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[Revolutionary]

Let me start off by saying I hate the word cheevos, but I had to cut down the thread title to fit everything in, so I apologize.

For those that don't know, EVGA Precision is an overclocking/monitoring utility for graphics cards. I've personally used it for the past few years because I felt like it surpassed its competitor, MSI Afterburner.

Anyway, I was surprised to see EVGA Precision X 15 on Steam's New Releases today. Tried it out, and it seems to be very poorly thought out. For one, there are achievements. Now I know some applications have achievements, but these.. seem a bit risky to me. Especially in the hands of the less knowledgeable.

Thunder God
Set a custom voltage
Rampage!!!
Reach 1300MHz or Higher GPU clock
Dominating!!!
Reach 1500MHz or higher GPU clock
Unstoppable!!!
Reach 1700MHz or higher GPU clock
UNBELIEVABLE
Reach 2000MHz or higher GPU clock
Memory Madness
Overclock Memory by +300MHz or higher offset

Secondly, it's a program designed to always be running in the background. Yet, it changes my Steam status to "In-App" while it's running. Brilliant. There are a few omissions from the previous version as well, so back to 4.2.1 I go.

Anyway, let's see what Guru3D thinks about the newest version of the program they've been hosting for years (but was mysteriously absent today):

EVGA today is launching a new build of PrecisionX, this will be build 15. EVGA has made a move to developing the tweaking utility in-house, meaning they will cut ties with the previous developing programmer. By itself interesting news, but unfortunately this has to be the most awkward story I have ever written in the history of Guru3D.com Did EVGA copy the entire Rivatuner design and features concept from the original programmer ?

As most of you guys know, Unwinder up-to this point developed EVGA's PrecisionX of the overclocking software. Basically EVGA licensed the use of the Rivatuner Core overclocking / tweaking elements. EVGA has been working for over half a year on their in-house developed version of PrecisionX. Developing a tweaking tool in-house was an unusual yet understandable choice from EVGA's business point of view. Especially as these days creating tweaking software for GeForce Graphics cards with the latest revisions of NVIDIA's API this is fairly a do-able task. The new PrecisionX will be restricted to GeForce Graphics cards only and will bring all the features of the older build as well as minor tweaks to the UI and 64-bit overlay support.

Over the past months or so here at Guru3D.com have been watching this development closely, as with this build EVGA departs from the old overclock infrastructure based on the Rivatuner core engine from Alexey aka Unwinder. So make no mistake this is correct, PrecisionX software is no longer created or licensed though from Unwinder. Some will love that, some will hate that.

However after seeing the latest screenshots, my eye-browses started to raise.

After seeing new screenshots as posted by EVGA's marketing staff on Steam we got a little confused. It seems that EVGA copied and pasted the entire Rivatuner core feature set and design, though we can understand that you want your tweaking tool as close as the older version design wise this poses an issue. The complete design of the the overlay, monitoring, fan profiles and screen captures etc have been copied from Rivatuner. The original programmer or the Rivatuner core, Unwinder, never allowed EVGA to do this. EVGA only paid royalties for usage of the tweaking / overclocking part of their utility.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/ev...r-rtss-design-concept-into-precisionx-15.html

There's more at the link, including insight from the programmer in question.

EVGA responded to the allegations on the program's Steam forum:

"That is only one side of the story, firstly no code was copied. In fact, EVGA does not even have the source code from the original Precision. Secondly, PrecisionX 15 is new code built from the ground up. The GUI looks similar, well it should since the original GUI was 100% designed by EVGA, many other elements were too like voltage control, Bluetooth and more. The menus and such look similar too because, well why change them? They work well and people are familar with how they look.

Lastly, the original Precision was always a joint effort anyways, some elements were designed by EVGA others were licensed like the RTSS server, and many features were added because EVGA requested it. In this new version we rebuilt all back end code from scratch. This will allow us to continue to add more features in the future, and not be bound by any "exclusivities".

So yeah. That happened.
Thoughts?
Lock if old, though I doubt it.

 

[nbthedude]

This seems bad but as an owner of a EVGA GeForce 780 factory Oc that has never been pushed further this made me actually interested in the product. Not that ai would ever be dumb enough to risk ruining my card for Steam achievements. That seems like the dumbest shit imaginable.

 

[The Cowboy]

Wow, those achievements are just insane, i can see the less knowledgeable killing their graphics cards whilst they aim for the unstoppable and unbelievable ones.

As for the stealing design bit, i recon Unwinders response to what EVGA said should be quoted to.

Well, new EVGA Precision X is released so I was finally able to peek inside it and quickly review the contents of “100% in-house” development.

Everything is even worse than I expected.
•Original EVGA Precision EXE resources and dialog templates were copy-pasted to this “in-house” project as is, even original dialog control IDs are the same. Company PRs already claim that GUI is 100% designed by EVGA which is sadly not true, company designed concept art of EVGA Precision skin only. All product properties, entire monitoring section, setting and so on came from directly original RivaTuner (and were available in other RivaTuner based products like HIS iTurbo years before Precision was born) and EVGA has no relation to designing them at all. So company directly violated our license agreement terms and reverse engineered licensed binaries to copy data from it and represent it as their own design.
•EVGA completely cloned original RivaTuner’s RTMUI multilanguage context help system and localization engine. Contents of “Help” and “Localization” folders were copy-pasted to new product as is from original Precision, including localization and GUI translation databases for different languages. “Help” folder contains direct mapping of dialog IDs to help files, I guess getting easy access to it as direct reason of “copying” original dialog templates with original dialog IDs. So the company also violated our license agreement terms and redistributed parts of original product without permission.
•Even “in-house” skin still uses my original raster fonts from old good RivaTuner. But at least that can be partially justified. Out intellectual property ownership terms of agreement define that I own software product copyrights, the company exclusively owns the product distribution rights as well as non-software intellectual properties like trademarks, product name, logos and artwork I create for them during the contract. So you may try to fit “copied” fonts in this category if you close eyes on the fact that it came from original RT.
•Fun thing, even for the installer of “in-house” product the company copy-pasted my own license agreement from original installer, which contains my own third party components licensing terms and direct restriction on reverse engineering or redistributing them. Probably you’ll at least read what exactly do you copy paste, EVGA?
•The most sad and painful thing for me is that the company entirely copy-pasted RivaTuner’s unique concepts of displaying data into On-Screen Display. RvaTuner Statistics Server was the first tool in the industry that introduced the concept of in-game hardware monitoring via OSD back in 2005, I spent almost than 10 years on polishing it. And most sad thing for me is that original Precision was not supposed to include such functionality, so it is not included in development budget and royalty fees. I added RTSS to Precision in one of the first versions completely free of any licensing fees just to help the company to promote new tool and it truly became one of the most important application features. So it was used during more than 5 years completely free (and the company was never brave to admit that) and in final they originally “thanked” for free OSD usage by stealing it. EVGA’s brand new “in-house” OSD is also open a simple rip of open source FW1FontWrapper overlay. And If I were the developer of FW1FontWrapper, I’d read the story of RTSS and think 1000 times about it.

Its the last bolded part that gets me, that's pretty dam scummy of EVGA.

 

[Soulflarz]

Wow, those achievements are just insane, i can see the less knowledgeable killing their graphics cards whilst they aim for the unstoppable and unbelievable ones.

As for the stealing design bit, i recon Unwinders response to what EVGA said should be quoted to.

Its the last bolded part that gets me, that's pretty dam scummy of EVGA.

After reading this part

Uh...this should be fun to follow! >.<

 

[Qassim]

Whatever happened in regards to stealing ideas/design/etc, I've tried this out and it seems like a nice improvement. I like that I can finally monitor and display the overlay on 64bit games.

I know it has been available on other versions (MSI iirc), but for some reason, I couldn't get it to work.

 

[SmartBase]

So basically they made achievements for the two people who use LN2, what a fantastic allocation of resources.

 

[Revolutionary]

This seems bad but as an owner of a EVGA GeForce 780 factory Oc that has never been pushed further this made me actually interested in the product. Not that ai would ever be dumb enough to risk ruining my card for Steam achievements. That seems like the dumbest shit imaginable.

I suggest trying out the previous, non-Steam version, 4.2.1.

Wow, those achievements are just insane, i can see the less knowledgeable killing their graphics cards whilst they aim for the unstoppable and unbelievable ones.

As for the stealing design bit, i recon Unwinders response to what EVGA said should be quoted to.

Its the last bolded part that gets me, that's pretty dam scummy of EVGA.

Yeah there was so much to this story, I forgot to quote that important bit.

Whatever happened in regards to stealing ideas/design/etc, I've tried this out and it seems like a nice improvement. I like that I can finally monitor and display the overlay on 64bit games.

I know it has been available on other versions (MSI iirc), but for some reason, I couldn't get it to work.

Their new OSD is buggy, unfortunately. I'm currently playing through Assassin's Creed 1 and enabling the new OSD rendered every wall invisible. So keep that in mind.

 

[Uthred]

You cant copyright a "feature set", whatever the truth of the plagarism claims it is asinine to complain that they copied a feature set.

 

[Ferrio]

You cant copyright a "feature set", whatever the truth of the plagarism claims it is asinine to complain that they copied a feature set.

Unfortunately this day and age you can.

 

[terrisus]

Let me start off by saying I hate the word cheevos, but I had to cut down the thread title to fit everything in, so I apologize.

I read the title as "Steam with Cheetos"

What the heck's a "cheevo?"

 

[Revolutionary]

Update: Seems EVGA posted an official response on the Guru3D article while I was posting the thread.

First, we value the relationship that we have with Rivertuner Alex/Unwinder since Feb.13th, 2008. With EVGA and Alex/Unwinder mutual efforts, Precision has became a very popular overclocking utility since it launched. Afterburner&#8217;s first release was in Oct. 2009.

It was originally EVGA&#8217;s idea to provide the world&#8217;s first &#8220;simple&#8221; overclocking GUI designed for NVIDIA cards that utilizes some of the Rivatuner technology for free. Due to some misinformation floating around about EVGA Precision recently, we would like to clarify several points. Also, EVGA wouldn&#8217;t have any interest to develop our own version if Alex/Unwinder had showed his interest back then like we&#8217;ve seen today!

1. The EVGA Precision main GUI (main Window) and format was fully designed and owned by EVGA, that means Alex/Unwinder did not design the Precision GUI at all. The Rivatuner technology was used for the backend like GPU reporting, OSD and overclocking. Other features like voltage tuning, pixel clock control and Bluetooth function were coded by EVGA. We want it to be clear that Rivatuner source code has never been released to EVGA. A year and half after Precision was introduced, Afterburner was released, that shared a lot of the same ideas and concepts originally set by EVGA&#8217;s Precision, and also used Rivatuner technology.
2. Most gamers knew that some of the key features that have been requested and missed such as 64bit OSD, voltage control and video recording in the early versions of Precision, yet Afterburner had it. You probably don&#8217;t know that some of those ideas were initiated and requested to Alex/Unwinder by EVGA to implement into Precision well before it was available in Afterburner, but Alex/Unwinder had no intention to add it. One year later they showed up in Afterburner exclusively without any notification and/or offer to EVGA. We felt that we became Alex/Unwinder and Afterburner&#8217;s free consultant if we continue this route.

We like Precision, the interface and the features, just like most of the gamers in the community, but under these circumstances, it became clear that in order to provide more features that are requested by the community, we needed to recode the back end from the ground up, using our own existing Precision skin designed as merely inspiration, that is why today we have the new EVGA PrecisionX 15. In the latest PrecisionX 15 we have put in some features like 64bit OSD support, Steam achievements and more. We want to make it clear that EVGA PrecisionX 15 is 100% coded in house without using any code from the older Precision due to we don&#8217;t have the source code since day one!

EVGA will continue adding features to support the community on PrecisionX15 for free as usual, and hope to inspire other overclocking utilities to be better for the entire gaming community.

The bottom line is that EVGA doesn&#8217;t want any third party to dictate what features the community should or should not have!

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=4875070#post4875070

I read the title as "Steam with Cheetos"

What the heck's a "cheevo?"

Shorthand for achievement. Blame Microsoft.

 

[terrisus]

Shorthand for achievement. Blame Microsoft.

Well that's absurd.

And now I want Cheetos.

 

[Revolutionary]

It begins...
From the Steam forum:
"I think I accidentally killed my card with this."
http://steamcommunity.com/app/268850/discussions/0/41973820581398948/

There has also been another update from the programmer in question in the Guru3D article.
Oh, and bump for the morning crowd.

 

[Mr Vast]

It begins...
From the Steam forum:
"I think I accidentally killed my card with this."
http://steamcommunity.com/app/268850/discussions/0/41973820581398948/

There has also been another update from the programmer in question in the Guru3D article.
Oh, and bump for the morning crowd.

Unless they put some serious voltage its not really harmfull to set let say gpu clock to 3ghz. It will just not work and reset it to default. Even with voltage most gpu got a voltage lock (pro ocer change the bios to remove it) like most 780 got a limit at 1.21v and its not even close to killing the card.

Heat is also a problem but again most gpu throtle before getting close to harmfull.

 

[CTLance]

Holy crap. if what the dev says is true then EVGA are assholes.

I mean, I get why they want to keep the look and feel of the utility the same. Perfectly understandable. However, should his allegations of outright theft be true, then this goes waaaay beyond that.

Also, that achievement trap is hilarious. This will kill their utility in reviews.

 

[wiggleb0t]

EVGA gone fucked up.
They make good gpus from experience, this paints them as cheap scum.

*Hugs msi afterburner*

 

[The Cowboy]

It begins...
From the Steam forum:
"I think I accidentally killed my card with this."
http://steamcommunity.com/app/268850/discussions/0/41973820581398948/

There has also been another update from the programmer in question in the Guru3D article.
Oh, and bump for the morning crowd.

If they wanted to put in achievements it would have made a lot more sense to go with things that can't damage a card, and things anyone using the program can do (i mean how many cards can overclock to 2000Mhz?).
-
How about things like these.
.
*Use the OSD in a game.
*Use the OSD for xyz number of hours.
*Take a screenshot using the built in screen shot feature.
*Take xyz number of screenshots.
*Record a video using the built in video recording feature.
*Record xyz number of hours of videos.
*Create/save and use a profile for xyz number of hours.
---
Someone in that thread also makes a very good point.

I did not see any notice on the store page that this can break cards and also void your graphics card warranty.. should be in BIG BOLD LETTERS on the storefront.

If its on the Steam store they really should have this.

 

[Lefein]

Congrtulations! Your graphics card is a smoldering rubble heap!

*Achievement Unlocked*

 

[Foxyone]

2000 MHz GPU clock? As far as I know, the only GPU to ever get that highly OC'd was a 680 to 2002 MHz.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Wow, that achievement stuff is so dodgy :/

 

[K' Dash]

Why would you want your users to destroy their cards with a tool you made?

 

[bee]

unwinders fallen out with someone on the internet! lol not heard that one before, unpleasant guy to say the least

 

[chickdigger802]

so can you still get the app from their site?


and lol those achievements. But even then, modern nvidia cards would just downclock if you try to do dumb things, so it should still be quite hard to brick a card through OCing, no?

 

[jimmypop]

eVGA not looking good so far.

On a related note, I dislike apps tied to Steam in the way that this PrecisionX release seems to be.

 

[JaseC]

The program has been pulled pending some changes:

Some people mentioned that the file structure in EVGA PrecisionX 15 is similar to the previous version of Precision. During development, we referenced the USF skin format (which has been published by RivaTuner developer at Guru3D forums in 2009 http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=3316361&postcount=8 to allow the community to create their own skins). The above mentioned feature would make it simple to allow users to recompile any previous skins to work with the new version of PrecisionX 15. However, we do understand the confusion caused by trying to maintain this feature and we will change it in the next release.

Next, it was also mentioned that the code contains text references (not code) to the word &#8220;RivaTuner&#8221; and the word &#8220;RTTSH.dll&#8221;, a RivaTuner file. This actually came from the user interface localization / help (wording). During the original Precision development, EVGA worked with several outside firms to help translate user interface help files into various languages, unfortunately this is a misprint in the translation files and will be fixed. Again, no RivaTuner code was ever used in EVGA PrecisionX 15. We apologize to the RivaTuner developer for this error.

Originally our goal was to add more features such as 64bit OSD, Steam, updated voltage controls, and more to a new version without changing the Precision user&#8217;s experience that they were already familiar with. Unfortunately, the &#8220;similarities&#8221; between the two programs have led people to believe that EVGA might have copied the code and design from RivaTuner, which is not the case. Given the circumstances, in order to remove any questions and to further differentiate it visually from the previous versions of EVGA Precision, EVGA has decided to listen to the community and suspend the downloading of EVGA PrecisionX 15 temporarily while these updates are being implemented.