6 ms·

Wow, why would they go out of their way to do that? Even with my most cynical hat on, I can’t think of how this is in their self interest. Oh, is it to ensure

by jcheng 5y ago

Wow, why would they go out of their way to do that? Even with my most cynical hat on, I can’t think of how this is in their self interest. Oh, is it to ensure nerfing of FP64 performance for their consumer cards? Is that done at the driver level?

sudosysgen 5y ago
I am pretty sure it's to prevent people from overclocking their cards more than NVidia deems safe for the sales of their most expensive cards.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  If that were the case then manually setting the clock speed would be supported but it would lock out any speeds higher than the OEM configuration.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Not quite, no. Even manually setting the clock rate would allow for performance improvement as you could lock the card at its boost clock or at least prevent downclocking under load. The only lockout solution is to lock speeds to the base clock completely.
    - ComputerGuru 5y ago
      It depends on how the card’s speed governor works. Do you set a desired clock rate and then the firmware tries to hold that speed dependent on factors like core temperature or do you set a hard value and the firmware holds that come hell or high water?
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        From how it used to work, the actual frequency was dependent on both the driver and firmware, though the driver used to and probably still can force a certain frequency.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
I think it has something to do with preventing people from running the higher-stability drivers that come with buying a Quadro (or hypothetical super stable FOSS drivers) on significantly cheaper consumer hardware, because that makes it much more difficult to justify buying a Quadro in many circumstances. The added stability is part of the upsell and is more software than hardware.
my123 5y ago
> Is that done at the driver level? No, the FP64 units aren't physically present on silicon in high numbers on the non xx100 dies. However, limitations enforced just by the driver and its FW set: - GPU virtualisation (see: https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock) - NVENC video encoder limitations to 2 simultaneous streams on customer cards - Lite Hash Rate limitation enforcement to make GPUs less attractive for miners

by jcheng 5y ago

sudosysgen 5y ago

I am pretty sure it's to prevent people from overclocking their cards more than NVidia deems safe for the sales of their most expensive cards.

ComputerGuru 5y ago
If that were the case then manually setting the clock speed would be supported but it would lock out any speeds higher than the OEM configuration.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Not quite, no. Even manually setting the clock rate would allow for performance improvement as you could lock the card at its boost clock or at least prevent downclocking under load. The only lockout solution is to lock speeds to the base clock completely.
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    It depends on how the card’s speed governor works. Do you set a desired clock rate and then the firmware tries to hold that speed dependent on factors like core temperature or do you set a hard value and the firmware holds that come hell or high water?
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      From how it used to work, the actual frequency was dependent on both the driver and firmware, though the driver used to and probably still can force a certain frequency.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

I think it has something to do with preventing people from running the higher-stability drivers that come with buying a Quadro (or hypothetical super stable FOSS drivers) on significantly cheaper consumer hardware, because that makes it much more difficult to justify buying a Quadro in many circumstances. The added stability is part of the upsell and is more software than hardware.

my123 5y ago

> Is that done at the driver level? No, the FP64 units aren't physically present on silicon in high numbers on the non xx100 dies. However, limitations enforced just by the driver and its FW set: - GPU virtualisation (see: https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock) - NVENC video encoder limitations to 2 simultaneous streams on customer cards - Lite Hash Rate limitation enforcement to make GPUs less attractive for miners