NVIDIA's shady trick to boost the GeForce 9600 GT

Posted on Friday, February 29 2008 @ 16:37 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
When TPU first reviewed NVIDIA's new GeForce 9600 GT they noticed a discrepancy between the advertised core speed and the frequency reported by the clock generator. After further investigation they can now answer what causes this.
The idea of implementing a mechanism that directly increases the GPU frequency (and performance) based on the PCI-Express base frequency is a great novelty. It has the potential to offer hassle-free performance improvements to a large number of less experienced users. Being able to adjust this frequency in most modern BIOSes is a big plus because it will be applied without any software installation requirement in Windows (or any other operating system - there is your Linux overclocking).

The execution of this from NVIDIA's side is less than poor in my opinion. They did not communicate this new feature to reviewers at all, nor invented a marketing name for it and branded it as a feature that their competitors do not have. Even when asked directly we got a bogus reply: "the crystal frequency is...". No, there is no 25 MHz crystal and its frequency is not fixed either. I'm not accusing the sender of the E-Mail of course, I just believe he didn't know, maybe this fact wasn't communicated to the marketing team at all. However, if you would get such an inquiry wouldn't you look into this further if it was your job to properly promote a product?
Read more over here.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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