Gigabyte Accuses, ASUS Denies. Regardless, How Smart is "Smart" Overclocking?

pr0digal jenius

On the surface, relationships between various motherboard vendors are usually kept above-board and cordial. While there’s no love lost between the various companies, there’s a certain degree of civility that keeps the wheels of diplomacy greased and situations (mostly) polite.

That’s why it was actually a bit surprising last week to receive an email from Gigabyte that point-blank accused ASUS of cheating. In a world where benchmarks don’t “favor” companies, they “optimize” for them, cheating is a very loaded word. It actually implies something BAD is going on, as opposed to all that “good, healthy, optimization” that we all know and love.

The accusation centers around a BIOS option in the 925 / 915 ASUS boards called PCI Express Graphics Link Mode. (PEG Link Mode for short.) Gigabyte claims that the ASUS 925X / 915P series motherboard, as compared to other motherboard makers, scores significantly better results on certain 3D graphics performance tests,… This setting [PEG Link Mode] clandestinely overclocks the frequency of Memory and Core Engines of ATi based PCI-Express graphics.

ASUS, as you might expect, was less-than-thrilled with Gigabyte’s accusation, and fired back a PR barrage of its own, claiming that “PEG (PCI Express Graphics) Link Mode, is a unique feature that enables users to boost graphics card performance for superior video quality.”

So which is it? Feature or cheat? Lets take a look and let you decide.
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Source/Read More: Sudhian

Vampyromaniac

they've aligned themselves with Nvidia, while making ATi cards faster

GutterPunk

HAHA!!! GOOD CALL Vampy

Mazuko

What a great article, that addresses some key issues. Explanation is key, it's a shame that mobo manufacturers don't think the same.

pr0digal jenius

read any mobo manual and that is obvious

Vampyromaniac

funny how this article is about Asus mobos silently boosting ATI cards, and not Nvidia

pr0digal jenius

Asus, Epox, Abit...in that order, are what i trust


as for this 'OCing'...if it runs...hooray, as long as the OC doesn't make any fires or kill things....why should I care if my PC is running faster?

BWX

They've been doing this forever, nothing new here.. My old Gigabyte GA-7DX+ ran at 135 or 6 mhz when set to 133. Looks good in benchmarks when everything is set to "default".. The real performance measurement of a board is how far it can be overclocked, so who really cares what it does at default?

I know the Abit NF7 lost most benchmarks to most other boards "at default speed" at the time because of this, but in reality it blew them away because it's OC performance was so much better.

Vampyromaniac

my retarded mobo unfortunately underclocks by default. CPU's at 1527 MHz instead of 1533 lol

but, this isn't about Asus overclocking their mobos, it's about Asus mobos overclocking other hardware.
If one company is oc'ing another's hardware by default, or without the option to deny that, I think that's bad and starts down a very bad road.

BWX

Integrated video right? Not really "other hardware" any more than a Via chipset is "other hardware" - If it's welded to the mobo, it all kind of falls under the same umbrella right?

As long as people know about it (and they always find out), it doesn't matter to me.. I mean who cares about what onboard video is faster? Onboard video sucks anyway..

I'd be more interested in onboard IDE, Raid, and SATA, and sound performance.

Vampyromaniac

No, not onboard video lol. ATI graphics cards, PCI-E.

BWX

Hmm, I like the idea, but not if it is to skew benchmarks- They should sell it as an advanced feature.. I'm still wondering how the mobo drivers OC the video card though-- weird..