Overclockers

We are such a small percentage of the overall market that it really wouldn't hurt Intel's bottom line - BUT - we are also the ones that recommend parts to numerous potential buyers based on our own perceptions. AMD will welcome any gains in the "Enthusiast" market with open arms

I doubt Intel will be as restrictive as rumored - and we'll still have the K series with higher but not outrageous pricing for our OC'ing enjoyment. However - locking the DMI/QPI will indeed hamper some of the benefits of overclocking (at least in my uses for low-latency audio production). I seriously doubt Intel wants to hand over the reigns to AMD for the Price-vs-Performance Overclocking Crown...

Agreed...it seems like I have heard this story before..."Intel stops overclocking" but it never comes to pass.

I'm just saying, if they did...and there was no easy way around it...I bet half this forum would jump ship to AMD.

Exactly, though I don't see how overclocking would hurt them if most of their sales are through the channels where people aren't overclocking. The enthusiasts would just go to AMD, which would be worse off for them. This could very well be just a way to entice investors by saying some individuals will now pay more for the same performance rather than buying a cheaper processor. Lots of companies like to fluff their stocks at certain points.

They (intel AND amd) already tried, hard, once. All cpus used to have an unlocked multi.

200MHz to 233MHz Core Speed by swapping a jumper. Oh the good old days

Maybe I am not understanding this but why would they release chips that can not be overclocked?

As was stated above the OC world really isn't that big of a market. From what I would guess the base profit for Intel would be corporate deals. Which to my knowledge don't OC... Is OCing something that Intel really needs to limit?

Not to mention, think of all of the people in the OC Forums community with nothing to do. We would have to leave the house! AHHHHHHH

There was an issue at some point where some businesses were buying cheaper chips, overclocking, then selling them at the faster speed. Don't really believe that is going on now.

My current ideas
1) Analysts already figured out that they would have a net profit increase even with some switching to AMD. People would be forced to buy more expensive CPU if they wanted more performance. With the branding that Intel has over AMD, they would lose some, but keep the majority.
2) Making certain statements help to increase their market value. Great for the company to buy and sell stocks at the right time.
3) Appease vendors as the benefit to building your own computer will have decreased. (Prebuilt computers tend to not have the options of overclocking much if at all.)
4) Decrease costs of support, now that you would not be able to overclock, the settings would all be set to specific ranges depending on your chip. This would limit peoples ability to mess up their settings and have it set them correctly. There would be less calls to Intel and/or less RMA'd chips.

It is really unfortunate since mostly ENTHUSIASTS buy these chips, which for the most part LIKE TO OVERCLOCK. It seems like a backwards step for intel, seems like AMD will once again assume the position of power in hardware overclocking.

I would switch to AMD for my primary rig without a doubt. Provided they wouldn't do the same thing on their next release.

they have to. Or they basically lose their jobs. As the article said, if you can't overclock, there is very little reason to buy an enthusiast level mobo.

Yep, they said the same w/ Nehalem.

Here's a link for perspective.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...d.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.

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.

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


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.

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/...d.php?t=256063

Relevant quotes:

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*
I agree that our title is better. The XS title is just a direct copy/paste of the bit-tech title.

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

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.

My favorite part of the whole article.

Yeah, thats what they said for i series as well... we will see.

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.

Intel had the writing on the wall as soon as Turbo Boost Technology was unveiled. Their marketing department will start saying every chip they make is overclocked automatically, which is technically true (anything with turbo boost, which will be almost every chip soon).

AMD is coming out with something similar soon.

We all got spoiled from the legendary Core2Duo series (4.0Ghz on stock voltage, yawn =D) and we'll have to work a lot harder to get those good overclocks. But that's the fun

OK, who the hell are you? Did you, in a past profession, have experience as a writer/editor?

I only ask because what you just said makes perfect sense and is an example of a much larger problem in all outlets of media/journalism (especially politics) and is something I think we should all be more cognizant of.

Thus, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

(edit*** Also, I forgot to add: in my experience, what you said usually comes from the mouth of a crazy old dude with tautologically infallible conspiracy theories about 9/11 and etc. Even if they're right... I mean... they're crazy. Surprisingly, your rant was quite reasonable.)

I betcha the DMI bus clock signal is the clock signal, it'd make sense given that the DMI is a PCIe bus with a new name.

I was talking to someone (ghost?) about the very first SB chip seen in the wild and how it looked like they were using PCIe directly for the bclk and how it'd be a major pain to OC. Wish i'd posted that convo back then, i'd look like an oracle or something now :P

Like i said:
The current DMI is a 4x PCIe 2.0 link, which totals 2GB/s.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...the-next-gen/1
Gotta keep in mind, a PCIe 16x 2.0 slot is a whopping 8GB/s of bandwidth.

PCIe 16x 2.0 slot is 16GB of bandwidth bidirectional.

The current DMI is a 4x PCIe 2.0, which totals 2GB/s bidirectional, Intel is using PCIe 1.0 speed standard 250 MB/s on the DMI bus on the ICH-10, P55

Anandtech LINK:http://www.anandtech.com/show/3574

Your still missing some things.

The PCIe 2.0 standard uses a base clock speed of 5.0 GHz, while the PCIe 1.0 version operates at 2.5 GHz


QUOTE: and posted on YouTube (see from 2mins onwards) confirms the fact that only a 2-3 per cent OC via Base Clock adjustments will be possible. This is because Intel has tied the speed of every bus (USB, SATA, PCI, PCI-E, CPU cores, Uncore, memory etc) to a single internal clock generator issuing the basic 100MHz Base Clock.

The base clock comes from a clock Generator in the PCH.

Thanks for the link, for sandy bridge

In your professional opinion, do you think this is not from intel.

QUOTE: Intel's own slides confirm just 2-3 per cent

Well 3Q 2011 looks better, however expensive.

QUOTE: also mirror what we've heard and go further to include details Intel's upcoming LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E and 'Patsburg' chipset that will replace the current X58 and LGA1366 platforms.

According to HKEPC the upper limit DDR3 support currently exceeds 2,666MHz (wowzers) and most importantly follows previous current generations basic designs so overclocking potential is unaffected, yet, unspecified

That'd be socket 2011, socket 1155 is for cheapskates.

I wholly agree with the former statement - guess they didn't like how people took their lower clocked CPU and OC'd to higher for free. As for the latter, could you offer a reason to why AMD may follow so soon? Just curious on your thoughts Killador.

On another note, what would the sockets be then?

S1156-> S1155(?)
S1366-> S2011(?)

What becomes of S1567? Not really applicable to me, but I'd like to have a rounded-view on this. Haven't come across the next MP-supported socket in my readings or browsing through the above posts. No one touched on the four channel DDR3 support for their high-end offering; yes, the benefits will surely be contested - a measurable but not really perceivable change in performance (what were the average % increase from dual to triple channel DDR3 again?). Actually, re-reading my last sentence I guess there isn't much to talk about it, it'll just be a repeat.

If the DMI clock doesn't OC past 2-3% of its base 100MHz, we're down to multiplier OC (assuming board manufacturers don't figure a workaround)? I guess their 'K' series processors fill that space, but for those on air cooling it doesn't outperform their locked counterparts (of course I'm referring to current CPU's, I couldn't know how SB locked vs unlocked would perform).

Fueling some discussion since it's been a week.

Nahelem was just speculation, This is a roomer with allot of legs to stand on.

QUOTE:According to one Taiwanese motherboard company, on a Sandy Bridge system, the fact that all the busses are linked means that turning up the Base Clock by just 5MHz caused the USB to fail and SATA bus to corrupt.
We chatted about possible work-arounds but at the moment the few 'asynchronous' setups tried were currently not working. It's been claimed to use out-of-the-box the design was deliberately limited with the intention to simplify board design and lower costs. This obviously has the 'unfortunate' side effect that enthusiasts will be unable to manually overclock Sandy Bridge CPUs to their limits, but the CPU's own internal overclocking, TurboBoost, will still work and Intel will offer some controlled multiplier overhead for enthusiasts as a token gesture.

If bit-tech did talk to the Taiwanese and it's true, it does not make any sense, decrease the complexity of the motherboard for cost and increase the complexity of the CPU and PCH

So the rumors are becoming real? What a shame. I figure this would affect a lot of people designing products for overclocking. Sure a lot of people will switch to AMD, but there is still a majority who will buy Intel and will just end up having to leave everything stock.

I'm sure AMD will welcome the new enthusiasts. I don't really see AMD limiting overclocking. Considering that their chips are so cheap, why wouldn't you just buy one of their high end chips anyways? I hope Bulldozer turns out to be a real beast so there would be no need to buy an Intel.

There's more news on SB now:

http://www.computerbase.de/news/hard..._sandy_bridge/

http://www.techeye.net/chips/sandy-b...roadmap-leaked

Oh, thanks I was looking for the actual pictures. All I got were thumbs from others.

There will be ways around this - I'm sure of it. Look how much Intel has embraced Overclocking on the i7 - they even wrote some software tweak applications for it! I have no intentions of going to Sandy Bridge in the next year, but I'm sure something will happen on the Overclocking front by then. Granted Intel will still sell more expensive unlocked "K" processors, but I seriously doubt all overclocking will be dead with the exception of the K series CPU's.

NTM the revenue they "lose" from us overclockers buying $200 CPU's and cranking them up past a $1000 CPU's stock clocks is minimal and likely only a small blip on their bottom line. I know I'd NEVER buy a $1000 CPU - maybe a $300 CPU. So I wouldn't be an example of any type of lost revenue to them - only a better price-to-performance experience for me as the end user and an Intel Fanboy

There are runmors going around about AMD's Fusion CPUs to counter the Sandy Bridges CPU coming out Q1 2011. They have the Bulldozer (Zambezi Family), Llano (Athlon II Family) and Ontario (Bobcat Family) CPUs that are rumored to be released Q1 and Q2 2011. Most of these i believe are to be mainstream on desktop and laptops - they really look identical to Nehalems - but with some features Sadny Bridges has to offer.

That is not true most of all retial motherboards are overclokable, we are the meat and potatos of DIY around the world for desk top usage industy that also incudes performance video cards, and all performance producs, it all ties in.

intel is not stopping overclocking there putting a price on it. I've never spent over $200 for a cpu and not much over a $100 for a overcloking motherboard and have always destroyed the performance of the intel $1000 CPU with overclocking.

If intel only market $300+ CPU K models and if motherboard manufactures have a special chip's made to bypass intel, the cost of it being the only factor, this will hurt the market in the long run I feel.

To this date intel has only sold 15-25,000 thousand Gulftowns world wide IIRC there is not a big market for $1000 cpu,s.

From the beginning PC gaming boomed with because of DIY video and CPU,
and the meat and potatoes of DIY are low budget.

So we will have to see because video card companies started to charge more from the beginning, also SLI, fire and that worked because you can't cheat on video cards like you can do with CPU's

Just think they way it stands now there is only 2 K models of CPU that can be overclocked, the way it was before all models could be overcloked. like $50-$100 CPUs running almost as good as top model CPUs, some even better.

Think of all the people that did not intend to overclock, however did later because they already had all the equipment and just gave it a try, boom.

OEM dwarfs DIY by magnitudes - The DIY/Performance Enthusiast market that actually knows what Overclocking is is very small when comapred to the OEM's massive buying power.

I know if I ask 100 of my coworkers (a fairly tech savvy bunch, too!) only 1% would know what I'm even talking about - much less actually implement overclocking in their own rigs. If you ask here, you'll get a VERY different sample since we are on OC Forums after all (we are the exception - not the rule).

Needless to say my sentiments above stand. I would not buy a $500-$1000 CPU just because they are the only ones that "allow" overclocking - just as the "pirates" generally wouldn't buy the content they pirate if they had no way to pirate in the first place. It's a very similar concept (something for nothing) from a "bottom line" standpoint...

Why would I upgrade from a 4GHz i7 930 to a "Stock" sandy bridge of similar price ($199)? I wouldn't - and Intel knows that. The fact that their more expensive CPU's don't sell well adds more creedence to my theory IMO. The MoBo manufacturers will mod their BIOS's to find a way around this IMO - I'm not terribly worried

Worst case scenario? Everyone goes back to AMD - then Intel will eat crow rather quickly. I seriously don't believe Intel is willing to give AMD that chance after the P4 era left egg on their face...

It's less than 0.1% - well less than that. My 1% was an arbitrary sample from "techies" and only suggested they know what overclocking was - not that they actually implemented any type of overclocking themselves. Out of the 300 people that work here (a "techie" environment on top of that), I'd bet maybe me and one other person actively overclock their PC's...

If an i7 930 is $199 and beats the more expensive "K" series Sandy Bridge CPU's - then what's the motivation to buy the K series??? I don't see it.

Again - I really believe Intel will NOT let AMD take the reigns on this - and AMD already has $99 Quad Cores, and a slew of fantastic overclockers below $200.

I might consider a $300 CPU (my last two i7's were only $199), but beyond that I wouldn't have a huge problem going to AMD - and Intel knows this. I'm not terribly worried either way as I won't be building a new system anytime soon.

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

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

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

That's what i said on page 2 :P

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

Could this just be a marketing ploy to garner attention?

You'll get more memory multipliers.

I noticed that but it didn't click. I'm betting they will have something available for highest end so that you can attempt to get to 7ghz again.

The real problem I see is that, its always been showed that straight Multi OCing has limits. At one point or another, things stop clicking and you need to push the Clock ref.

I'm only looking at this from a Benchers perspective.

More mem multis, but it looks like you'll basically be locked into standardized speeds. No tweaking to get that little bit extra, and it looks like an absolute max of 2133 on socket 1155 unless mobo manufacturers have some leeway there.


I thought that the middle/low end SB stuff (Socket 1155) was going to be locked down, but the higher-end stuff (Socket 2011) would use an external clock and be fully OCable? Details are obviously still fuzzy, though.

Overclocking is not a small market.

Intel, Discussion on CPUs and Overclocking 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 all the points.

I'm talking about older processors. I remember this happening when i7 came out, i5 came out, Core2...

I'm not worried in the slightest. I'm prepared to stick with my $199 i7's for at least a year - and then I would simply switch to AMD if Intel is jacking up the cost of Overclocking. Problem solved

Let the market decide and Intel will eat crow soon enough. Or (as I believe to be the case) there WILL be ways around these limitations. Or you can pay more to Overclock your Sandy Bridge "K" CPU and Intel will "win" this battle. I think the consumers should vote with their wallets since the Overclockers are such a HUGE part of Intels' bottom line like you keep getting at (I really don't believe that - even if the Intel engineer says otherwise ).

OEM makes "us" look like ants. Just look at Intel's onboard graphics dominace over AMD/Nvidia's discrete offerings (COMBINED) amungst "Enthusiasts". That's only a tiny part of the story...

And that's what it would take to make Intel eat crow *IF* this is more than pre-mature crying wolf (I really think that's all it is)...

Overclocking is all about cost effective parts opened up to a whole new level of performance. If you have the cash for high-end parts - then more power to you - but I've always stuck with ~$200 CPU's and ~$200 MoBo's - and I have no intention on changing that because Intel wants to rake us over the coals to make some extra cash...

Again - I'm not worried. I'm actually a bit curious to experiment with my first AMD system if it comes to that (but it won't )

The intel Engineer said that desk top users are switching to mobile and what you have left is a desktop hyper segmentation and a big component of that is the enthusiast overclokers.

He said that the traditional market is moving to mobile so whose left, it's people that really care about these products and overclockers are big piece of that.

The word is BIG not HUGE not a drop in the bucket.

He is part of the market analysis for enthusiast, what more do you need to hear he has been working for intel for 4 years as marketing enthusiast engineer.

Also he or intel reads the overclocking forms on the net and compares and looks at overclocking data clock speeds and general overclocking data, he also said that.

He also said intel does not want to do things that would make overcloking fizzle out they feel overcloking is a key component to keep the market strong.


What part of the video did intel says otherwise.

I'm absolutely a gung-ho overclocker. And I'm an ABSOLUTE Intel Fanboy - probably more so than most on this thread (every single PC I've built in my lifetime has used Intel CPU's and Chipsets - no joke). No doubt at all about that. If Intel raises the price of Overclocking because they can - I'm going to AMD. I'm not the only one

I'm pretty sure the Intel guy knows this, too...

Of course some will stick with higher priced Intel CPU's and still overclock on the Intel side - but part of what drives me to overclock is 1) Limited Budget and 2) Performance. I want to have a solid grasp on BOTH - if Intel removes one of the two - AMD will gladly fill the void...

Intel won't let that happen after the P4 spanking AMD gave them IMO - and there WILL be a way to overclock "base" Sandy Bride chips in the near future IMO. A broken record: "I'm not worried in the slightest"...

And we are just a drop in the bucket. Intel's attempt to make us feel otherwise is simply good marketing on their part (they have to justify their higher priced unlocked CPU's to US somehow - right?) OEM dwarfs any and all overclockers on the planet by a HUGE margin (H-U-G-E!).

There is some OCing allowed, just not much.
"A few" extra multis. Sounds like ~500mhz to me.
We are a drop in the bucket. A decent sized one, and one worth exploiting, but a drop nontheless.

I know they won't allow base multiplier because of OEM clocking before, so they locked it, and they say turbo will have a few bins on the top limit, that will only help single threaded applications.

You can believe what you want, I trust what intel tells me about data with products and data of buyers that are overclocking they have the money to do the research and engineers just for the enthusiast market. We are not just drop in the bucket overclockers, because we help the DIY community that does not overclock and that is rare to see that, intel does not want that to fizzle.

Think of it this way, is it harder to select the correct parts and build a PC then to overclock a few bins.

Where are the websites on the net that are for non overclocking enthusiast. At one time i wanted to get out the oveclocking forms, just to deal with regular pc problems and I could not find any sites, it's all about overclocking on the net and always has been.

Overclockers are not just a drop in the bucket.

Happy New Year!
some small results to Core i5-2500k

Intel has a video of a sandy bridge OC'ed to 5 ghz.... you can over clock them........

They overclock, you can rest assured of that. It's restricted in the sense that you can't do much with bclk (a 7 MHz + increase is good), but multipliers can work wonders.

Can you give 'er some gas, like 1.3v and see how it clocks?

Thanks for posting those pics!

Does CPU-Z need to be updated or something? Those RAM multis don't look right. It seems like the RAM speed is based on a 133MHz Bus speed instead of 100MHz.

Does SB allow the use of odd multis for RAM?

Man, Im so golden. Wife just said today when am I going to build a 2nd computer for the house SB here I come! Probably keep this rig the way it is and give me a chance to try out a GTX570 maybe

In case any of you missed it....5.1GHz stable on air cooling



My full article is here...

Trade you.