Asus and MSI are accused of “doping” the Geforce GTX 1080 to the media

When partner manufacturers release their own customized variants of graphics cards from both AMD and Nvidia, it is more common than unusual for these to be factory overclocked. For reviewers, however, some choose to take this a step further, by sending copies with special BIOS that raise the clock frequencies a notch extra.

This is something that has been going on for a couple of generations and with the launch of the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080, it is getting attention again. The report comes from Techpowerup, which writes that both Asus and MSI have sent graphics cards with higher clock frequencies out of cardboard than consumers receive.

What it’s about is that they, via special BIOS for media, ensure that an OC mode, which normally has to be activated manually in each company’s software, is the default. From MSI’s side, the card is at 1,708/1,847 MHz at base/boost and GDDR5X memory at 10,108 MHz, corresponding to increases of approximately 1.5 and 1.0 percent, respectively, compared to the default mode Gaming Mode.

The decision is motivated by the fact that “all consumers” still use the company’s software and OC mode and that they want to make it easier for reviewers, who may thus “forget” to activate this. According to the report, Asus has also started to do the same with the launch of the Geforce GTX 1000 series.

Regarding Asus, it is something that has been confirmed by SweClockers who have the company’s Geforce GTX 1080 Strix Gaming in the test lab. In conversations with the company’s representative in the Nordic region, it appears that Asus’ reasoning is the same as MSI’s company expects all consumers to install GPU Tweak II and activate “OC mode”.

SweClockers tests with the correct clock frequencies

In connection with the test of the MSI Geforce GTX 780 Ti Gaming, attention was drawn to the behavior from MSI by SweClockers, which at the time could not verify whether the OC mode was the preset for consumers or not. The same thing was repeated at the launch of the Geforce GTX 970, where the editorial staff with more concrete information confronted MSI and has since received graphics cards without media-adapted BIOS.

As for other players, the test lab always checks that everything is correct with all graphics cards and that they are tested with the correct clock frequencies, ie that consumers can expect directly from cardboard.