ASUS release official statement regarding press and retail GPU samples

ASUS release official statement regarding press and retail GPU samples

| Source: ASUS Author: Mark Campbell

ASUS release official statement regarding press and retail GPU samples

Over the past 24 hours, there has been a lot of controversy over the differences between GPU review samples and retail GPUs, specifically when it comes the clock speeds that GPUs come with out of the box.

MSI and ASUS have been at the core of this controversy, with many outlets claiming that they are trying to cheat consumers by sending GPUs for review that don't represent the final product that consumers will find in store, with some going so far as to say that all reviews for their GPUs should be called into question.

ASUS has now released an official statement to address this issue, showing that they are not setting out to lie to consumers but to make the reviewing process simpler by giving them access to the GPUs "OC Mode" right out of the box. This GPU mode is available on all retail ASUS GPUs can be accessed using ASUS' GPU Tweak II software, a software that adds a lot of other useful features for ASUS GPUs.

(Image Credit: TechPowerUp)

Below is ASUS' official statement regarding this change, stating that press samples for their GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 GPUs have shipped in the GPUs "OC Mode" and that retail products ship of these GPUs ship in "Gaming Mode".

All users of ASUS will be able to use "OC mode" and "Gaming mode" by selecting the desired option in their GPU Tweak II. The only difference between press and retail GPU samples is which mode is selected by default.

ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards come with exclusive GPU Tweak II software, that provides silent, gaming, and OC modes allowing users to select a performance profile that suits their requirements. Users can apply these modes easily from within GPU Tweak II. The press samples for the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 OC and ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 OC cards are set to “OC Mode” by default. To save media time and effort, OC mode is enabled by default as we are well aware our graphics cards will be reviewed primarily on maximum performance. And when in OC mode, we can showcase both the maximum performance and the effectiveness of our cooling solution. Retail products are in “Gaming Mode” by default, which allows gamers to experience the optimal balance between performance and silent operation. We encourage end-users to try GPU Tweak II and adjust between the available modes, to find the best mode according to personal needs or preferences. For both the press samples and retail cards, all these modes can be selected through the GPU Tweak II software. There are no differences between the samples we sent out to media and the retail channels in terms of hardware and performance.

In reality, ASUS has not done any "cheating" here, certainly nothing on the levels of Volkswagen anyway. All ASUS GTX GPUs will be able to access the performance levels provided by "OC Mode", review/press samples just have this enabled by default.

While it is clear that ASUS is not giving reviewers more performance than is available on retail GPUs, they did not give reviewers foreknowledge of the differences between press and review samples in advance.

In future, we will be making sure to check what speeds our review samples are running at and will be reporting what GPU clock profile we will be using during our testing. Remember that these "OC mode" speeds are achievable on every GTX 1080 Gaming Strix GPU without manual overclocking, it is just a shame that ASUS did not tell reviewers in advance.

You can join the discussion on ASUS' official statement regarding press and retail GPUs on the OC3D Forums.

ASUS released an official statement regarding clock speeds on retail and review GPUs.https://t.co/9ea3v5hjR3 pic.twitter.com/09LPaLEBTH — OC3D (@OC3D) June 17, 2016

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