Rumor: Intel to deliberately limit Sandy Bridge overclocking

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silentcoercion

Limp Gawd
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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 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.
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It goes on in more detail, but seriously? I really hope this isn't true (or at least, that mobo manufacturers find a work around). Makes a lot of sense from Intel's perspective, I suppose...
 
it seems like a really dumb move on their part unless there is a technical reason/limitation why they're doing it.

AMD is going to be popular among the enthusiest crowd again
 
dr.stevil said:
it seems like a really dumb move on their part unless there is a technical reason/limitation why they're doing it.

AMD is going to be popular among the enthusiest crowd again
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Smart for them though. At the moment amd still isn't as good as intel chips, if that continues sure you can overclock amd but you would still get a faster processor by buying the more expensive intel chip. I can see why they do it, but not so great for us.
 
I remember before the i7 launch they had talked about only giving the x58 mobos the ability to overclock. I wonder if this will go out the window like that did. Or maybe they are going to implement it for real this time.

It makes sense for them to do this. 1366 prices have plummeted because there is not a major adv for most people to spend twice as much for similar performance of what you could get with a cheaper 1156 i7.
 
Remember when the pci bus clock wasn't independent of the fsb speed? I do. I also remember overclocking being a PITA as a result.

If this is true then I'm afraid my Socket 1155 upgrade plans are out the window. Had my hope set high too.

However:
"Intel will offer some controlled multiplier overhead for enthusiasts as a token gesture."

What does this truly mean? Limited multiplier adjusting I suppose...

I will certainly be following this closely.
 
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Listen, Intel is rumored to do this with EVERY SINGLE generation of CPU in recent memory and they don't ever do it. In fact the only CPU I recall actually getting hardware locked to prevent any significant overclocking was the SY039 stepping of the Pentium 133MHz CPUs.

We heard this about Pentium D, Core 2, i7 and now Sandy Bridge. It isn't going to happen. And I'll be quite shocked if it does.
 
Dan_D said:
Listen, Intel is rumored to do this with EVERY SINGLE generation of CPU in recent memory and they don't ever do it. In fact the only CPU I recall actually getting hardware locked to prevent any significant overclocking was the SY039 stepping of the Pentium 133MHz CPUs.

We heard this about Pentium D, Core 2, i7 and now Sandy Bridge. It isn't going to happen. And I'll be quite shocked if it does.
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Thanks Dan.

I'll get off the ledge now :p
 
Also, whatever Intel intends to do and what the motherboard manufacturers will do are two totally different things. With companies like ASUS building in core unlockers and offering enough BIOS settings for overclocking to keep you scratching your head for a week, I don't think we have anything to fear. We've heard these doom and gloom scenarios for enthusiast computing before and its always proven to be baseless. Intel may not like CPUs getting overclocked but companies like Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI love them. Without overclocking they wouldn't sell nearly as many high end motherboards.
 
Well, guessing this thread is dead now that there's essentially a duplicate in Front Page News, lol :D

Though I gotta admit the combination of not getting credit for finding the link *and* not being able to post in the new thread stings just a little (apparently, you do not even lightly tease Kyle :D )
 
Dan_D said:
Listen, Intel is rumored to do this with EVERY SINGLE generation of CPU in recent memory and they don't ever do it. In fact the only CPU I recall actually getting hardware locked to prevent any significant overclocking was the SY039 stepping of the Pentium 133MHz CPUs.

We heard this about Pentium D, Core 2, i7 and now Sandy Bridge. It isn't going to happen. And I'll be quite shocked if it does.
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Exactly, every new CPU release from Intel has a "locked down overclocking" rumor.

Here's a fun article from 2008 before the Core i7 release that says only socket 1366 will be able to overclock...
http://www.overclock3d.net/news/cpu...to_stop_overclocking_on_mainstream_nehalems/1

And in 2007 there's a fun story about a secret chip that can detect OC's in C2D's...
http://www.techradar.com/news/compu...-overclocking-black-box-in-intel-chips-147960
 
Yeah those are the types of rumors I remember reading about back in the day. Intel really would like to eliminate overclocking I'm sure, but it doesn't make sense to do so from a business standpoint. The fact of the matter is that enthusiasts make up a small percentage of sales and what they buy or don't buy as a result of overclockability is largely irrelevant. In fact the fact that we tend to buy lower-medium end CPUs and overclock probably generates more revenue for them than the alternative. Lets face it we often buy many different CPUs to see which ones overclock best or buy multiples because we can get less-expensive upgrades for all our other machines. If we only bought one expensive or semi-expensive CPU every once in awhile, we'd just move our old stuff down to other duties (folding, HTPC, spare rigs, etc.) and we wouldn't go crazy at Microcenter picking up $200 Core i7's all the time. People also wouldn't buy so many motherboards looking for better overclocks. Since Intel chipsets are quite prevalent they get revenue from that too. Until it truly makes sense for Intel to block overclocking from a business standpoint, they won't.
 
Yeah I don't see the business rationale. Joe's Lemonade and Sears HQ aren't going to overclock their HP or Dell business computers, so there's no danger of losing sales on high-end processors in any noticeable volume. The only people who care about overclocking are a niche group of PC gamers and enthusiasts, and if you lock them out of overclocking, the end result isn't going to be more sales more expensive Intel chips, it'll be new sales of AMD chips.

That said, I expect that Intel WILL do more to differentiate its tier 1 and tier 2 chipsets this time around. The differences between X58 and P55 are so laughably minor for 90% of even the enthusiast market (Tri-SLI and HT-apps) that I never saw any reason to even consider X58.
 
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