News Intel plans to deliberately limit Sandy Bridge overclocking

Fuuuu... I've been waiting for this CPU for years to replace my Q6600... Guess the 1200eur check for mobo, mems, and cpu goes to an AMD based system... Fusion looks promising, and if this cpu gets this kind of bottleneck, then AMD's the way.

Thanks Intel for my venerable Q6600, but it's time to change sides...

 

Won't intel just lose money this way? So many company's have a good thing going but then get greedy and decide to try for just the little bit more..and inevitably ruin it all. Why I ask you...why?

Intel are Morons..

 

thats not to surprising, I mean really they have been doing that for a while now anyways with all their previous lines.

 

Then I'll never buy any P67 compatible cpu or motherboard, I'd rather go AMD...

 

Because we (a few enthusiasts on a forum) doesn't mean dick to their bottom line. Joe Schmo will buy Sandy Bridge, like every Intel product before it - even P4!!

 

Can't really fault them. TBH, I'm surprised that overclocking is still alive.

Does anyone here have a CPU better than an i7-920 who bought it with their own money (i.e. not a promotion, sponsorship, review sample, etc.)?

I'd wager that few, if any, of us have the flagship CPUs, when the $300 one overclocks to the same performance. I'm surprised that there is a market for the i7-950 and i7-980 when the 920 and 930 have so much more bang for the buck. Granted, I am sure there are a couple "money is no object" people with those top CPUs, but I bet that most people with top-of-the-line gaming rigs are running 920s and 930s, since the marginal returns from going past that are terrible.

For years, smart enthusiasts have purchased the lowest end of the flagship series. Because of how the CPU manufacturing process works, (same line for all clock speeds of the certain CPU, and each batch is sampled and then marked as a certain speed), there is always a likelihood that the lower end CPUs can be overclocked just about the same as the higher end CPUs.

If Intel offered the same 920/930 CPU it does now, clocked at just under 3GHz, without overclocking, it would still be a very popular chip. If they offered a 950 CPU at almost 4GHz, they would be able to sell far more than they are now, since people now are just overclocking 920/930 to 950 speeds or faster.

it's always been an odd relationship between overclockers and AMD/Intel.

Some of you may remember the days when you could bridge two contacts on the Palomino core Athlon XPs, and unlock the multiplier. at that time, nobody had unlocked multipliers.
Then, with the Thoroughbred, they "fixed" it so you couldn't unlock the multiplier.

There was a time around then when it seemed like they were both 'cracking down' on overclocking and implemented methods of restricting it.

However, overclockers buy enough CPUs that AMD/Intel have to cater to them, or lose their business. That's where the Extreme Edition and Black Edition stuff came into play.

Providing a low-cost chip that overclocks like a beast (right now most people are getting 800Mhz-1GHz additional on air, which is just insane) is a good way to shoot your higher end CPUs in the foot. However, it is also a good way to shoot down the competition's CPUs. It won't affect retail sales at all (helping or hurting), but enthusiasts will swarm over an overclockable ~$200 CPU that can run with the big boys, and whoever is selling it stands to make a lot of money. The damage it does to hurt your higher-end CPU sales is less than the damage it does to hurt your competitors mid/high end CPU sales.

At this point, perhaps Intel is complacent enough with the dominance of Nehalem that it isn't worried about competing with AMD. The low end core i7s - 875, 920, 930 - AMD can't compete with them. I have a Thuban X6, AMD's flagship (well, not quite, mine is a 1050T and the flagship is 1090T BE, but close enough), and it is struggling to compete with i5 750 for games. Their only competitor to the i7 875/920/930 is the higher end core i7 950 and 980 and whatever else there is up there.

Intel won't lose sales of its low end i7 range, because AMD doesn't have anything to compare to it, even at stock speeds the i7 beats the P2X6. But they will gain sales of its high end i7 range.

Now, what this would do would be provide AMD with an opportunity to hit Intel very hard. The Thuban was a step in the right direction. 6 cores for cheaper than Intel's 4 core chips, and overclocks just as good. However, K10 just can't compete with Nehalem on games and other applications that don't use all six cores. If Intel locks up the overclocking like this, and AMD can figure out something that is as good as Nehalem, they could take the enthusiast market back by storm offering a $300 CPU with an unlocked multiplier that can overclock to having higher performance than the $300 Intel offerings.

It's also a potential jackpot for motherboard manufacturers that can find a way to circumvent this. Look at the popularity of the Black Edition and Special K cores, and the fact that people will easily pay a 50% premium just for an unlocked multiplier. If they can figure out a mobo configuration to bypass FSB limits, they could easily sell it for 50% more than similarly equipped ones without it.

 

intel pure capitalist money grabbers ,if you cant afford it you caint have it ,no wonder people go out thieving , intel has it almost in the bag with nvidia not doing mbrds anymore . who knows perhaps apple, dell and others pushed intel to do this , amd might be next .

 

That blows, really really blows



And that's coming from someone who almost never overclocks

 

Intel have recently made their biggest profit ever, to keep momentum they need to ensure this growth continues thus limiting OEM products overclocking potential makes perfect sense. I see them trying to make us a smaller niche (as we were in days gone by) - I just hope AMD can turn a profit from the fallout and start producing decent chips again...

 

Looks to me like they have know respect for their customers or even fan base, they're fu*king rip off merchants and I only pay their prices because I've felt like I've had to to keep up with new tech! This is just concrete proof to me of what they're up to. Don't they realise that overclocking and all the little things that fall into the enthusiast category is what makes this whole hobby fun. Take it away from us Intel and your W*nkers, steal our thunder and try and make money out of what we do by taking the ability to do it away from us and then just feed us little crumbs and charge us extra hundreds of pounds as a "token gesture".... well you can go an f*ck yourselves!!! AMD the time is now!!!!

 

I can see what they are doing from a business point of view, stop people getting something for nothing and force OEM's to buy more expensive CPU's for their high end machines but I think this can have a bigger blow back than they anticipate...

 

Ummm, what? No mainstream manufacturer I've ever heard of sells overclocked CPUs. They're buying the more expensive ones already.

I'm getting a little amused by all of this anger.

In any other industry, being able to tweak some settings and make a $300 product perform the same as a $600 product would be completely insane and unheard of.

Can you go out and buy a vanilla, base model 2.0L hatchback with 125hp, and then change some settings for free and get 250hp out of it? Can you re-flash the firmware on your 60GB MP3 player to make it a 120GB MP3 player?

Intel's goal is to make money. it's a business. it's publicly traded. the entire point of anything intel does is to make money for its stockholders. it's not Gordon Moore sitting in a cave, laughing at the plight of the common man while he counts his bags of money and treasure.

AMD is hurting right now. It's easy to see. Intel wouldn't do something like this if they were trying to take market share from AMD. They're far enough ahead that they can take a break from trying to beat AMD, and instead focus on trying to milk the most profit out of their current line-up as they can. This is a very bad thing, and AMD needs to come out of the bullpen with some serious hardware. Competition creates innovation, and if AMD starts making some chips that can give the i7 a run for its money, Intel will play the overclocking card again to try to boost sales.

 

It's obvious there's not going to be any possible negative affect for Intel, even if the whole enthusiast market moves to AMD just to spite Intel they will still make a mint from the oem and commercial markets. But in reality we will still probably pay more so we can get a processor we can overclock and get an extra 1Ghz out of and that performs better than the competition at that price point. Which makes me wonder... So intel charges more for it's cpus that can OC but say Fusion is ace and at the same price point AMD outperforms intel but intels processor only beats AMD when it's overclocked. So your basically judging the CPU on what it MIGHT overclock to. Surely to make the market fair Intel should sell it already at the overclocked speed to compete with AMD but then Intel has turboboost and already overclocks the processor under load so technically you should get AMD beating performance when you need it. Man it's confusing to predict what will happen.
But Bit-tech are right it will be very hard for the motherboard manufacturers to differentiate themselves in a market which is already finding it difficult exemplified by the loss of some major motherboard players, Abit DFI to name a couple. This isn't a surprise from Intel and if they didn't want their mainstream processors to overclock I'm pretty sure a workaround wouldn't be possible, those engineers at Intel aren't working on the most advanced micro-architectures for no reason. Let's just hope this is hype and it doesn't come into fruition or there will be a lot of enthusiasts sticking to their current set-ups because they can't afford the overclocking chips they need to make the jump to another Intel socket worthwhile.

 

Sorry, brainfart. Meant to say system builders like OcUK and Scan, who buy huge volumes of CPU's.

But on the subject dont Dell overclock their top end XPS machines?

 

Wow - that works out a a new CPU every 6 months!

Agree though about o/c - I've only just retired my £50 E2160 and it's 45% overclock after 2.5 years, just from an increase in FSB. Just installed a Q9650 and will be o/c that too.

Also, apologies for any noobness in my next question - I take it that LGA1155 isn't a typo and Sandy Bridge will require a new socket? That's a shocking lifespan for LGA1156 if it - & I assume a new mobo will be required for the new CPUs...

 

I figured that they would of done this a while ago after putting out the q6600 which overclocked to the performance level of more expensive cpu's.
I wanted a fast cpu, but bought a cheap one. and overclocked it. Now I will have to buy an expensive one. and they will rake in the cash.
except that I just became an amd fanboy.

 

Yep, whole platform upgrade for Sandy Bridge... didn't Intel say they expect a new socket for every new generation from now on?

 

So back to the early 2000s of processors?

 

Not a chance in hell that AMD will see any business from this. AMD gets hammered even when they have overclocked but Intel are at standard clock speeds. No difference then.

This is just rumour control, so lets just wait for the facts.

 

I declare shenanigans!!!! This is a blatant move move to cash in on the enthusiast market as the unlocked cpus will probably be hideously expensive. Even if I had the money for it I would never buy an extreme edition or similar purely based around the satisfaction i get oout of buying a mid or low end CPU and clocking the hell out of it until it smashes down CPUs that are several times the price. I've always bought intel CPUs and if motherboard manufacturers don't find a way around this I'm switching to AMD purely on principle. Let's face it though, Intel are a money making machine its not like they give a flying **** about us enthusiasts.