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Intel Puts the Lock on Overclocking
Patrick Schmid writes "Intel included an overclocking-prevention mechanism into the 915/925 chipsets. So far, only Asus and Gigabyte know how to override it. You can start from the beginning or jump to where we discuss the overclocking lockout."
Do these sorts of things hurt their business? I wonder how many would not buy into Intle knowing that there are these sorts of things built in? I imagine that the big corps don't care.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
Sounds fair. Now if only Intel would agree to not abuse this by artificially locking processors to manipulate market prices.
I can hope.
Sure... wouldn't want to be able to overclock easily... gotta make us upgrade to the next, best, faster CPU. Maybe if AMD stops gaining market share from Intel, Intel will lighten up on those of us that want to overclock.
..and 'only' some manufacturers ALREADY know how to get around it.
newsflash, some manufactures have not ever supported overclocking of any sort..
so there's a lock, but there isn't? that's the point of this? it's not like you could blindly choose what motherboard to get before if you were going to overclock it since some of them didn't really support it at..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Rejoice!
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Company restricts product in an artificial way, and other people find ways around it.
In other news, people breathe.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I have been over clocking since the 486 SX and I can say its all just a fun game. You will NEVER have the stability and it just does not make sense to do any more. If you can't aford to buy a chip fast enough to do whatever job you need it to do then you need to rethink what you're doing. Granted it was "fun" and "neat" to put one over on the chip makers but in the end its all just meh.
Sorry, Intel, but you're keeping us from overclocking chips when you yourself have created some of the most inefficient (in terms of optimal performance and energy/heat useage) microprocessor of anyone this decade?
They've been hanging out with Microsoft too long.
That's like a car manufacturer saying, "We've installed a mechanism which will keep you from opening the hood if your intention is to upgrade the engine, because we want you leasing and buying new expensive cars very soon."
Uhhh, f*ck off.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
but can find no practical reason for this that makes sense to me. The people who overclock know that they can burn up their chip, and the people who do not overclock don't have to worry about it. I guess maybe a small percentage of people might go poking around in CMOS setup and change the clock speed, but is that number large enough to alienate gamers and hackers who want control over their own boxes? I think not.
*grabs ankles* Thanks again, Intel. Gimme on-board DRM and I will be a happy camper.
bash: rtfm: command not found
How long before every semi-hacker knows how to unlock their intel chip to over clock it. When has locking anything kept anyone out?
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
...as if it was still useful at speeds above 3GHz.
blah
I was not very impressed with the ratings of the new processor. While it has a little bit of improvement - you really need to get a completely revamped system (mother board, memory at the minimum - but you want a video card to be able to utilize the new speed). I believe even SATA hard drives had some problems.
Not to mention that the fastest P4 runs at 35 degrees centigrade, while this processor runs at 70 degrees. That is a major problem, imho, for a marginal increase.
Overall, this is not impressive technology. They rushed the material out. I referenced my information from Toms Hardware.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Remember when they locked the multiplier on their CPUs? The only reason they did this was to sell 'faster' chips. Celeron 300A anyone?
well now i don't even have to think about "intel or amd ?". If Intel want to prevent me overclocking a chip i paid for i will prevent giving them money.
It's not like anyone blaims Intel when someone kills an Intel processor by over-clocking it. I don't see any reason behind the prevention of over-clocking other than to try and make people have to upgrade more often or maybe because they want to lose marketshare.
I DONT SEE WY WINTEL CARES IF I OVERCLOACK MY COMPUTAR! ITS MY WARRANTY I AM FEEDING TO TEH THERMAL DIETY!
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Multiplier locks on new chipsets - in effect, new CPU's? AMD's Athlon FX is completely unlocked. How is Intel going to compete by continuing to offer an inferior product?
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
because people overclock their systems and then try to claim warranty repair. sometimes, the overclocking is done by a middleman who re-labels chips. when the chip melts, the ball falls somewhere between intel and the innocent but bilked customer. this helps cut down on that.
I don't see nothing wrong with that statement.
Why Intel bothered to lock these chips from overclocking doesn't make much sense to me. Maybe they want to ensure that users are getting what they pay for, and not more, but if it can be unlocked easily enough, I don't see why Intel would bother. It doesn't seem like best practice is being utilized in this kind of prohibitive design mechanism.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
First It comes out that Intel's making Dual Core Prescotts what would do better as hotplates than processors, and now they're announcing that they're preventing you from overclocking?
Will someone PLEASE remind me of Why I would ever pay $499 for a Pentium 4 3.4Ghz Prescot, or $990 for an 800Mhz 2MB Extreme? I can hop over to AMD and get a better processor for less, and to boot I can overclock it if I want!
Intel = Morons
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
There you go! As long as Intel doesn't make an "unoverridable" chipset we'll have crazy geekz trying to figure out how to get around it and making a webpage about it.
Follow along here. I have a "2600" Athlon, which is really a 2.083 GHz chip, which supposedly takes a 166 MHz FSB. I have lowered the multiplier on the chip, but raised the FSB to 200, since I havd DDR400 memory. No stability issues whatsoever, and various benchmarks report about a 1/5 improvement in memory bandwidth, etc.
I have no real desire to rev the chip higher than spec, in fact, its so damn hot now, I'm thinking about dropping the overall GHz. But its useful to be able to twiddle the multipliers to suit your needs. Thank you AMD, fsck you Intel.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I think the link between overclockers and Al-Queda is quite clear. There has been multiple contacts detailed and documented between the two but unfortunately for security reasons I cannot disclose them. So you'll just have to trust me on this one... if you overclock, we will invade you Mr. Terrorist Osama.
But rather against merchants that overclock and then sell machines as the next-highest processor. I remember back when Intel first started doing this the company said it wasn't targeting the actions of the end user but rather shady mercahnts.
Dumb question, but does this also affect _under_clocking?
DNA just wants to be free...
Try this:
Clearer?
With such a fragile socket and obscene thermal properties, who here is going to overclock a prescott P4 to begin with? 115W rated thermal dissipation on the 560 (3.6GHz) model. 115W!
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
[/Star Trek Solution]
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Why do people overclock their PCs? The money you have to spend for extra cooling could also be spent for a faster CPU. And the manufactuerer does not specify a chip for a certain clock-speed without a reason.
Sometimes I take the other way und underclock my Athlon TB1333. With less speed you can also decrease the core voltage and save some energy. If you combine this with a tool like (L)Vcool, you get a really cool & quiet computer, even with the boil an egg on it Athlon.
But thats just my opinion.
With the advent of high end gaming, people are willing to spend more on a system. But these parts will rise in price accordingly. Building your own will no longer be a viable method of computer purchasing. Dell, HP and others will make sure of that.
With the help of the big two prices will go up, because of the need to make profits. You can't make a whole lot when you're charging $500 per box, but at $3K there's room.
Peace
I can't believe they would do something like this. As far as I've seen AMD has been stealing market share faster and faster every day and by doing this they're only encouranging every gamer who still has intel to purchase an AMD system. Everyone knows that the gaming industry is driving computer hardware and software to new levels; For intel to be cutting it's ties with the gaming industry is like shooting yourself in the foot.
This has nothing to do with warrenty issues, and everything to do with Intel wanting people to continuely upgrade for the faster chips right when they come out. (When prices' are high).
No, this is
When you have a 400Mhz CPU and you goose it to 600Mhz you have a 50% improvement. To get a 50% improvement out of 3Ghz CPU you have to juice it to 4.5Ghz. And let's face it anything less than a 25% improvement, or in this example a 750Mhz improvment - the actual perceived improvement is practically ZERO. So it seems to be fairly useless in the big scheme of things.
Why not build a machine instead that can boot in 2 seconds or has a 100% disk I/O performance improvement?
Oh wait I forgot - having 0.0054% better FPS playing some 1337 shooter game is da Shit. All hail me and my enormous ferrite testicles.
Yes, I've RTFA, but to me the image looks as if it were comparing with the PCIEX clock, but the text explicitly states that PCIEX isn't doing the trick. Maybe it's just because I don't know what BSEL[2:0] means, but I don't understand the mechanism.
Especially: Since the only reference for a clock can be another clock, shouldn't it always be possible to simply increase all clocks available to the processor (assuming the rest of the hardware doesn't make problems)?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Preventing overclocking makes very good sense for Intel.
This move is NOT designed to prevent end-users from overclocking; that is an unfortunate side effect.
The real reason is because often, shady resellers will be Intel chips, overclock and sell them as faster than they really are. When the chips fail (which, if overclocking is widespread, they inevitbly will in some cases), it looks to the end user like Intel makes crappy chips; obviously this is bad for business.
Now accusations of intentionally marking chips down from what their capable of may or may not be true. In some cases that's justified; better safe than sorry for Intel: they'd rather have chips that aren't performing as fast as they possibly could then chips failing because they weren't capable of the level they were marked at.
Then again sometimes this is a sketchy practice.
Within the 915/925 chipset is a function that halts the function of the cpu should the cpu-chipset bus speed deviate outside of the acceptable tolerance (5%) of the rated bus speed. This affects both overclocking and underclocking the bus. The "fix" mainboard makers are considering is not much more than a small hack that allows for another 10-15% deviation from the nominal bus speed.
Analysis: this is nothing new. Intel retail mainboards have *never* allowed overclocking, and their processors have been multiplier-locked since 1998.bottom line: the lock is there for stability concerns. If you want to overclock a socket-T processor, use a mainboard with a different chipset.I'm sure Ali, SiS, VIA, and Ati would love your business.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
It's amusing that Intel is afraid of using the number 666 (evidenced by the Pentium 3 667, and now the DDR667 memory). Not that I blame them, the fundies would probably call for a boycott of their products if they labeled them correctly in this circumstance.
The problem with overclocking is support. That "new breed of computer users" are idiots. Now that overclocking can be done in the software on most computers, it's accessible to people who don't know better than to kick the speed up 2x. Remember people who would run the Add New Hardware Wizard in Windows 95 to add stuff they didn't have? These are the people Intel is afraid of (and rightly so).
Yeah, they're not supported, and they don't get warranty support. But that's not gonna stop them from getting mad at Dell/Gateway/etc when they won't replace the CPU they fried (remember, these people are dumb). Their attitude is likely to be: "if it was going to break the computer, why'd you let me do it?".
Also, Intel's interested in making installing a new processor as easy as possible, which means idiot proofing the things. If you can't overclock it, that's one less way to fry it. Again, fewer support calls, fewer stupidly angry customers.
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I'm quite certain that even a 1% estimate exagerrates the number of overclockers rather significantly. Sure they spend more money on their systems than regular users, but not on the CPU -- it's going to the latest bleeding edge 3D accelerators, the fastest CAS2 memory they can find, the fastest HDD's they can find, etc.
If most overclockers were busy overclocking the fastest CPU's Intel sells, maybe it would make a difference, but most overclockers are trying to get that bleeding-edge performance without paying the bleeding-edge price. Intel loses nothing by stopping the practice.
We're also getting well into the hardware performance ranges where overclocking by even 10% is a major accomplishment that requires very serious cooling. It's not like the PII/III days when you could get as much as a 50% boost over the rated speed (rare, but it did happen.)
Even most overclocking fanatics I've known over the years don't bother overclocking their latest systems. It's not worth the risk of frying the CPU and destabilizing the system for less than a 10% performance boost when you can go with a dualie board of cheaper CPUs instead.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I really don't care if they stop me from overclocking because I don't do it. I don't do intensive CPU tasks, so I have no need for it.
/. community.
But, what I do is UNDERclock my CPU so that it runs cooler, thus needing fewer/quieter fans. I don't need all 2.4ghz, so I send the FSB and voltage down a bit. And then, instead of hitting 45 celsius when idle and fans blazing, I get around 40 degrees, and can't hear the fan at all. If I need to do something intensive, I just reboot, change to default and flip the switch that turns the fan on "high" mode.
If they are locking the FSB, voltages, multipliers, and everything else, this doesn't just prohibit overclocking, it stops tweaking at all. Which, in some form or another, is a fundamental need for most of the
When someone mentions CPU overclocking it brings to mind Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap taking about his why his guitar amplifier volume knob goes from 0 to 11. "If it is set to 10, there is nowhere left to go, is there? 11 is for that extra push, over the cliff..."
an ill wind that blows no good
Well IANAL either, but considering I think the language in the DMCA specifically says *copy* protection, I think an attorney would have a hard time arguing that it should apply here.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
"intel blocks overclock yada yada yada"
Does history never stop repeating itself?
whatever their plan with this no-overclock policy is, they seems to make profit with it, because every now and them they release something like this.
I've strugled with an old Pmmx chip that cruchs my packets back home to downclock it and make it live long... wait.. maybe their goal is to stop downcloack. Maybe their chips ALREADY come overclocked and hence, with a live so short that you will change computers faster then the moore law can count hertz units increments! (i.e. you will have two computers market as gigaHertz before you buy any teraHertz)
And I doubt if it's true, AMD stock holders are smiling!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
In the good old days, processor makers would usually sell 3 different speeds of chip -
1. The base speed
2. A little better, for $100 more
3. TEH ALPHA AND OMEGA, for $500 more.
The only real difference between the base speed chips and TEH ALPHA AND OMEGA are clock limitations - I've never seen a chip that couldn't be stably clocked up to at least the next model's worth without remaining stable, and occasionally you get lucky. On paper what's supposed to happen is that processors will yield a few different speeds, with most failing to be stable at the maximum speed - but that's not really how it works when the chip reaches retail.
The big problem with this practice is as follows:
A. The performance difference between, say, a P4 2.53 and a P4 2.80 is almost zero
B. Nearly all P4 2.53's can overclock to 2.8 without any problems.
C. The price difference between a P4 at 2.26 ghz and a P4 at 2.53 ghz is 30 bucks; the price difference between a P4 3.4 Extreme and a P4 3.2 extreme is about $100 - and don't even get me started about the Pentium-M. Overclocking can really save quite a bit of money.
Most cheap people just buy the slowest processor in a family and overclock it to the next in the family - and it very often works flawlessly.
They can put in what ever they want..
Might piss off a small part of their customers, but in the long run, the average consumer will just buy the faster model outright.
Us in the 'minority' don't count. Never have, never will. Its just how the world works.
---- Booth was a patriot ----