTX 680 Classified in their product section seems to have the EVBot port blacked out using something like MS Paint. So, from the outside looking in it looks like EVGA was trying to hide the fact that the GTX 680 Classified will no longer have EVBot support and hoping no one noticed.

[...]

The questions that could not be answered were “Why is NVIDIA doing this?” and “Are they [NVIDIA] experiencing an increased level of RMAs? …as in, does real voltage control kill Kepler GPUs excessively fast?” and it would have been nice to to know the answer to these. Only NVIDIA knows exactly why they are holding back the potential of their GPUs by limiting the cards so much.

All this information makes it seem like it’s just a matter of time before NVIDIA snuffs out other voltage control features from other manufacturers. We know MSI and Galaxy have been having trouble getting NVIDIA to budge on allowing voltage control. ASUS has their GPU Hotwire feature, which can control GPU voltage when combined with their high-end motherboards (similar to EVGA’s EVBot). I haven’t heard or read anything about ASUS removing hotwire for NVIDIA cards, but it looks to be inevitable. We’ve sent an email to our contacts at ASUS asking about this and we’ll update with any information we get from them.

So, the AIB partners are not to blame here, it’s all NVIDIA.