Nvidia Response to GTX Series Voltage Control

Question

I thought it would be worth posting this in light of recent events.
Quote from: brightsideofnews.com, 3rd October 2012
We contacted Nvidia for comment and received a response from their Senior PR Manager, Bryan Del Rizzo with the following,
"Green Light was created to help ensure that all of the GTX boards in the market all have great acoustics, temperatures, and mechanicals. This helps to ensure our GTX customers get the highest quality product that runs quiet, cool, and fits in their PC. GTX is a measureable brand, and Green Light is a promise to ensure that the brand remains as strong as possible by making sure the products brought to market meet our highest quality requirements.
Reducing RMAs has never been a focus of Green Light.
We support overvoltaging up to a limit on our products, but have a maximum reliability spec that is intended to protect the life of the product. We don’t want to see customers disappointed when their card dies in a year or two because the voltage was raised too high.
Regarding overvoltaging above our max spec, we offer AICs two choices:
· Ensure the GPU stays within our operating specs and have a full warranty from NVIDIA.
· Allow the GPU to be manually operated outside specs in which case NVIDIA provides no warranty.
We prefer AICs ensure the GPU stays within spec and encourage this through warranty support, but it’s ultimately up to the AIC what they want to do. Their choice does not affect allocation. And this has no bearing on the end user warranty provided by the AIC. It is simply a warranty between NVIDIA and the AIC.
With Green Light, we don’t really go out of the way to look for ways that AICs enable manual OV. As I stated, this isn’t the core purpose of the program. Yes, you’ve seen some cases of boards getting out into the market with OV features only to have them disabled later. This is due to the fact that AICs decided later that they would prefer to have a warranty. This is simply a choice the AICs each need to make for themselves. How, or when they make this decision, is entirely up to them.
With regards to your MSI comment below, we gave MSI the same choice I referenced above -- change their SW to disable OV above our reliability limit or not obtain a warranty. They simply chose to change their software in lieu of the warranty. Their choice. It is not ours to make, and we don’t influence them one way or the other.
In short, Green Light is an especially important program for a major, new product introduction like Kepler, where our AICs don’t have a lot of experience building and working with our new technologies, but also extends the flexibility to AICs who provide a design that can operate outside of the reliability limits of the board. And, if you look at the products in the market today, there is obviously evidence of differentiation. You only need to look at the large assortment of high quality Kepler boards available today, including standard and overclocked editions."
Quote
What does this mean for consumers?
This essentially breaks down to giving consumers fewer options between their cards and limits the innovation that AIBs are capable of implementing in their products. If Nvidia is limiting the AIBs within a set of parameters on their non-reference cards, then they are hurting those board vendors' most profitable products. This gives consumers less choice, while enabling Nvidia to theoretically have lower RMAs. Such a program does, however, make sense if you think about the perception of Nvidia if all of their board partners are running amok. They obviously have to have a certain level of control over what their AIBs do with their GPUs if they are going to warranty them. But, we believe that Nvidia has gone too far in their restrictions on board partners and amount of control they exercise in the process.
So, the Green Light program is a program that we believe hurts AIBs and consumers while enabling Nvidia to reduce their RMA rate and improve their margins. If you are an Nvidia investor, this is great news, but if you are a consumer, this is clearly bad news. Nvidia claims that this has to do with the quality of the product and smoothness of launches, however, we believe that in the end it's all about money.
Source

Answer 1

More to it than meets the eye, it seems...
Quote from: bit-tech, 5th October 2012
Nvidia accused of crippling board partners' designs
A source inside one of Nvidia's largest graphics manufacturing partners, who spoke to us on the condition that they remain anonymous, explains: 'The fact is Nvidia is stopping ALL partners from allowing any form of hardware/software overvolting, or providing hardware mods beyond its very limited restrictions. They threaten to cut allocation [of GK100 parts] if hardware mods aren’t removed or avoided entirely.'
While homebrew soldering-iron-and-prayer overvolting is still permitted, manufacturing partners aren't allowed to make it easy for buyers. 'We're not allowed to openly advertise the PCB markings [for overvoltage adjustment] on the GTX 680,' our source continues.
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Claims that manufacturers aren't being restricted in their designs beyond the confines of the Green Light programme are soundly denied by our source, however. We've been told that the secretive restrictions on board partners go yet further: 'They [Nvidia] also threaten allocation if you make a card faster than the [stock] GTX 690.'
These restrictions are not limited to just a couple of companies, either: they appear to stretch right across the board, and are responsible for product cancellations and - as with EVGA's removal of the EVBot header from the GTX 680 Classified - hardware modifications from multiple manufacturers. They're also leaving a bad taste in board partners' mouths: where in previous generations each company has been able to push its own cards to the limit in order to beat the competition, under Nvidia's alleged new rules all GTX 680 boards will be more or less identical in performance and features.
The hardware restrictions are a loss for the consumer, too: EVGA has already stated that it won't be reducing the price of the GeForce GTX 680 Classified, despite removing the EVBot header and corresponding facility for custom voltages outside Nvidia's recommended limits - meaning buyers now get less card for their cash than before the company capitulated to Nvidia's alleged demands.
We've approached other board partners, but thus far none have been willing to comment on the record regarding our source's claims of hardware restrictions - and with our source alleging that Nvidia may even cut chip allocations for companies that talk publicly about the matter, that's no surprise.
Full story here >> http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/10/05/nvidia-crippling-partners/1