Breaking Intel's Overclock Lock: The REAL Story

by Wesley Fink on 7/16/2004 3:39 PM EST
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  • jiulemoigt - Saturday, July 24, 2004 - link

    I did have to laugh at #5 "Because of DDRII and the hugely overclockable Prescotts, the potential for massive Intel overclocks without extreme cooling and wads of cash would be huge." I remember the last space heater we were told would be a great thing, I think it ended up with a vacum cleaner nickname... DRII will not be faster than DRRI until they get it to the point DDRI is at now. and prescot is the reason intel requires mobo marker to design the mobo with a bolt on heatsink design... Intel survives on marketing along at this point.
  • gimper48 - Wednesday, July 21, 2004 - link

    Wes, Thanks for the response man. Yeah I see what you mean. I didn't take it the same as you I was interpreting it differently. I do not see it as an argument only as a need for more testing.. Peace,
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link

    #12 & #13 - I am not going to get into an argument with HardOCP, but I stand by what is posted here. I have read the [H] article and there is absolutely nothing in the article which proves otherwise to anything posted here.

    All of the testing here was with a 520W 24-pin Power Supply as already stated in the article. We found the 24-pin high-power solution with 6800 Ultra long ago - it is not a new revelation. We also reached 258-260 with the 6800 Ultra and 278 with the ATI X800XT.

    The highest result shown at [H] was 255 with either card, so the results there were not even in the same ballpark. In fact they didn't even reach the limit we found with the Abit AV8, let alone enter the new territory from 260 to 278 that is available with the Asus.
  • gimper48 - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link

    I forgot to include the article that the comments are refering to http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQw
  • gimper48 - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link

    This is what one of the reviewers at Hardocp.com had to say about this article and from what I read it seems true. More testing is definitely needed.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gimper48
    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipset...doc.aspx?i=2...

    This gives some interesting insite to the overclock lock.

    And there are some things in there as well that I think are just wrong. I think his #2 statement is incorrect and so is #3. I have proven different here on our test equipment. We are OCing far beyond his 10% with no tweaks at all with a retail CPU. We saw the same issues with the engineering sample CPU.

    The SATA does have a lot to do with it though. And I do agree with his statement that ATI seems to be more tolerant, at least on the newer VPUs.

    It looks as though one thing is for sure, solid OC boards from "everyone" is not going to happen on the 925/915 front. With the latest Asus BIOS, our OCs actually got worse not better. There is still a lot of half-truths everywhere on this. That is one reason we did not get into theorizing explanations that we were not sure of backed up with limited test data using just engineering sample CPUs.
  • gamara - Monday, July 19, 2004 - link

  • dvinnen - Monday, July 19, 2004 - link

    #6 The reason for the multiplier lock was not to limit overclocking, but because some people were abusing it. They would set the multiplier of a 2000+ (or any proc) higher and sell them as a higher rated processor. There was a lot of these conterfit processors floating around last year so they had to lock it.
  • tfranzese - Monday, July 19, 2004 - link

    I was already planning on an AMD64 system once PCI-E comes out w/nForce 4 chips. This just solidifies that decision at least till the fall/winter.
  • mindless1 - Monday, July 19, 2004 - link

    "goodbye until you clean up your act"

    It'll happen alright, for each and every customer who shuns intel because of this... including me.
  • MadAd - Saturday, July 17, 2004 - link

    #1. "goodbye until you clean up your act"? Nah its just not going to happen. The best we can hope for is that the Intel enthusiast crowd only buy the Abit/Asus unlocked boards and put a sour taste in the finances of other mobo manufacturers that did stick to the reference design.

    Lower sales of boards, lower growth, less willingness to develop/support every sub version, less willingness to licence from intel at all yadda ya .... however if the market share of enthusiasts is as small as some make it out to be then we dont really have a choice and intel wouldn't even notice if we did say "goodbye until you clean up your act"

    Even tho some see Intel as the evil leader and AMD the underdog, I find it uncomfortable having no choice in a market of anything, even an AMD only choice.
  • danidentity - Saturday, July 17, 2004 - link

    It's only a matter of time until AMD starts limiting overclocking just as Intel is doing now. Don't forget how Intel used to be the only one with locked multipliers. AMD then followed suit.

    Anand, do you plan on doing an article to see how well the off-the-shelf LGA775 chips themselves scale with OCing?
  • neologan - Saturday, July 17, 2004 - link

    #4, i do not agree. Because of DDRII and the hugely overclockable Prescotts, the potential for massive Intel overclocks without extreme cooling and wads of cash would be huge. They are trying to limit this as much as possible - that is what the lock is for. They are not doing this out of spite just because enthusiasts are not picking there platform, they are doing it because if there was no lock, we would be seeing massive overclocks at low prices of the likes we have never seen before. Intel can go to hell imo....AMD all the way. They have, for a long time either provided amazing value and competitive performance, or equal prices with better performance.
  • Anemone - Saturday, July 17, 2004 - link

    Because when the 875 was around Intel had a competitive set of cpu's. Now, Intel figures that those in the know aren't buyng their cpu's. There are easily a dozen websites that are recommending AMD64 when it comes to current machine builds. So Intel figures the only ones buying their machines are the Dell purchasers of the world. If that is true then why build a chipset that helps enthusiasts?

    I get the strong feeling that Intel doesn't feel they CAN compete anymore in the enthusiast arena, that each time they release a more competitive CPU, AMD will just one up them. So, they are figuring why bother. Remember Intel is lead around by the marketing department. They lock things down, and get two results. They guarantee a simple, solid non overclocking chipset, thus making sure that the people buying their stuff are the run of the mill types who will upgrade when Intel tells them to. Secondarily they then put their own branded motherboards in a better light so they get that revenue stream ticked up a bit, when the enthusiasts pretty much stop buying their high end cpu's. They think that's a win in the end for them and carries them in the best way through the "strong AMD" bad times which they figure they'll get back under control in 2005. Then they can release a more overclocker friendly chipset, get everyone happy again, and put the market back the way they want it.

    Yep corporate types really do plan for this sort of thing.

    If they wanted every enthusiast out there to choose AMD this time around, looks like they've succeeded. Good job Intel! (sarcasm)

    And you wonder why many of their top engineers are leaving the company? hehe Hint, it's not rocket science...
  • Pumpkinierre - Saturday, July 17, 2004 - link

    Dont understand why you wouldnt get the same SATA failure with the i875/865 when you overclock? The link must also increase in speed when the FSB is increased but I have'nt heard of SATA failures on these mobos with overclocking.
  • zShowtimez - Saturday, July 17, 2004 - link

    Never thought it would come to it but so far its lookin like my next rig will be AMD.
  • Anemone - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link

    You know, in 4 months Nvidia will have the NF4 with Pci-e for a chip that genuinely performs.

    Oh, don't take this wrong, P4's perform too but you have to give them some oomph to get things moving on them. And if Intel is dead set on making this impossible, then why don't enthusiasts just switch? Since Pci-e can't be locked but only run in 'tolerable' specs, then you know you are stressing your peripherals, something that modern chipsets were supposed to have left behind over the past few years.

    Intel I guess didn't learn their lesson with RDRAM, and think that telling the user community how they want things done is acceptable.

    Personally I don't like that attitude. I don't care for what they consider calling a competitive price for a lower performing chip, and I think it's high time the user community gives them the same message it gave them over the memory issue, "goodbye until you clean up your act"

    For me, I think this about does it. We'll see if others feel the same.

    ...

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