News AMD Introduces Precision Boost Overdrive 2, Boosts Single Thread Tremendously

[InvalidError]

They certainly do condone its use - in fact they develop, promote and supply it!

They don't officially condone it - the official stance is that using said features voids the warranty.

 

[escksu]

They certainly do condone its use - in fact they develop, promote and supply it!

I have to say its quite confusing. This is because there are conflicting reports regarding whether PBO voids processor warranty or not. Some say it does, some say it doesn't.

But, my personal understanding is that PBO voids warranty. However, Precision Boost does not.

 

[deesider]

They don't officially condone it - the official stance is that using said features voids the warranty.

As I noted before, the legal implications of footnotes on product advertisements will vary from state to state and country to country. However, in many jurisdictions manufacturers simply cannot weasel out of their responsibilities by relying on terms and conditions.

In other words, the alleged official status is irrelevant - depending of course on where you live.

For instance if I were to be denied an RMA on the grounds of enabling PBO on an AMD cpu, I could pay a $45 fee and take it to the disputes tribunal. There I would only need to convince an advocate that it is reasonable to expect that AMD is responsible for a performance enhancing function that they not only develop, supply and promote as a feature of their product, but also work with motherboard manufacturers to ensure it is readily enabled for me at the press of a button. A defence that using the features that AMD provided to me is 'user error' or an improper use would be a tough sell.

You may or may not believe that AMD should have the right to void a warranty from the use of their own product features, or maybe just resigned to it based on local law, but in many jurisdictions they simply do not have that right.

 

[Nemesia]

This is why AMD has legal teams working on protecting AMD's from every possible ways. You think that convincing a lawyer to bring this to court will be an easy and cheap thing? AMD already thought about people who could do this way before it could happen.

If the "denied an RMA on the grounds of enabling PBO on an AMD cpu" is clearly stated somewhere and you can see it before activating PBO it totally falls under your responsibility. AMD wins.

Mr X. Can you read me this text here in bold format. "If you activate PBO it void the warranty". Prosecutor: "I rest my case your honor. No more questions". It doesn't really take much more than this to make it all in your hands and your fault.

 

[jpe1701]

I can only tell you my own personal experience about pbo and the warranty. I upgraded from a Ryzen 1600 to a 2700x on my x370 taichi motherboard. I usually just would run the cpu at stock but occasionally would play with pbo with a negative voltage offset and just run benchmarks and monitoring software to see how it worked or to see how a specific bios revision worked. One day on a particular bios version the pc wouldn't even post if pbo was set to enabled. It would post after resetting the cmos as long as you left pbo on disabled. So I waited for more bios to come out and none of them would work with pbo enabled. I first rma'd the motherboard but that didn't work. I contacted AMD support and after explaining everything I just said I just had to send them a copy of the receipt for the cpu and pictures of the cpu ihs and of the motherboard and fill out the RMA form and in less than 2 weeks after sending in the 2700x I had a brand new one even though they knew I had used pbo occasionally. I mean I didn't like underline it and put it in bold for them and I didn't specifically ask but I got the idea it really wasn't a big deal.

 

[Darkbreeze]

This is why AMD has legal teams working on protecting AMD's from every possible ways. You think that convincing a lawyer to bring this to court will be an easy and cheap thing? AMD already thought about people who could do this way before it could happen.

If the "denied an RMA on the grounds of enabling PBO on an AMD cpu" is clearly stated somewhere and you can see it before activating PBO it totally falls under your responsibility. AMD wins.

Mr X. Can you read me this text here in bold format. "If you activate PBO it void the warranty". Prosecutor: "I rest my case your honor. No more questions". It doesn't really take much more than this to make it all in your hands and your fault.

Sorry, but this is entirely wrong. No judge is going to go for that and furthermore, it's actually NO different than manufacturers who STILL to this day continue to slap "warranty void if removed" stickers on, pretty much everything, despite Federal law prohibiting it and the FTC specifically TELLING manufacturers to stop doing it or they are going to start levying sanctions against them. It's why we have the laws to begin with.

AMD tells motherboard manufacturers what they can and cannot do, for the most part, with any board, and provide the microcode for said board, and as mentioned, SPECIFICALLY develop the CPUs to be used in this way AND they ALL come this way enabled by default, for every Ryzen board I've seen so far, so to think that a judge would back them on this is ludicrous. It would have to be a keystone cops kangaroo court. There is ZERO "reasonable" expectation that AMD wouldn't be culpable given all the facts.

Personally, I'd be VERY surprised if we EVER saw a case like that go before a judge. AMD knows they'd never win, unless they could PROVE that EXTREME steps were taken to perform a high level manual overclock. For an inbuilt behavior like PBO, I can't see that ever landing in front of a judge because AMD would just eat the board, smile and move on.

 

[Nemesia]

Sorry, but this is entirely wrong. No judge is going to go for that and furthermore, it's actually NO different than manufacturers who STILL to this day continue to slap "warranty void if removed" stickers on, pretty much everything, despite Federal law prohibiting it and the FTC specifically TELLING manufacturers to stop doing it or they are going to start levying sanctions against them. It's why we have the laws to begin with.

AMD tells motherboard manufacturers what they can and cannot do, for the most part, with any board, and provide the microcode for said board, and as mentioned, SPECIFICALLY develop the CPUs to be used in this way AND they ALL come this way enabled by default, for every Ryzen board I've seen so far, so to think that a judge would back them on this is ludicrous. It would have to be a keystone cops kangaroo court. There is ZERO "reasonable" expectation that AMD wouldn't be culpable given all the facts.

Personally, I'd be VERY surprised if we EVER saw a case like that go before a judge. AMD knows they'd never win, unless they could PROVE that EXTREME steps were taken to perform a high level manual overclock. For an inbuilt behavior like PBO, I can't see that ever landing in front of a judge because AMD would just eat the board, smile and move on.

I know no case like that would go to court. I'll stick to troubleshooting PC's and leave the legal stuff to people who knows what they are talking about

 

[NP]

If the risk for damage is so low, why does it void the warranty?

Because the risk is only low if you know what you are doing, and most people don't.

 

[spongiemaster]

Because the risk is only low if you know what you are doing, and most people don't.

What pre-existing knowledge do you need to check a box? There are no user configurable options for PBO. If your CPU's catches fire, AMD messed up the software.

 

[TerryLaze]

What pre-existing knowledge do you need to check a box? There are no user configurable options for PBO. If your CPU's catches fire, AMD messed up the software.

No PBO relies on mobo data and if you have a gaming or otherwise performance board it can very well go beyond the guidelines that AMD has.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3491-explaining-precision-boost-overdrive-benchmarks-auto-oc

Setting overdrive to “enabled,” setting overdrive to “advanced,” and specifying the motherboard as the source did the same thing on the two boards we tested for this content, but the two motherboards set different values. On the Gigabyte X570 Master with the 3900X, PBO limits were as follows: PPT 1200W, TDC 540A, and EDC 600A. On the MSI Godlike, the limits were: 1000W, 490A, and 630A.

With PBO disabled the limits were PPT 142W, TDC 95A, and EDC 140A on both boards, which is correct AMD spec for 105W TDP processors.

 

[NP]

What pre-existing knowledge do you need to check a box? There are no user configurable options for PBO. If your CPU's catches fire, AMD messed up the software.

I know what you mean, but here this out. Warranty uses the same logic as insurance. And with that logic, it is not the act of ticking a box that is the reason for losing warranty. No. The reason is that people who tick that box are statistically more likely to damage the processor. For whatever reason. Some because they also do some other overclocking, some because they also adjust other settings they don't understand either, others just by accident.

Plus, I imagine those who fry the cpu by the way of overclocking it to the limits and beyond might be tempted to say: "I only clicked one little box. Now give me my warranty, plz." It might be harder for them to argue their processors just spontaneously combusted without them ever having adjusted any OC related setting.