The same average joe you speak of wouldn't know how to check the driver for the non-overclocked frequency in the first place. Also, linkboost IS an advertised feature, this is just the first card to truly take advantage of the increased PCI-E frequency.
Finally, stock is stock. You take your card, pull it out of the box, put it in your computer and run it? That's stock. All this means is, stock speed on a NVidia chipset is different than stock speed on a different chipset.
Personally, I really like the idea of the new feature, as I'm sure a lot of people here will.
I do want to know one thing though.....
Why doesn't the guru3d testing show the same issue?. Guru3d use rivatuner in their sli review of the 9600GT to show temps(page 4 of the review), which is done on a 680i. The inno3d card is still at 700mhz, using the same tool tech powerup said showed the issue.... So can someone explain what's going on here with this?