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Intel plans to deliberately limit Sandy Bridge overclocking

Anyone else see this B.S. ? I hope this is false.

Quote:

News

Intel's own slides confirm just 2-3 per cent overclocking headroom. Oh dear!
Information provided by Intel in its own presentations about its upcoming mainstream LGA1155 Sandy Bridge CPUs appears to confirm the company has designed the CPUs to deliberately limit overclocking.

A video leaked to HKEPC 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.

This clock gen is integrated into the P67 motherboard chipset and transmits the clock signal to the CPU via the DMI bus. This means there's no need for an external clock generator that used to allow completely separate control of all the individual hardware.

When you're overclocking, you want to be able to push certain frequencies, such as the Base Clock and memory clock, but leave others, such as SATA, completely stable as they're very sensitive to adjustment. Current motherboards allow multiple bus speeds because external clock generators are programmable via the BIOS.

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.

At the time of writing we are still talking to Taiwan's motherboard companies, but the few we have had contact with are certainly worried as Intel's move not only impacts enthusiasts, it also takes control and emphasis away from motherboard manufacturers. After all, why would you buy one board over another if they all overclock the same? On the plus side, if a company does crack the Base Clock limit, then it means a potentially huge advantage over the competition. It's no understatement to say the next few months are crucial for the motherboard engineering teams.

On the plus side though, memory strap limits are at present removed on sample Sandy Bridge hardware - Intel's slides claim 2,133MHz - which is nice to have, but since most of the performance comes from additional CPU MHz rather than memory speed, it's not the answer we were really looking for.

HKEPC 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.

Intel still plans to sell K-series CPUs which come with an unlocked CPU multiplier - and with this move, the K-series CPUs start to make a lot more sense, as they will be the only Intel CPUs capable of overclocking. Is this move a slap in the face for enthusiasts that will send them towards an AMD Fusion platform or are CPUs just getting fast enough that overclocking really doesn't matter that much to you any more?

Let us know what you think, in the forums.

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SOURCE:http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...overclocking/1

This would be the best thing that ever happened to AMD if it in fact happens

and you can bet Intel will jump ship fast if they do decide to go this route due to enthusiast sales would drop off the side of the world

"hung:

It sounds about right. Intel has integration fever. You can only integrate so much on a part before you are limited by one thing or another.

Another thought:

Look at what has been placed on the market w. Intel and more importantly HOW....

When 1366 came out, the $1k 975 sold like any $1k chip would. What hurt sales even more is a bottom of the line 920 that could almost always hit 4+ ghz on AIR. Most likely, that is not what Intel had in mind.

Now fast forward to the i7 6-core series.... Intel dropped the 980x. Just the 980x. I'm pretty sure the silicon was there to unleash any number of locked cpu's, but once bitten... The 980x sold very well. If you leave no choice, the locked monsters will sell better....

The end result.... limit base-clock overclocking, so that unlocked "enthusiast" grade cpu's will sell like they are supposed to. OEM's buy enough locked chips. Intel needs to sell their top dogs to us, just like the mobo and gpu companies do.

Food for thought... (I'm sure I left a lot out... damned caffeine high)

If this plays out exactly like the ching chong ping pong says it will, cherry chips will rule the day completely.

Hopefully the mobo manufs can find a work around.

I'll believe it when I see it. Just like I didn't believe the 1.65v DIMM limit, the locked bclk, the low VTT limits of the i7 when the same effing slides came out for the X58 platform.

Jesus guy, don't get sucked into a website twisting words so easily.

Like I said on XS, exact same thing was written when Nehalem was about to come, but the rumours were wrong, and I can place a bet that Intel wud not lock out OC on any of their retail chips for now.......

Quote:

Originally Posted by thebanik (Post 48610)

Intel cares about overclocking, but ASUS, GB, eVGA etc... care a whole hell of allot and they are real used to using overclocking as a 1st point marketing tool.

I'll bet that the P-series overclocks like stink, and the X-series overclocks just as we have come to know and love. Francios, as loud mouthed and full of himself as he is, I'll take his word for it.

Quote:

Albert Einstein said "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" , so, I am going to say it as simple as I can, and you guys can quote me to reply to those silly stuffs:
"Overclocking will be different on SB, but it will still be a lot of fun too, and it will be as good/high as usual, and Anybody who claim the opposite just have an agenda"

Sorry for not sharing my results ... hehehe ... but well, you guys are slow on your SuperPi results and so on .... hahahahahaha

Drwho?

I wouldnt mind if this was true. lol multiplier overclocking is quite easy although its seems the higher the multi the higher the vcore required for same speed. I could give an eff about ddr3 2666, 2000 is more than adequate and far from a bottleneck in most benchmarks.

I do remember the fearmongering about i7 was the same, def rev :)

fooker said we're slow on super pi, bastige!

I believe over on XS Francios said said they will be able to be overclocked and will knock your socks off.

But what does he know LOL

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...7&postcount=61

WE will have plenty of overclocking fun with SandyBridge, there are tonnes of fun coming your way, some amazing new stuffs ... when putting together a so complex chip, some challenge emerge ... then, there are two kind of people, 1st Kind: "OMG, this is the end of the world" ... 2nd Kind "Cool, some challenges and new stuff to understand and use" ...
you guys choose your camp, But just know what we have many many people working on making sure you guys can have fun with our CPUs ...

And let's put it in plain words: "A sandyBridge overclocked will pulverize anything else on CPU performance, and will surprise you on other areas" ...

Drwho?