Slashdot Mirror
Bypassing Intel's Overclock Limit Reveals DDR2-667
BatonRogue writes "Slashdot posted a Tomshardware article talking about Intel's 10% overclock limit on their new chipsets not too long ago. The situation has just become even more interesting. AnandTech just posted a roundup of DDR2 memory that sheds some light as to why Intel may have implemented the lock. It seems that on the Abit board they tested, which supposedly bypasses the overclock limit, the first generation of DDR2-533 memory modules had no problems working at 667MHz. Could it be that Intel is keeping DDR2-667 support for yet another revision of their new chipsets even though the memory support is clearly here today?"
I seem to recall last week almost the exact same posting, however it was using AMD's name rather than Intel.
Anyone got any intel on that? (-;
Mike
Gamblers Forum
Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth.
While I really dont like companies crippling the hardware I buy. Could you imagine a shovel that would stop you from moving sand too quickly ?
I have to say that if my systems are %10 slower but even %05 more reliable its a good trade off. I'm not saying that they are super unreliable now, given all that goes into making a computer behave and the number of suppliers involved. Its just that some of these machines are so fast that I there is no value to me personally in overclocking.
I think that businesses generally have enough to worry about with proper operation to not want to overclock their processors. If Intel is working with memory makers to insure stability they should be up front about it -- people would understand the overclocking then.
Overclocking adds another possible source of problems that most companies don't need.
Turn the question around. Instead of asking "why buy $1000 3.4 GHz chip instead of $500 3.2 GHz chip", ask this: how come Intel doesn't label that second chip "3.4 GHz" and sell it to you for $1000?
That would be $500 extra revenue for Intel. How come they don't do it?
Perhaps it's something to do with increased failure rates, warranty returns, and a negative hit on their reputation.
Intel grades their chips. They mark each chip with the speed that they feel comfortable selling with Intel's name and warranty.
If you want to overclock your chip, it's your chip; you bought it, you didn't license it with a stupid EULA! But the problem comes when another company (not Intel) buys a $500 chip from Intel, overclocks it, and then marks up the price and sells it in a system as if it were a $1000 chip. Intel gets nothing all the trouble, the cheater company gets the markup, and the end user gets the shaft.
I guess you've never heard of the 487 math co-processor deception,
quote, "In a real marketing coup, uninformed computer users did not know that they purchased and installed the much more powerful 486DX microprocessor in their computers."
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
4-4-4-12 Timings? Thats horridly slow,My current system is running at 2-2-2-6 at ~450mhz.
1 9/ index.html
Basically these numbers represent how fast ram can actually access the data stored on it(in nanoseconds.) Column access strobe, Row access strobe,ras to cas latency,and the total. If this were hardware terms,it would be a hard drive with a slower seek time,but a much higher transfer rate.
These little timings can really effect your performance,Heres a good read for those who havent been this geeky yet:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/200401
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
That was hardly a deception. Intel sold chips with damaged Co-Processors as 486SXs. This allowed them to increase their chip yields, and make money on something that would have otherwise been garbage. That's not to say that some SXs didn't have working coprocessors that had been disabled. In those cases, Intel simply remarked DX chips to meet the demand for the SX line. (How many damaged chips can you manufacture?)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Intel reliability standards call for infant mortality less than 500 units per million and a service life of 7-10 years depending on product. The goals of overclockers are very different.
Ever heard of a schmoo? It a contour graph of what frequencies a part will work at at a given voltage and frequency (and that's only at one set temperature). Ofthen is is very blob like and can have holes of instability or islands of stability. You need to pick product offerings that not only yield well, but are far enough on any contour line from the schmoo that you can test the part at a few values of voltage and frequency with confidence. Tester time is a bottleneck, and Intel test more than anyone else.
Yes, downbinning occurs for marketing reasons, but generally for economy products. Believe me, Intel and every company fights for yields at the top bin for every flagship product. Even when downbinning occurs, it is done to match actual yield to orders, not out of any desire to hold back.
So you can beleive the last three paragraphs or you can believe that Intel is being forced to slow the rate of product advangement by the Carlye Group. It's up to you.
This reminds me of a story an older IT guy told me years ago. He was in charge of several mini-computers in the 70s. The company who made the computer told him they could upgrade it when he needed more capacity. When he ordered the upgrade, the computer company sent a tech out to do it. The tech opened up a panel on the computer, cut one wire with a pair of clippers and closed the panel. I don't think they even had to reboot it.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
...is going to like this as well. Remember, they've usually had less of a requirement for memory bus. With them going dual-core, while retaining socket compatibility, they only have one connection to feed two processors. At DDR 400 today, they're already looking at 2xDDR333. While I'm sure the equivalent from Intel would like to have 2xDDR667...
:)
Overall, looks like there's going to be a lot of competition going on in the CPU biz for a while to come. And obviously a bunch of memory brands. In fact, I think there's pretty good competition all around in hardware, and things are starting to look up in the OS world as well. I predict good times for the consumers in the time ahead
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is still true today. Several of our photocopiers are capable of going faster with some kind of switch setting change; there's nothing different about the faster machines themselves, just the "slow down" setting on the less expensive model.
Haven't tech companies been doing this kind of thing forever? Even when geeks find out about it and take advantage of it, they usually make out on it anyway since so many other people don't care and wouldn't know how to bypass in the first place.
I think they're starting to do this above-board now with "utility computing" and other on-demand features; they ship you a beefier box than you need, with the idea that you can enable/disable the extra power as needed.
read the link - they were designed to only operate with the disabled chip in place, in essence, you paid for two chip and were only using one. Yes it was deceptive. The users beleived they had a cpu and a seperate expensive add-on doing the math. In reality they had one chip that HAD to be there disabled and doing nothing so it couldn't be used on another motherboard.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Synchronizing a wide bus at 667Mhz is considerably more difficult than a narrow bus.
It takes engineering effort. Certainly IBM has done it by clocking the 970 bus to 1.25GHz. But that doesn't mean that its suddenly easy to get those clock rates. Especially on a technology that is design-by-committee, like DDR2.
There was 66, 166, 266, 366, 466, 566, but get to 666, OH NO! Now it's 667! and then they reverted back with 866.. Of course, there's goobers that try to justify the change as if there was some technical reason than admit why it was really relabled. Boo to bowing to religious superstitions. Quick, change the BSD mascot!
Just because something is stable when it's overclocked doesnt mean that it's stable. If it was a server, even a problem that caused a lockup every 6 months or year wouldnt be acceptable. That freak incident could happen next year, or tommarow.
I'm not against overclocking or an Intel fanboy, I run an overclocked barton at home. But I dont think Intel would hold back, especially with the athlon64 out there and with the negative prescott press, Intel might be a bit more cautious than usual.
Wasn't old Tom right tho?, that DC current is best for short distances? Why doesn't the modern PC have an integrated power backup? If it ran on straight DC that would eliminate the spikes and we could go on to a safer tomorrow. AC power supplies are evil. The college-educated who are making simple processes overly complex and failure prone aren't far behind. Edison laughs at us from the grave. America used to be a place to excel but now we found out how to profit out the yingyang from neverending Sales... which holds people back. We have become a nation of control freaks. One look at our political system that can only come up with two white guys running for President should tell us a thousand words. Maybe the reason we're getting the dregs on cpu and memory is that NASA is scooping up the best for sending to Mars eh? I underclock my stuff so it will still be running in 2030. You can't beat a 3.4 downclocked to 667 hehehehe. Nitrogen power Forever.