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NVidia is allegedly binning the RTX chips for performance and OC potential, before selling them to their Board Partners. This includes having distinct device IDs for the binning quality, not just the model itself. Please note that both sources linked below are talking about the same thing, from a different angle. But they also contradict each other in some aspects. Techpowerup claims there are two distinct binning qualities and one is not allowed to be factory OCed. HardwareLuxx claims there are three distinct binning qualities, but did not mention the limitation to factory OC. Translation: "NVidia is offering three performance brackets to their partners. Standard chips, which can barely be OCed at all, some with medium potential and some that are especially great for OCing." The picture was taken from the Techowerup article. Board Partner get a different price depending on the quality According to HardwareLuxx, the partners can order specific packages of chips, which are always bundled with the memory. There is no information about the differences between brackets and no information on pricing differences either. Translation: "A GPU-Memory-Package with standard chips is cheaper than one with an especially well OCing chip. The exact limits in terms of clock and volts for the three versions and their pricing are unknown to us." There is a catch though: The lesser Quality chips are not allowed to be factory OCed according to Techpowerup. They will however not be locked out from OCing by the users. Though they will likely be worse at OCing, that is the whole point of the binning process. My take on this: At first, it sounds like "yet another thing to bash partners", but I always try to see the positive aspects first. Silicone lottery may be less of an issue moving forward. Sure it was nice to get a great chip, but it was also greatly annoying when losing the lottery. Partners know in advance what they will be getting. This may lead to reduced binning by partners. Also, they can produce budget variants by getting the cheaper chip stacks. Think about OEM cards for example, which usually don't get OCed anyways. Or real budget cards that are simply cheap, with a nice cooler, for people that want to save a few bucks and don't plan on OCing anyways. Due to the identifier as part of the product number, it is also easy for everyone to check which kinda chip they have. I would personally love to see this getting extended to more than A-Grade and "other". Which is what HardwareLuxx claims to have heard from partners. But that is something we could do as a community as well, using the OC Scanner and making a chart which custom cards fall into which range. Source German: HardwareLuxx Source English: TechPowerUp

I just watched this. But it left me with a question. I know not every chip is 100% te same. But say on a GM204 chip There are 2 sm's not working. Would Nvidia cripple another sm and an L2 module to basically make this card a 970? If this is true, why dont they for instance just leave the 2 not working sm's for what they are and just sell it with the other sm and L2 still working. We all know its a silicon lottery why not make a few people extra lucky? z0ne

I was hoping people with experience in previous generations of hydro coppers could somewhat accurately guestimate the price. What do you think the new GTX 980 Hydro Copper Editons will sell for? Is it cheaper to buy a reference gtx 980 with aftermarket waterblock or wait and buy the hydro copper edition cards? I just bought two reference gtx 980s and before my refund is up would like to know what the smarter buy is.

Right at the start I have to say: Raise your Don..., wait, no. (just kidding) I am upset, groggy, my head is a pile of random thoughts, but I have to write this right now. I just dismounted my 27" cheapo korean monitor. Its a Yamakasi Q270B OC edition. It costs around double of what a non-OC grade cheapo monitor costs. Just to explain the reason for being 700 USD and more is the special circuit board of the monitor, that allows overclocking the monitor to a refresh rate of up to 132 Hz, depending on how good the circuit board is (kind of silicon lottery). Considering it using an LG IPS panel, that is used in all the fancy 27" apple monitors, this is pretty respectable. Because high refresh rates and ips picture quality dont usually go together, right? So paying an extra 350 dollars for the unique 1440p IPS 120Hz experience is justifiable and worth it. Right? (it really looks good, even though there is a lot of motion blur compared to comparable 120 Hz TN monitors, I was very happy with the compromise I chose with buying this monitor about half a year ago. ) Lets look at the pictures I took with crappy lighting and my Galaxy S4 camera ( :\ ) Going from left to right you can see the bezel of the shell, the stand and all the screws, An unnecessary silver plastic piece that gave it a more stylish look, but was blocking the vesa mounts on the back. Then there is the back shell with the circuit board laying on it, and finally the big silver thing is the panel its self. Theres the panel its self with the power connector cable on the right and two connectors at the top mid for the actual image signal. It weighs about 4 kilograms and is mounted to the plastic shell with four m3x10mm screws. (°_°) The label clearly shows that it is the LM270WQ1 by LG. The vesa mounts are two pieces of thin metal with threads, held in place by plastic rivits, just molten stamped down plastic. And that is supposed to lift like 6 kilogramms ?! The quite simple looking pcb is mounted to a piece of thin metal... ...which is used to keep the panel from flying around inside the chassis, but is actually quite bendable #LinusBendTest I have asked google for some panel side to vesa mounts, so I would not need the plastic shell at all. I found this: http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/710593724/27panel_screen_LM270WQ1_SDE3_for_apple.html So you can get them for 30-100 USD, considering that this is a trading company and not the actual manufacturer and depending on the number you order. So the production cost may be about 25 USD. The circuit board doesnt look any different from the ones used in simple fan controllers or computer case I/Os. Maybe around 10 USD production cost. The stand / case, depending on what you are going for. It 4 screws to mount the panel to some slices of metal, then some crossbar metal bar that these mount to and some kind of stand. Alternatively you could just add a 10x10cm plate of metal with threads for vesa mounting. Cost: maybe 10-15 dollars. So to sum up, LG as the panel manufacteur could build these for what? 50 USD ?! Some guy starting a company with a budget of 10000 USD could get the materials for what ? 120 bucks? Produce 10 monitors a day and sell them for 200-300. So he would have a revenue of 100 dollars per monitor. Making 1000 bucks a day. He could hire people and like earn LOADS of money. You can get the materials, anybody can. My mind puts out: Even converting the money you pay extra for a cheapo monitor on ebay into the time it would take researching for materials, contacting suppliers and building your own monitor, you would save money. Its so rediculous!!! Like TTL would say, "I need to wrap my head around this and think about it." But like: Where is my 1440p 120Hz gaming optimized monitor from an actual company like LG ??? Where are the 4K monitors for like 300 bucks, when they can make 1080p panels for phones for what? 30 USD production cost?! Even though I am not a dumbass and I know the industry quite a bit, I was literally MINDBLOWN when I looked inside my monitor this night and I could imagine you are, too. Its like the NSA thing, where you know they spy on you, but when you actually get to know how much, you are damn suprised. What are your thoughts on this? I would love to hear what guys like Linus, that are in the industry for many years, think about it. Still surprised, or just accepting it the way it is ?!

Hey, one question regarding binning of GPU's. I have 4 R9 270X cards that currently reside in my altcoin mining rig. However, due to absurd energy prices in SoCal, mining may soon be irrelevant, and so I am planning on converting the mining rig into a gaming rig for myself. So, my question, is it possible to personally bin/check which GPU is the better binned of the 4, as I can only run 2 of them in Crossfire, and would like to use the best 2 of the 4 cards in my personal rig. Any and all help/advice would be greatly appreciated.