It's possible for nvidia to replace the resistors with one-time-programable memory ,and program it at factory. And it's cheap, it's being used in $1 FPGA from silicon blue.
And they'll probably do this in their next chip.
And they'll probably do this in their next chip.
Most people who are probably doing this are hobbyists at best. Most professionals would probably just have their company buying the cards anyway, and this hack won't at all change that.
Actually, it being a hardware hack rather than a software hack makes it even less appealing even for small shops to try. "You want to take that new $400 video card that we just bought you and do /what/ to it?" vs. "ooh, it's just a software upgrade" (even though both have the very real chance of bricking the card in inexperienced hands).
as if the company had infinite resources and didn't want to spend less.
This isn't true for startups or any kind of small business.