[Randyman...]

Originally Posted by wingman99

Do you get the big picture yet. DIY is what pushes the gaming industry not OEM desk top sales.

I really don't get the big picture with regard to Overclocking


I know plenty of people that gladly upgrade their RAM, HD's, Video cards, and even CPU's and complete OS re-installs themselves. Yet they have no clue what Overclocking is and certainly haven't OC'd their CPU's. Some *might* OC their GPU's via ATI's driver based OC utility - and that's as far as it goes and is only used because the OC capability is built into the driver and is 100% automatic! I agree the "DIY" market is big, but again the percentage of that DIY market that has any clue about overclocking - and then the fewer that actually overclock their rigs - is miniscule compared to Intel's big business of OEM's...

I know I personally wouldn't buy an expensive (>$300) CPU just because the cheap ones would be locked. I'd go AMD instead. Do you get that big picture or is my stance as a dedicated Intel consumer (I'd even call myself an intel fanboy) also irrelevant?

Here is where we stand:

1) Either the MoBo manufacturers will find loopholes around this and it will be a non-issue just like it was before i7 was released (remember this same issue came up back then, too )
2) Intel's K series will flop and they will eat crow once they lock all of the cheap CPU's (will have to wait for i7 to die off first)
3) The enthusiasts will all migrate to AMD - also resulting in Intel eating crow
4) Intel's odd marketing strategy will be a "hit" and they will sell more $500 CPU's than they ever have (I'm SERIOUSLY doubting that outcome).

I'd also add that unless you can increase the bus speeds/bandwidth, a simple unlocked CPU Multi is NOT ging to give you the same performance benefits that we see now via FSB/bclck overclocking. Food for thought.

I'm all set for the next year or so - two i7 rigs, two C2Q rigs, and two C2D rigs to keep me going. The fact that Sandy Bridge might be a better architecture is no motivation for me to spend $500 on a CPU and $300 on a high-end MoBo when my $199 i7 930 and $170 ASUS P6X58D-E will be right on it's heels at less than 1/2 the cost!!! Clear as a bell to me - but that's me

[DaveHCYJ]

I think even if you accept the fact that the OEM market dwarfs the DIY market, that doesn't mean the DIY market is not important to Intel/AMD. Its the DIY market that gets lots of attention and has a huge PR $ value. I think Intel is aware of that and won't let it slip away (I hope).

That being said, I'm kind of disapointed with the whole unlocked multipliers being the new overclocking. I never was one to chase the boundries of overclocking, I typically would just give my system a modest boost to the fsb and be happy. I enjoyed having everything run slightly faster, not just the processor. Oh well, at least with memory ratios you can still overclock the two most important components.

[Randyman...]

The PR and Reviewer/Blogger aspects have more "legs" than the entire Overclocking user base IMO. That is also why I don't think Intel will completely block overclocking. They are leaving a backdoor open somewhere - and just waiting for Asus or Gigabyte to tap into it IMNSHO. AMD spanked Intel in the P4 era - Intel will not let that happen again - and AMD is still coming on strong (It's not like Intel can rest on their laurels or risk bad PR - or AMD will overtake them AGAIN!)

One of the 4 outcomes I listed above

[wingman99]

Originally Posted by Randyman...

I really don't get the big picture with regard to Overclocking


I know plenty of people that gladly upgrade their RAM, HD's, Video cards, and even CPU's and complete OS re-installs themselves. Yet they have no clue what Overclocking is and certainly haven't OC'd their CPU's. Some *might* OC their GPU's via ATI's driver based OC utility - and that's as far as it goes and is only used because the OC capability is built into the driver and is 100% automatic! I agree the "DIY" market is big, but again the percentage of that DIY market that has any clue about overclocking - and then the fewer that actually overclock their rigs - is miniscule compared to Intel's big business of OEM's...:

I think your severely underestimating peoples and gamers knowledge and the thing called the internet.

Overclocking is born form tweaking it all starts when you have trouble with something and you ask for advice or google for it.

You think allot of gamers don't know about overcloking and DIY don't because of the people around you. you can't judge by that.

Gamers and DIY are always looking for advantage or better graphics or performance end of story.

[Randyman...]

I'll respectfully disagree from my real-world perceptions - and the peeps I work with and associate with aren't exactly stuck in the 20th Century (they are a fairly tech-savvy group as we work in a technichal environment - and they do enjoy gaming in general). Even if the DIY'ers are interested in Overclocking - will they be willing to dish out a good deal more cash to purchase (or completely upgrade) an overclockable system? I doubt it - so I strongly believe Intel has left a backdoor open to allow overclocking on the cheaper parts as they always have.

The hardcore gamers will be the ones that Overclock (and might be OCD like me ). The casual gamers (most gamers like the ones I work with who are passionate but not "Gung-Ho" on tricking out their systems - ) are the ones that will install a new GPU, and don't want to screw with the BIOS and stress-testing and possible crashes and system instabilities involved with manual CPU overclocking. I'm not even fond of the whole "new system Overclock Stress Testing / stability testing / crashing" procedure - and I absolutely LOVE building PC's!

You also have the odd-balls like me that NEVER game, but are all about squeezing the last drop from our $199 CPU's to get the best Audio performance out of my systems (tons of Low-Latency audio is a tough task to handle). For my applications, an unlocked Multi ("K Series" CPU's) is almost useless as I need more bandwidth across the entire system to handle 128 chanels of Audio coming in and out of my system at extremely-low latencies. RAM and FSB/QPI/DMI bandwidth is crucial in my settings - and simpy unlocking the CPU Multi and charging me more cash is not going to do me any favors.

Regardless - Intel will be shooting themselves in the foot if they effectively kill overclocking from their affordable CPU's. The PR and related pushbacks will drive the budget-minded enthusiasts (like me) to AMD. I'd have no issues going to AMD - and every single PC I've built in my life has been an Intel (likely over 20 systems by now). If that doesn't say something - then I don't know what does...

Don't forgte this same "Scare" reared its head before i7's came out too - and they are some of the best overclockers on the planet! Cry wolf...

Intel's bottom line won't grow because they want us (the tiny Overclocking market) to buy more expensive CPU's. If anyting it will shrink as we (lots of us) will go elsewhere in search of cheap overclockable power...

[wingman99]

Originally Posted by Randyman...

I'll respectfully disagree from my real-world perceptions

In the real world now most motherboards have overcloking capability now, no extra purchase needed from the DIY community and this community is vary large way more than 1% and like I said before you can overclock now for cheap $50-$100 boards.

There are many reason to build your own computer and people do the research and they wanted overclocking motherboards, that's why most motherboards you buy will overclock that is how big it is in the real world customer demand caused manufactures to supply overcloking boards in all price ranges, you can be hard pressed not to end up with a ovclocking motherboard on any purchase.

Real world PC Gamers cheat in games steal games and and the gaming industry says it a loosing the battle that is how bad it is and you don' think there smart enough to overclock a cheap system to save some money or maybe they are on the good side and want the best graphics at a low cost and game play to win, just like how i'm trying to explain that 1% does not even come close to the amount of overclokers that do it jut because they can and it's easy, can saves money or more performance.

intel did not leave a back door, they did this because just like you they can't count the number of people overclocking because most retail boards overclock, they want a peace of this big pie.

I'm not saying they can't make a clock generator to interrupt and take over clock gen from the south PCH however if it is possible, which i'm finding hard to believe because they set the internal multipliers all to 100mhz.

After reading the the data that's out there would have to be two paths into the CPU one for memory so you can change memory speed multiplier with the P67 chipset and the other would be a path into the cpu chip for BCLK and video clock so you can't separate PCI-E video buss clock speed of 5.0 GHz from the CPU clock, so if you increase the bclk the PCI-E video buss will go up to.

That is how I would do it.

So if there is only two clock gen paths going in to the CPU chip good luck opening and changing architecture.

This is how much intel thinks there is mass amount of overclokers out there and they want to cash in.

LINK:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U62lC...eature=channel

[BrianAbington]

they may do that at first, but I think they will then come out with something beastly that really responds well to overclocking and is way more efficent that is aimed at gamers and servers.

[Bobnova]

If just the record number of people on this site (who now know about OCing) buy $100-extra K series CPUs, that is half a million bucks for Intel.
On one hand that's not much, on the other hand we're a drop in the bucket users wise.

[DaveHCYJ]

Originally Posted by Bobnova

If just the record number of people on this site (who now know about OCing) buy $100-extra K series CPUs, that is half a million bucks for Intel.
On one hand that's not much, on the other hand we're a drop in the bucket users wise.

Based on the current roadmap it looks like the Sandy Bridge i5 2500k is going to be priced the same as the i5 750/760 is currently. People are currently loving the 750/760 in the $200ish price range so that shouldn't really change assuming the 2500k hits the same price range.

Also don't forget all intel CPUs will not have some multiplier "wiggle room". They aren't completely unlocked like the k series will be, but if the wiggle room is large enough, it may be enough to satisfy your average overclocker.

[Bobnova]

I haven't seen any prices mentioned anywhere, link?

[DaveHCYJ]

No official pricing, just speculation that the units will be priced relatively the same as those they are replacing.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/t...ins-in-a-row/4

[Bobnova]

I would be very, very surprised to see that personally.

[DaveHCYJ]

Agreed. I'm not holding my breath, but at the same time that is the direction Intel has been moving. Originally you could only get unlocked multipliers in the $1000 EE units, but its slowly been moving into lower price brackets with the K units. I don't think its out of the realm of possibilities for this to be one more step in the lower priced direction.

[wingman99]

Originally Posted by wingman99

In the real world now most motherboards have overcloking capability now, no extra purchase needed from the DIY community and this community is vary large way more than 1% and like I said before you can overclock now for cheap $50-$100 boards.

There are many reason to build your own computer and people do the research and they wanted overclocking motherboards, that's why most motherboards you buy will overclock that is how big it is in the real world customer demand caused manufactures to supply overcloking boards in all price ranges, you can be hard pressed not to end up with a ovclocking motherboard on any purchase.

Real world PC Gamers cheat in games steal games and and the gaming industry says it a loosing the battle that is how bad it is and you don' think there smart enough to overclock a cheap system to save some money or maybe they are on the good side and want the best graphics at a low cost and game play to win, just like how i'm trying to explain that 1% does not even come close to the amount of overclokers that do it jut because they can and it's easy, can saves money or more performance.

intel did not leave a back door, they did this because just like you they can't count the number of people overclocking because most retail boards overclock, they want a peace of this big pie.

I'm not saying they can't make a clock generator to interrupt and take over clock gen from the south PCH however if it is possible, which i'm finding hard to believe because they set the internal multipliers all to 100mhz.

After reading the the data that's out there would have to be two paths into the CPU one for memory so you can change memory speed multiplier with the P67 chipset and the other would be a path into the cpu chip for BCLK and video clock so you can't separate PCI-E video buss clock speed of 5.0 GHz from the CPU clock, so if you increase the bclk the PCI-E video buss will go up to.

That is how I would do it.

So if there is only two clock gen paths going in to the CPU chip good luck opening and changing architecture.

This is how much intel thinks there is mass amount of overclokers out there and they want to cash in.

LINK:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U62lC...eature=channel

I have done some more thinking and I think the motherboard manufacture can bypass intel with 3 new designed chips. A new clock gen chip for the different clock tasks and a multiplier converter chip intercept in the tracers from the PCH to the CPU and and a auto, lock PCI-E video divider chip to intercept the CPU chip tracers 5.0 GHZ buss to the PCIE-E 16x slots.

So the way I look at it, it's a win win situation for intel

Motherboard for overclocking 1155 cost $300+

or you could go with the intel unlock CPU k series i5 2500K Quad 3.3 GH z cost$300+

I don't see the CPU k for anything less than $300+ because the non overclocking cpus in there lineup go all the way down to Core i5 2500T 2.3GHz quad, that is 6 in the line up of quad cores before you get to the first K at 3.3Ghz 6MB L3 and the top k is 3.4GHz 8MB L3.


The hopefully external clock gen on the the fully overclockable 2011 socket and year. with cpus starting at $ 300, this could change to locked like the1155

intel is just cashing in on this big overclcoking enthusiast market, just like the intel engineer is saying in the youtube video I posted above.

Also I have had time to think it over and I can see we are no better than the gamers I talked about above. We cheat intel out of buying the higher clocked price point cpus with stock heatsinks, in the video I posted above intel points this out by saying there is only a small amount of extreme overclockers that pay the high price for components.

Watch the whole intel video above and pay vary close attention to what the intel engineer says, some of the video is vary boring for some of us and he points that out too, however he hits most of my points.

[Bobnova]

That's what i said on page 2 :P

Originally Posted by Bobnova

Different by design as in you have to buy an overclockable CPU, that's my guess.
We may not be a large segment, but we do exist, if half the people on this forum go to SB and buy unlocked CPUs at the current locked+$100 rate intel gets $44K, that's not bad, really.

It's in intel's best interests to charge more for unlocked CPUs and keep bus speed locked, just like it was in AMDs best interest back when HTref didn't OC as well. They had BE and non-BE for the same cpu, the BE just cost more.
Really Intel just has to make it hard, it doesn't matter if it's doable as long as the basic joe n00b can't do it effectively.
I can't see intel making it impossible, at some point someone will make a motherboard with a filter in the PLL lines, it catches the signal and raises it. The sata is on the chipset, it's uneffected, same for USB. The PCIe on die goes up, but the same chip could interface into the PCIe lines (ala Hydra) and drop the frequency back down to 100 to keep the GPUs happy.
It'd cost more, but it ought to be doable.

As James Bolivar DiGriz says: What man can lock and encode man can unlock and decode.

[wingman99]

Originally Posted by wingman99

I have done some more thinking and I think the motherboard manufacture can bypass intel with 3 new designed chips. A new clock gen chip for the different clock tasks and a multiplier converter chip intercept in the tracers from the PCH to the CPU and and a auto, lock PCI-E video divider chip to intercept the CPU chip tracers 5.0 GHZ buss to the PCIE-E 16x slots.

So the way I look at it, it's a win win situation for intel

Motherboard for overclocking 1155 cost $300+

or you could go with the intel unlock CPU k series i5 2500K Quad 3.3 GH z cost$300+

I don't see the CPU k for anything less than $300+ because the non overclocking cpus in there lineup go all the way down to Core i5 2500T 2.3GHz quad, that is 6 in the line up of quad cores before you get to the first K at 3.3Ghz 6MB L3 and the top k is 3.4GHz 8MB L3.


The hopefully external clock gen on the the fully overclockable 2011 socket and year. with cpus starting at $ 300, this could change to locked like the1155

intel is just cashing in on this big overclcoking enthusiast market, just like the intel engineer is saying in the youtube video I posted above.

Also I have had time to think it over and I can see we are no better than the gamers I talked about above. We cheat intel out of buying the higher clocked price point cpus with stock heatsinks, in the video I posted above intel points this out by saying there is only a small amount of extreme overclockers that pay the high price for components.

Originally Posted by Bobnova

That's what i said on page 2 :P

Yea I said some of the same things before too in this form, however it's much more complicated to bypass intel then we originally thought. Also overclocking is not a small market.

LINK:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U62lC...eature=channel
Watch the whole intel video above and pay vary close attention to what the intel engineer says, some of the video is vary boring for some of us and he points that out too, however he hits most of my points.

[MIAHALLEN]

And same as what I said on page #1 (kinda)

Originally Posted by MIAHALLEN

Food for thought:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=204868

I think mobo manufacturers will find clever ways around these issues, and overclocking will carry on

[Randyman...]

My sentiments exactly This is nothing more than pre-mature "crying wolf" IMNSHO. The same hub-bub was happening before i7's came out, and they are SICK overclockers even on a budget! (i7 930's and i7 860's are only $199 at MicroCenter).

Overclocking will carry on - Asus and Gigabyte et all will see to that...

We're a drop in the bucket - but Intel doesn't want that drop to end up in AMD's bucket


As you were

[thideras]

Could this just be a marketing ploy to garner attention?

[Dolk]

So question... How are you going to OC your memory now? Are the K series going to allow Intel users to use the BCLK or is it fully locked to 100mhz across the board?