• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

[O/C]Intel to Restrict Overclocking on Sandy Bridge

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.
they claimed the same thing on the i7 series, Nahlem, didn't happen, they have said this a few times, never happened.

But even then, sure we recommend things, but dell , HP and other OEMs still count for i would say %90 of their sales so it still wouldn't make a dent if they did it, sure people would run to AMD, but most people look at a computer on dell, look at the price and hit buy.

Yep, they said the same w/ Nehalem.

Here's a link for perspective.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=559606

Not only are we able to OC i7, but we can even use the 'turbo' multi constantly on all cores when it was only designed for single core usage.
 
This has been stated IIRC every other generation or so, every time people either got around it or it didnt happen.

Short of them literally forcing manufacturers to eliminate BIOS settings, it wont be enforceable. Well assuming they havent figured out how to apply the DMCA to OCing.
 
Over the top, and frankly a little irresponsible

Frankly, the headline and summary are over the top. Where's the quality control? At best, this is editorialising.

Deliberately restricting overclocking? Are you really sure that the sole and only reason Intel is reducing down to a single on-die clock generator is to thwart overclocking? Not to, say, simplify design and reduce cost? Because these seem like logical things to do, trending along with on-die memory controllers and the like.

In fact, the linked bit-tech article says as much, albeit in a breathless manner that assumes intention where I'd imagine there is none. This seems to be deliberately limiting overclocking in the sense that gravity deliberately interferes with my dreams of flying like superman.

I think we could have done a better job of objectively decoupling the editorialising (assuming certain dastardly intentions) from the reporting (the chips will do X). We're better than this.

It's certainly not the end of the day. "Normal" users get a cheaper chip, more of the system is on the chip (with presumably fewer failure modes as a result), and the rest of us can happily bypass the clock signals onboard. Big deal.

More accurate headline: Sandbridge on-die clock generator will likely break current overclocking methods.
 
Last edited:
Paul, I understand your concerns, but look at how long your title is compared to the existing one. And there is nothing factually wrong with the existing title. The new intel chip, with the reference intel motherboard design will not allow overclocking. And it is stated that 3rd party manufacturers are working on ways to get around this but nothing is working, yet. As such, this does not look good for us, Overclockers, and we said why.
 
The changes will break current overclocking methods - that's maybe not the intention, but it's the most important repurcussion as far as overclockers are concerned. It's something we (editors) have discussed and taken on board though, constructive criticism is welcome.
 
Thanks guys.

I'll take a long, accurate title over a short, sensationalist one any day of the week. However, I understand that concern. But in my opinion, character count should never take precedence over accuracy.

While the current title is "correct," the word choice implies ulterior motive and intent. "restrict" is a word that implies an intentional limitation. As we can see, this is much more likely to be a secondary consequence of a design decision, not an outright restriction intended solely for impeding overclocking (as the word choice suggests, and the summary further "confirms").

And David, I agree that this is the major consequence for our community, it's very important that we don't conflate cause and effect. Here's one place where we can excel over other communities while still hitting all our points.

Thanks -- Paul


I think it's Intel's strategy to force over-clocking enthusiast to buy the premium chips.

But that's just it--this is speculation. We have no facts (e.g., internal strategy memos, etc.) to confirm such an opinion. We do have facts that this will be a consequence, and so we should separate the editorialising and sensationalism from the facts, which are in and of themselves already newsworthy.

You and I have the savvy to pluck out the facts from the speculation, but some of our younger readers may not.
 
Dr. Who on XS has already posted that this is bogus. He has engineering samples at this disposal (as he's hinted strongly) and this is not going to be an issue. He said it would be "very different" but it will still clock very high just like current i7s do. He's been dead on before and I trust his info as he has put up screenshots of his chips in previous posts.
 
Dr. Who on XS has already posted that this is bogus. He has engineering samples at this disposal (as he's hinted strongly) and this is not going to be an issue. He said it would be "very different" but it will still clock very high just like current i7s do. He's been dead on before and I trust his info as he has put up screenshots of his chips in previous posts.

Fantastic! Do you have a link and/or sources?

Seriously, this is where we can really build our reputation. Report the stories, but do the deeper fact checking that requires real thinking and analysis. (Not to mention good old fashioned fact checking.)
 
Last edited:
Fantastic! Do you have a link and/or sources?

Seriously, this is where we can really build our reputation. Report the stories, but do the deeper fact checking that requires real thinking and analysis. (Not to mention good old fashioned fact checking.)

Link to thread as a whole:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=256063

Relevant quotes:

Amazing! event in a thread with the title like "Intel plans to deliberately limit Sandy Bridge overclocking" ... The tittle is totally BS, but still ... :clap: :clap: :clap:

Do you really Think that the parts out there has final tuning in? look at the stepping ... :rofl:

SandyB is very different than what you are use to ... may be you are a little bit over confident ... To quote morphius, "Don't think you are, know you are!"

in my case, I prefert Kouros ... Houston is not launching as much space craft than Kouros.
_45999339_007585685-1.jpg ... and i am in perfect synch with what I know about SandyB :) 🆙 🆙 🆙 🆙

well, this is not firmware, this is the regular systems, but it is much more advanced now that things are getting integrated. Especially on the power management side, you don t want laptop parts and desktop parts to behave the same. Nothing new, just more nodes to adapt to where stuff go. If you look at the literrature about Nehalem, it is already in. Thinking that the receipe to optimize all of this is in those leaked sample is funny. What would mean that Intel People are so good that we don t need the silicon to tune the CPU ... lol I wish! But sorry very much like you and me, Human! :yepp:

Let's take an example, turning OFF the top of the 64 to 128bits of an SSE execution can save 50% of the power, in the mean time, turning it back on is not instantanious ... so, for a workstation, you don t want that feature ON, while, on a laptop , you really want this ... Now, if you go through the all design of a core like Nehalem, you ll find many places where you can enable those kind of power saving. you want to turn off your cores when you see only single threaded workloads, etc ... all of those policies need to be tuned.
The new generation of CPUs are not what people are use to, there are reason why the Core i3/i5 have those amazing level of performance with the same power envellope as Penryn ...
Power gating is very powerfull if you take the time to do it very deep everywhere and you have a power control unit smart enough to do it right.

Those new processor architectures are really amazing, provide awesome flexibility, with billion like transistor count.
Intel Rarely speak about it, but we do have performance counters all over the CPU, monitoring all the phenomena inside the machine, and vTune allow you to get access and see the statistics about all of this. If you are really into performance and CPU architecture, there are documentation and free version of vTune. help yourselfs, and look at all those nodes that can be monitored. The CPUs are not 486 or Pentium like for a long time, NEhalem toke it to a much higher level, and this was only the 1st step.

Francois

PS: by the way, i just posted this using Wimax enable Core i7 620M, and I am in the middle of the silicon valley, Indoor , using WIMAX-4G
890654237.png
This is the way to go :) ==> http://www.clear.com/

yeap, it is much faster than arm ... with better low power ...
(Now, i ll get a lot of hate mails ;) ) hehehehe ... :ROTF: :ROTF: :ROTF:


This is my opinion, it is ok to disagree, not ok to crusify me 🆙

Let 's close this thread ... all was said ... Intel does not have a crazy plan to stop overclocking, otherwise, i would have hanged the dudes in my attic :) (Metaphore)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
the title at XS definitely says that intel is doing it on purpose. I still don't think ours implies the same thing. We posted the article on the 22nd using the facts in the bittech article. Just because different facts came to light the next day doesn't mean that we weren't doing our fact checking or that we were wrong to report it, just like with the "fake" intel chips a few months ago.

Paul, we're all volunteers doing the best we can with the limited time we have. We invite you to help us out.
 
Splat, I'm sorry it came across as unduly harsh. That was absolutely not my intent. I'm sorry I've become a curmudgeon in my old age.

I understand and agree that it was the information we had at the time. Given that the information was limited, perhaps we could have taken a more cautious stance? Also, we could have easily written a more restrained entry that (once again) separated the facts as presented in the bit-tech article from the sensationalism/editorialising.

The facts (as understood at the time) regarding the clock generator were in and of themselves interesting and newsworthy. The logical implications for overclocking, in and of themselves, were interesting and newsworthy. The breathless accusation of deliberate breaking of overclocking was wholly unnecessary and didn't need to be repeated.

Please take it as constructive criticism. You guys are doing a great job, and I recognise that you're doing amazing work as volunteers. I wish I could get more deeply involved, but family and work life are preventing it at this point, beyond my current role of trying to provide feedback and constructive criticism. I hope it's helpful. If you feel otherwise, I'll back off.

Thanks again to the hard work by you and the others. -- Paul

*edit*
splat said:
the title at XS definitely says that intel is doing it on purpose.

I agree that our title is better. The XS title is just a direct copy/paste of the bit-tech title.
 
Last edited:
no hard feelings and thanks for the understanding. We certainly do appreciate the feedback and are working to improve. So don't hold back too much, but do keep in mind our diverse backgrounds.
 
Sounds great.

And once again, let me give you and the other writers and editors a public pat on the back. You're taking the site in a very good direction. -- Paul
 
Personally, I think anything Intel offers will end up overclocked. Once the genie is out of the bottle there's no going back. :sn:

Sure, AMD had a better CPU back in the day for a while, but OEM's still sold Intel and Intel out sold AMD all over the charts up and down in every market, so that is proof we don't have the power some seem to think we do, otherwise AMD would be a lot higher than they are now from that era.
With all the under-handed and illegal things Intel did to keep OEMs from selling AMD I'd say Intel thought it made a difference! Paying off OEMs to NOT sell AMD chips? Threatening to end long-standing pricing contracts not because the OEMs were going to sell fewer Intel chips but because they were also going to sell AMD chips? You think Intel did those things just on a whim? A whim that would cost them Billions of dollars a few years later? (And they had to have known the risks they were taking at the time.) Obviously Intel saw a threat to it's bottom line from AMD even if you didn't.

Yes, I'm sure without Intel's illegal and unethical interference with OEMs during "that era", AMD would be "a lot higher than they are now" ... :rolleyes:
 
This sucks:( I just got hold of 2 1156 boardz:cry:

If this hasn't been pointed out, the article mentioned that it was for chipset P67. 1156 boards will be fine since they are on P55/H55. Just don't get Sandy Bridge cpu's. :D

Don’t panic and switch to AMD just yet, motherboard manufacturers are looking for ways to circumvent the locked frequency.

My favorite part of the whole article. :thup:
 
This is false alarm, overclocking on SB would be different due to design, that's all.
 
Back