NVIDIA has before the launch of the G80 architecture told its partners that it will not allow any higher frequencies than NVIDIA’s own reference. The reason is simply that the G80 architecture is already at its limit when it comes clock frequency and at the same time it wants to avoid the situation that occurred with the G71, where overclocked cards from the graphics card manufacturer suffered from stability problems and at some occasions were damaged. This is the reason for manufacturers such as XFX, BFG, EVGA and Gainward to launch their GeForce 8800 cards with just NVIDIA’s reference frequencies, despite the fact that they usually deliver overclocked cards.
This is a completely understandable action by NVIDIA as it has no intention of ending up in a situation where the consumers keep sending back cards that has been damaged by factory overclocking. Our own tests have shown that there is a lot more to collect from the G80 architecture, but then you also need rigorous cooling.
