MIG-31

Read More/Source: NGOHQ
Thanks to Dyre Straits for the submission.
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When so many competitors are offering the same product, a manufacturer must provide some good reasons for consumers to choose their product from all the others. This is especially true when these products use the same chipset and offer almost the same features as the others.

Unfortunately, some manufacturers are trying to gain an advantage by cheating. For example, the most famous cheat among motherboards is when the manufacturer is overclocking the FSB by 0.5 MHz. Usually, no one complains about it and it’s not given too much attention. But, it gives you a very small advantage, especially in the reviews. This trick is a very minor and popular one and nobody really seems to care about it.

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Geminiwave

Well I'm torn on this.

on the one hand, I had an ASUS board previously and what he says is VERY true. It ALWAYS ran 0.05v over what I set it at. It REALLY annoyed me.

On the other hand, that doesnt explain how it can take the top overclocking spot. Can't you just add that 0.05v on the other motherboard manually? I mean at the end of the day a motherboard can go to x number of volts and hit y FSB mhz...sooo that means that ASUS would still be overclocking king, yes?

Still...this is really something I've been wondering about for awhile.

and note: I had an a7n8x. Thats back in the nforce2 days.

I'm also curious about why 0.05v made the computer overheat too much...but maybe with the room temp and cooling it was already on the edge. still thats weird. I can add .2v onto my proc and it still doesnt overheat. (then again im in seattle and this basement is freezing).

still a good find. Nice job finding this dyre.

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Erroneus

0.05v more and his machine crashes, sounds a bit strange imo and considering the quality of articles we seen from NGO, I would like to see this confirmed from other more reliable sites.

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The_Neon_Cowboy

Adding a bit of votage can add stabilty too...


anyways asus has a history of cheating 1mhz or more n the fsb, and before they made it a
feature they used now called AI, auotomatic overclocking when ever the board
detected it was being benchmarked.It like overclocked the cpu. moths later they
annoceda feature called ai that does the same thing. (after they got thier chops
busted by s tomshardware artical) then you have the peg link mode thing.. etc...
thier FSB is always lightly faster then spec...

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Tipstaff

Speaking of PEG Link, I still don't see where PEG Link Mode is cheating. This is a feature that is plainly listed on Asus' website.. a feature they provide that other manufacturers do not. The fact that they have it, and others, like Gigabyte (who are the biggest complainers in regards to this) don't is an advantage in favor of Asus. Sure, it doesn't say what it does exactly, but it does state that it was designed to increase graphics performance specific to the card that is being used. Thing is that it does this by increasing the clock speeds of either the GPU core, video memory, or both depending on the card being used. This is where Asus is in the wrong. They should be plainly describing what it does as this can be considered overclocking, and will void the video cards warranty.

What is of real interest here is that PEG Link Mode is NOT an Asus exclusive feature. Intel uses this on their own boards too. Intel cheating? Pa-lease. Intel doesn't sell their boards to the enthusiast market, so why would they cheat? Again, it's a feature that Intel has decided to provide on their boards, and which, btw, is disabled by default. And as I said it's not an exclusive feature. Does anyone think that Intel is paying Asus to use PEG Link? Hell no. If Gigabyte wanted to do the same thing they could. They aren't though, because this allows them to make it an issue in the hopes that this brings negative attention towards Asus. And it's working.

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mike2h

that & maybe their(gigabytes) mb's arent up to snuff.
i think this is all hoopla, if asus can make their mbs perform just a liitle better perf out the box, more power to them.
ive never head probs with any of my asus boards & they tend t obe ny fav for a variety of reasons. this crap come up every couple of yrs or so, just the inferior mb companies(imo) venting.
& your vid cards warranty can not be 'voided' by peg link.

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Geminiwave

yea I'm in agreement with you Mike...I just think there should be some honesty. I mean when i got my A7n8x it was pretty damned clear what everything did. Now I get a new motherboard and literally half of the settings even when you look online say "unknown" in the description. The company sure as hell doesnt describe it and when posted in a thread people are like "ehhhh not sure"

seriously. Its a matter of dishonesty. YES it increases performance and I am ALL for that. But...they NEED to inform the customer.

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ChrisW

LOL! I think Gigabyte should overclock their boards by 2MHz. Then you guys could start talking about how ASUS is inferior. I can't believe how you guys can make excuses for a company lieing to you just to make their product "seem" better than the competition and justify their higher price.

Geminiwave

well it doesnt "seem" better...they really are. ITs just dishonesty because there isnt full disclosure of what they're doing. Honestly ASUS return rates are quite a bit lower than any other company (at least they use to be). They're known for having fewer crapped up boards.

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ChrisW

You take a Gigabyte board and an ASUS board with identical parts. Use the same processor and memory. The Gigabyte maxes out at 240MHz fsb while the ASUS maxes out at 239MHz. Does that mean the Gigabyte board is better? No. They are both running at the same speed. The ASUS board is just under reporting it's real clock rate to trick reviewers into benchmarking their boards at a higher clock rate. They are not magically squeezing out that extra MHz.

Geminiwave

trick reviewers into benchmarking their boards at a higher clock rate...shwa? that makes no sense at all.

What it does is make it appear that the asus board is faster at the same clock rate.

still...if an ASUS Board overclocks to 250FSB and a gigabyte board OCs to 230 or 40 or even 245FSB it still means that the ASUS board is better. Often times the ASUS board DOES perform better.

and anyway at the end of the day, a setup has a set maximum capability. It cannot go over that capability. If someone takes time and care overclocking then they will find that maximum and then they can do it again with the same memory, CPU etc on a different board and discover THAT boards maximum.

All this means is that reviewers must be thurough. THG does a great job of this so I've watched their overclocking projects closely. Other sites can do great jobs too. In fact EVERYONE can do a great job and indeed SHOULD so really if companies are doing these tricks that screw up people who do rushed and sloppy OC jobs then so be it.

now for stock reviews? thats tougher and there should be some disclosure. Still...the board running that 1mhz above normal operating standards still means its under waranty and so are all of your parts.

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Dyre Straits

Well, guys, this article is about how ASUS is not reporting the vCore correctly. That's the whole issue right there in a nutshell. Why NOT report it correctly so that the user KNOWs for sure what the setting is and can decide for themselves what they want to use? That's a very simple matter of honesty to me.

I've used ABIT boards for years and I tend to trust the readings I get when I make changes in the BIOS settings and elsewhere. If ANY motherboard manufacturer is PURPOSELY misleading me by using phony readings, I feel I have a right to challenge them on legal grounds.

Whether this gives one board an advantage over another is totally beside the point in my opinion. The whole crux of the matter is accuracy and honesty.

In this situation, since many CPUs are using very low voltage, this .05 can be considered a hefty percentage of increase without the user's knowledge. I don't consider it an innocent matter at all.

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ChrisW

You just don't understand exactly what ASUS is doing. They are simply renaming the settings in the bios to a lower setting. You could simply edit a Gigabyte bios with a hex editor and change the FSB text string values to say they are 1MHz lower and it would be the same thing ASUS is doing. It is not magic. ASUS did not come up with a new way to increase performance of their boards.

bug77

Come on guyz. On a 200MHz FSB, 1MHz is 0.5% (lesser for faster FSB). Do you expect that to give an unfair advantage in any benchmark?

Tipstaff

It should also be noted that all this article shows is that this 1 board from Asus has this uppage of the vcore. As Erroneus said, I would like to see this confirmed on other more reliable sites, ones that I am more inclined to trust. I would also like to see other boards from Asus being looked at. Specifically, I would like to see if this is a cross platform thing that Asus has done. Is it just with this board, with all AMD based ones, or does this uppage also occur on their Intel based boards too?

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Dyre Straits

Yes, you're right about the article confirming that this one board has this problem. The article also states that the investigation is continuing to see if ONLY this model is affected or if other ASUS boards show this as well.

Additionally, since the article first appeared, there have been responses from users of this particular model board confirming that their own CPUs were running hotter than normal and they couldn't figure out why. Since the article was released, they've lowered the vCore to 1.35 and things are now back to normal on their own system.

So, there seems to be some very good information here and it's up to those who may be affected to check it out.

It would be nice to hear from other users who own this board -- or a late model ASUS board -- and to share their own experiences.

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ChrisW

Well, you have to take that 1MHz and multiply it by the processor's multiplier then multiply that by the number of cores to calculate the processor gain. Also, the memory is also being overclocked too and the effect is doubled for DDR. It may not be much, but it should be enough to ensure their board wins all the benchmarks thrown its way.

Now it looks like they are increasing their voltages too since they took no heat from the previous FSB scandal. "Man, this ASUS board is great! Look at the massive overclock I can get at 2.5V. I had to set the Gigabyte board to 2.6V to get the same overclock." Of course, what they don't know is the ASUS board is really set to 2.6V but only labeled 2.5.

I'm not saying that ASUS boards are not good, but just how good are they? Is the real performance gain worth the extra price? I bet a lot of people would not have purchased an ASUS board had their motherboard been benchmarked with accurate settings or maybe ASUS would have been forced to lower their prices.

Dyre Straits

I'm not sure what this has to do with the article/issue. The article doesn't claim that the CPU is being OVERCLOCKED....it's being over VOLTED....if that's even a bonafide term. Just want to be clear about it.

So, the .05v (VOLTage) increase without user knowledge can be something of a serious nature if cooling isn't adequate to compensate for it.

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Geminiwave

no I understand perfectly what ASUS is doing. I didnt understand what you said. It was quite confusing in your wording.

And that still doesnt change the fact that every board has a maxiumum speed it can hit (whether the reporting is off or not) so if ASUS takes the top speed, it doesnt matter if its reporting lower clockspeed...its still FASTER. If you have a porshe and a van race and they both go their masimum speeds, and they both say they're going 90mph but the porshe is actually going 100, its still FASTER even if it SAYS its going the same speed.

So the entire issue isnt really about whos faster (ASUS boards often do overclock better) but rather about honesty. If everyone was well informed than it wouldnt matter because overclockers would adjust according to the variance in clockspeeds and voltages. Sadly NOT everyone is informed. And really having to lower your boards voltage from the default stock voltage is unacceptable.

and by the way, as i previously said, I have an nForce2 A7N8X and it overvolts by .05v. I remember freaking out about it when i got it (I even bought a new PSU to make sure speeds were stable) but everyone said that 0.05v is a tollerable variance. I measured it myself with a volt meter and indeed it goes 0.05v over. Yes its true I would like to see this reviewed by some more reliable sites (hell lets see THG get this out) but I'm pretty sure this IS true and I applaud NGO for bringing this to light. Its a harsh accusation but if its true then this is really important for people to know about.

sides theres never anything wrong with challenging one of the big dogs. Someones gotta keep the big companies in line.

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Zardon

This is kind of old news tbh, and while im not sure I agree with the ethics of this, the increases are so minor I dont really think many people care. Also the issue of overvolting can be in cases down to bios misreading (sometimes)..... i have seen this fixed in bios updates. I have also seen many motherboards read CPU core temps with +_10c variances only exposed by my own diode readings.