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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.
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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.
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Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Company restricts product in an artificial way, and other people find ways around it.
In other news, people breathe.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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
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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.
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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.
Try this:
Clearer?
[/Star Trek Solution]
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
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.
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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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However, standard pratice is not to round up when labelling speeds. Witness the P2 266, DDR266, etc. Shying away from DDR666 is no more logical than skipping the 13th floor in tall buildings.
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
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.