Can someone ELI5 why this is important? Is there something wrong with NVIDIA drivers?
It’s important because now you can take full control of stats that you weren’t able to because of the lock.
And it migh be good for linux because since the 900 series gpu, or since the lock were first implemented, the open source nvidia driver it’s not able to re-clock the gpu with an higher clock than the boot one (and trust me it’s a really low clock) and you are not able to use a quarter of the power the gpu has.
Even if the open source driver code is 100% equals the nvidia one, literally copy pasted, it would not work because it need to be signed by nvidia to do so.
It’s not the drivers, but rather the BIOS. Nvidia have set various limits to power, voltage, etc. in there and now modders will be able to unlock those by flashing the vBIOS with a modified version.
It’s wild that companies essentially destroyed the practice of overclocking.
It’s not so much destruction as it’s unnecessary anymore IMO. They don’t leave much performance on the table with dynamic clocking / voltages. It’s a more efficient usage of silicon ultimately.
I miss getting “free” power by knowing how to overclock, but I’m also kinda over it. I cut my teeth on a K6-2 with jumpers to set voltage/multiplier, so I’m kinda glad to have parts do 95% of their max speed right out of the box now. It was fun while it lasted.
