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."

Comments

Market Share

[drsmack1]

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.

Re:Market Share

[Supp0rtLinux]

Remember... all the big OEMs are pushing the high-end gaming systems to the "new breed of computer users". Just as there's a resurgence in IT spending, there's a new breed of home PC user that doesn't mind paying $3000+ for a high-end system. No, corporate America doesn't give a rip about overclocking cause they care about their warranties. But there's a growing group that does... and choices like this make them turn to AMD. AMD has better, cheaper 64bit support. And they still make overclocking easier. Intel is cutting off their nose to spite their face. Funny... you'd think Intel would learn from Microsoft's example instead of repeating the same mistakes...

Re:Market Share

[lukewarmfusion]

No, these help their business. The percentage of people that overclock their machines is probably very small. However, the people that are willing to spend money upgrading their hardware are much more common. So Intel capitalizes on the fact that more people are willing to spend money on upgrades than to overclock.

Very few people will "not buy into" Intel because there are mechanisms like this in place... because most people don't know that overclocking exists, and many of the people who do aren't going to overclock anyway. No loss for Intel.

So now I can't burn out my processor?

[Trigun]

Sounds fair. Now if only Intel would agree to not abuse this by artificially locking processors to manipulate market prices.

I can hope.

Anything to make a buck...

[Supp0rtLinux]

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.

Over Clocking is over Rated

[Captain BooBoo]

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.

Re:Over Clocking is over Rated

[swv3752]

Especially now when the real world performance gain is just not there. When overclocking a 300mhz chip to 500mhz gave significant performance boost. Now that we have Ghz+ chips and squeezing another 100mhz gives a few percentage point points more performance. So now it will take 1 second less time to encode an mp3 or mpeg? I know have to take superhuman steps to cool the processor. I'll stick with stock speeds and have a quieter PC to boot thanks.

Re:Over Clocking is over Rated

[Billobob]

Thats just flat out wrong. My friend purchased one of the athlon XP-2500 mobiles for ~$90 a couple months ago (stock at 1.83 ghz), and managed to overclock it to 2.6ghz with the same stability as the processor is stock, and nearly 800mhz is nothing to scoff at - it managed to be the small advantage he needed to run UT2K4 in 1600x1200 smoothly, and improved multitasking slightly. If its just for home use, then overclocking is a fun crapshoot - sometimes its a bust, but often you can gain a significant improvement out of your processor. Of course nobody would overclock any system that requires total stability and 24/7 uptime, but for your typical home PC a little experimenting couldn't hurt as long as you know what you are doing.

Re:Agreed

[nelsonal]

Several years ago some white box OEMs were selling overclocked systems as though they contianed the rated chip. I don't know how common it was, but that was the offical reason that Intel clamped down hard on the practice. When it was just geeks in their houses saving a few bucks it was a minor loss (probably good advertising--Intel generally has the better manufacturing process and most overclocking headroom), once frad was diluting their brand and really reducing revenue they stepped in and put a stop to the practice.

Re:AMD fanboys everywhere

[Luveno]

Given the monster HSF on most Athlons, "fanboy" takes on a double meaning.

It makes very good sense

[PJamFan241]

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.

The article in a nutshell

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

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.

Support

[rsilvergun]

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.

Forget overclocking, I want to underclock

[MalikChen]

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.

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 /. community.