Odd Story - ASUS MB's Overclocking ATI boards??

[Dave Baumann]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17614

Gigabyte claims that "out of curiosity" it tested the Asus PSAD2 Premium board and discovered a setting called Peg Link Mode. "This setting clandestinely oveclocks the frequency of memory and core engines of ATI based PCI Express Graphics," Gigabyte alleged.

"It was also found that Peg Link Mode is not an enhancement feature for [the] motherboard, as it provides enhancement only to the graphics card's memory and core engine frequency, ostensibly with the sole purpose to obtain higher benchmark results on 3D graphics".

Thats a new one!

 

[jvd]

I take it the peg ati cards are more abundant and most likely to be benchmarked than nvidia.

Mobo makers normaly overclock the fsb by a mhz or so to seem higher on benchmarks

Was only a matter of time before they did this

 

[Sxotty]

JVD, you need to get some indignant anger about this, misleading the public and all that.

Really though I thought that this had already been insinuated before, I just saw something about an msi board that seems to do something like this, has a "turbo mode" for ATI/NV that is on by defualt somewhere hidden amongst the options.

 

[Dio]

Mobo makers normaly overclock the fsb by a mhz or so to seem higher on benchmarks

They are more open about it nowadays. In the Abit board I just got, it automatically sets the FSB to 204MHz. You have to switch from 'automatic' to 'manual' to set it to 200MHz.

 

[jvd]

JVD, you need to get some indignant anger about this, misleading the public and all that.

Really though I thought that this had already been insinuated before, I just saw something about an msi board that seems to do something like this, has a "turbo mode" for ATI/NV that is on by defualt somewhere hidden amongst the options.

What. I was told not to get upset when a 6800ultra extreme started to get bnechmarked .

Or 6800ultras at diffrent speeds .

Why would I get mad about this ? Seems par for the course

 

[Rys]

I think the questions should be: How can a PC mainboard overclock the engine and memory speeds of a graphics card in one of its slots?

Rys

 

[dan2097]

Mobo makers normaly overclock the fsb by a mhz or so to seem higher on benchmarks

They are more open about it nowadays. In the Abit board I just got, it automatically sets the FSB to 204MHz. You have to switch from 'automatic' to 'manual' to set it to 200MHz.

That will overclock the processor according wont it i.e.a 2% overclock right?

Thats a bit dodgy isnt it, I mean my old proccesor (xp2400+) at stock voltage only managed a 3.5% overclock before losing prime 95 stability

Overclocking the graphics card sounds very dodgy as wouldnt that void the warrenty on the graphicsd card... but then again isnt the same true of fsb overclocking in regard to cpus... :?

 

[2senile]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20040805PR202.html

Asustek Computer today released details of a feature in its 915P and 925X-based motherboards’ BIOS called PEG (PCI Express Graphics) Link mode amid cries of “foul playâ€￾ from Gigabyte Technology.

 

[RingWraith]

Ummmm, this isn't anything new. Its called 'OVERDRIVE' and ATi cards already support it.

 

[PatrickL]

With a big difference. Overdrive is covered under warranty. If your graphic card dies because of Asus overclock, do you think that asus will replace it ?

 

[AlphaWolf]

With a big difference. Overdrive is covered under warranty. If your graphic card dies because of Asus overclock, do you think that asus will replace it ?

Is it an Asus card?

 

[RingWraith]

Its really simple. It only supports ATi cards, ATi is the only company that supports overclocking, and its only for PCIe. Add this all together and you get PCIe Overdrive. If it was only a simple overclock then it would propably work on nVidia cards as well.

 

[DarN]

Asus' response

This thread from EB[/url]]After hearing the accusations, officials from ASUS said that they understand where the second-tier company is coming from. Since ASUS is the world's number 1 motherboard company, it has a responsibility to help improve the entire motherboard industry. Hence, it released information on some of its confidential technology to educate other motherboard manufacturers, which have very limited research and development capability.

ASUS 915 and 925 motherboards included an exclusive feature called PEG Link Mode. This feature allows users to overclock GPU frequency and VGA memory speed through the motherboard the same way system bus and memory bus are tweaked. PEG Link Mode overclocks PCI-Express graphics cards from BIOS settings to enable powerful video performance on DX8 and DX9 applications. ASUS engineers carefully fine-tuned the parameters for every single PCI-Express card to provide system stability during high-speed graphics operation.

Under PEG Link, there are five settings for this unique function: Auto, Slow, Normal, Fast and Faster.

The default setting is Auto, which means the motherboard will automatically adjust for the right frequency according to system configuration. For advanced users who demand more precise overclocking, they can select the other four settings to achieve the most suitable graphics card performance.

What an attitude

 

[3dilettante]

I don't like how ASUS sets the PEG mode default to auto. While odds are most systems will work fine on initial boot with the feature activated, I wouldn't like to be the one guy in a thousand who now can't boot up because the BIOS kneecaps my graphics card.

It's not that I could clear the CMOS to a safe default if the default caused the problem.

Odds are it would be incredibly rare, though I wonder what would happen if someone upgrades their x800 video card in a year or two for a next gen PCIe and finds out the feature has a compatibility problem.

 

[Dave Baumann]

http://www.ati.com/buy/promotions/asusPCIE/index.html

Seems like this might be ATI endoursed.

 

[Rys]

Well you learn something new every day!

Raising GPU engine speed when CPU load is high seems an odd concept to me. If you're CPU bound, the number of cases where upping GPU engine clock would help that CPU limitation seems very low, unless you're right on the edge of that CPU limit. And even if you are, I can imagine noticable fluctuation in framerate when it happens, as that fine balance is upset by a constantly shifting GPU clock.

And what about if you're GPU memory bandwidth limited at the time, so raising engine clock buys you nothing but extra heat?

I'd love to see it in action and investigate what happens (mainly to framerate) in CPU-limited games where you're right on that CPU limit, and GPU overclocking kicks in via the mainboard.

The basis for an article if someone is bored.

Rys

 

[Sandwich]

Well you learn something new every day!

Raising GPU engine speed when CPU load is high seems an odd concept to me. If you're CPU bound, the number of cases where upping GPU engine clock would help that CPU limitation seems very low, unless you're right on the edge of that CPU limit. And even if you are, I can imagine noticable fluctuation in framerate when it happens, as that fine balance is upset by a constantly shifting GPU clock.

And what about if you're GPU memory bandwidth limited at the time, so raising engine clock buys you nothing but extra heat?

I'd love to see it in action and investigate what happens (mainly to framerate) in CPU-limited games where you're right on that CPU limit, and GPU overclocking kicks in via the mainboard.

I don't think so. A faster GPU is a faster GPU. It should never slow you down, but it might help a bit in a lot of cases.

An game is rarely completely cpu-bound or gpu-bound, because the two generally have to wait on eachother.
Even if the cpu is slow and very busy, and the gpu sits idle between rendering frames, the quicker it's finished rendering a frame, the quicker the cpu can get on with it.

That's also why you can gain some performance by lowering the resolution, when you get low FPS even on a card with big fillrates.