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Ivy Bridge Running Hotter Than Intel's Last-gen CPU

crookedvulture writes "The launch of Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs made headlines earlier this week, but the next-gen processor's story is still being told. When overclocked, Ivy Bridge runs as much as 20C hotter than its Sandy Bridge predecessor at the same speed, despite the fact that the two chips have comparable power consumption. There are several reasons for these toasty tendencies. The new 22-nm process used to fabricate the CPU produces a smaller die with less surface area to dissipate heat. Intel has changed the thermal interface material between the CPU die and its heat spreader. Ivy also requires a much bigger step up in voltage to hit the same speeds as Sandy Bridge."

182 comments

  1. I really wish they would release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ... a processor without a on die gpu, if I'm going to have more heat I want more performance.

    1. Re:I really wish they would release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SandyBridge-E

    2. Re:I really wish they would release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If GPU is not used it does not use power, so just disable it in BIOS or drivers and your good to go (it does still increase price of CPU because of DIE area used but decreases it more than that because it makes CPU "mass market" since Intel can make only one model for ones wanting GPU and not wanting GPU)

    3. Re:I really wish they would release... by Surt · · Score: 1

      That's coming in q4.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    4. Re:I really wish they would release... by Auroch · · Score: 1

      ... a processor without a on die gpu, if I'm going to have more heat I want more performance.

      Yes, as I read the article, it basically says "New CPU processing speeds, New CPU heat levels ... with overclocked OLD cpu".

      --
      Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
    5. Re:I really wish they would release... by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      Uhhh, you realise it turns itself off if you don't use it...

    6. Re:I really wish they would release... by k_187 · · Score: 1

      Plus, you can disable it completely in the BIOS and it will act like an extra heat sink for one core.

      --
      11 was a racehorse
      12 was 12
      1111 Race
      12112
  2. Good! by Kenja · · Score: 4, Funny

    After switching all my lights to LED bulbs, its a bit cold in my office. A new, hotter CPU could be just what I need.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    1. Re:Good! by AC-x · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Wait, you were in an office not lit with horrible fluorescent strip lighting?

    2. Re:Good! by ericloewe · · Score: 0

      Does that even exist? I thought there was some building code that stated that all office spaces must use flourescent lighting, if possible the "extra-white" (blue) one.

    3. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't laugh. That's how I heat my home office. I have baseboard electric but I never use it. If I want to warm the room up, I slide the pocket door closed. Too warm? Leave the door open. I'm running a Dell XP laptop, a Dell CentOS server, a homebuilt Pegasos I (PPC/Morphos), and an Amiga 3000D. These four machines (and related UPSes, routers, etc.) are already using electricity, and generating "waste" heat. No need to use *more* electricity :) (I should experiment with leaving the door at certain positions to see where the equilibrium point is.) Lighting is provided by two 24" fluorescent lamps on top of bookcases, aimed up at the white ceiling, in opposite corners of the room. An additional 18w CFL in the center of the ceiling, covered by a black/purple/blue dancing bear tie-dye sheet, provides "mood" lighting :)

      Who am I? (Bonus question)

    4. Re:Good! by newcastlejon · · Score: 1

      This reminds me of something that happened in one of our old computer labs, one which we affectionately called "The Ice Box". As the story goes the A/C was originally designed on the assumption that the room would contain a few dozen computers, which it did, and an equal number of CRTs, which it did not. I suppose it's because the new building took so long going up that they missed the big switch to LCDs.

      The whole thing is probably apocryphal but I found it quite amusing all the same; there's something quite absurd about a bunch of people in thick coats huddled over keyboards when it's twenty degrees outside.

      --
      If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
    5. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They didn't say "office building" they said "my office"

      I switched all my lightbulbs for LED bulbs as well, and I find the heat kicks on more frequently.

      Keep in mind that the thermal energy of a LED bulb is often low enough that it's just barely warm to the touch, where as even 40 watt bulbs are too hot to touch. There's a reason ez-bake ovens used lightbulbs. The thermal energy emitted by a Ivy bridge CPU is still around twice that of an ezbake oven.

    6. Re:Good! by MagusSlurpy · · Score: 1

      And now I'm gonna try to make a cookie on my old Athlon, just to prove that I can.

      (10 minutes later)

      Mmm, pretty good, even if the bottom does taste like graphite!

      --
      My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
    7. Re:Good! by nschubach · · Score: 1

      Obviously, if it's twenty degrees outside you need more heat, not an air conditioner. ;)

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    8. Re:Good! by newcastlejon · · Score: 1

      That's twenty degrees celsius, which is quite warm where I'm from.

      --
      If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
    9. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      I got a better one: I helped set up a college computer lab, but it was really just a terminal lab for the old 3270 green screen CRT's to an IBM "mainframe" I administered ("Systems Programmer" in IBM parlance). My doofus manager somehow spec'ed the AC request so strong that on warm humid days in sunny southside Virginia, when the door was open to the hallway, just inside from the outside door, the humidity would condense on any CRT's that were not turned on, and short them out if they were turned on while still wet. We lost several before catching on.

    10. Re:Good! by vjoel · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's twenty degrees celsius, which is quite warm where I'm from.

      That's twenty degrees of *WOOSH*, which is quite embarrassing where I'm from. ;)

      --
      What part of `yes no` don't you understand?
    11. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ugh. I'm glad I don't live where you do; although I can and do deal with the cold, I much prefer when it is 26-30C outside. As an aside, the two temperature extremes I have experienced living here by the great lakes are -40C in 1996 and +45C in 1988.

      *sigh*

      Someday I will move to a tropical island, even if I have to shine shoes for a living.

    12. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You leave the door open in an air conditioned space. - check
      outside door too, (presumably to combat global warming) - check
      You power on dripping wet electronic equipment. - check
      Your manager is a doofus. - let me get back to you on that one.

    13. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't have any LED bulbs, but don't they have some pretty hefty heat sinks attached to them? Why do they need them, if they get barely warm?

    14. Re:Good! by atlasdropperofworlds · · Score: 1

      A bit cold?

      I once worked at a company that moved in to an office space before heating was installed. It was the middle of winter, in Canada, and all the equipment was brought up via crane through an opening in the side of the building.

      I used a computer running a busy loop program to heat my office. It worked well as a space heater.

    15. Re:Good! by Eskarel · · Score: 1

      I've had people tell me that LCD's actually generate close to the same amount of heat, but when in University I worked in a computer lab which switched and it was noticeably cooler. This was however a state school with a shared heating system between multiple buildings which meant that they did some silly things like turning the heat on and off based on a calendar not the weather, so I can't attest scientifically that this was based entirely on the LCD switch over.

    16. Re:Good! by lightknight · · Score: 2

      Do you think it's possible to switch out some of those bulbs for the tanning ones? I've heard a lot of complaints about my skin color recently (pasty white), but I can't see myself bringing a laptop with me into one of those beds at the local tanning salon.

      --
      I am John Hurt.
    17. Re:Good! by jaymemaurice · · Score: 1

      Yes, it makes a good practical joke, but you need to change the ballasts too.

      --
      120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
    18. Re:Good! by ultranova · · Score: 1

      As the story goes the A/C was originally designed on the assumption that the room would contain a few dozen computers, which it did, and an equal number of CRTs, which it did not. I suppose it's because the new building took so long going up that they missed the big switch to LCDs.

      Not to mention the invention of the thermostat.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    19. Re:Good! by toddestan · · Score: 1

      They use a good fraction of the amount of power that a CFL does, and CFLs do get hot when running. I have one LED bulb (so far) and it gets pretty warm after its been on a while.

    20. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The LEDs do not get hot but the IC driver does.

    21. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If your MEP engineer is worth his weight in eyeglasses he'll specify a 3500K lamp - and ensure they're all from the same production lot so you don't get a range of similar but visibly-different shades of light.

  3. notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's clear in the article, but the headline here sort of implies that the chips run hotter in general, whereas this test is only saying the new chips run hotter when overclocked. From what I can find, when run at the rated voltages/speeds, Ivy Bridge CPUs run at about the same temperature as last gen's CPUs.

    1. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Alastor187 · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's clear in the article, but the headline here sort of implies that the chips run hotter in general, whereas this test is only saying the new chips run hotter when overclocked. From what I can find, when run at the rated voltages/speeds, Ivy Bridge CPUs run at about the same temperature as last gen's CPUs.

      Seems like that would make sense if at normal 'voltage/speed' the Ivy Bridge is using less power. Based on the the numbers in the link the Ivy Bridge has a higher overall thermal resistance, junction-to-air, of roughly 30% [=((100C-20C)/(80C-20C))*(231W/236W)]. Based on other reviews the Ivy Bridge processors uses less power at stock frequency/voltage so that may be offsetting much of the temperature rise due to an increase in package resistance and heatsink interface resistance, under normal conditions.

      Power dissipation increases exponential with increases in frequency/voltage and it appears to rise faster with the Ivy Bridge processors. So as the power dissipation approaches or exceeds that of the Sandy Bridge processor much higher processor temperatures will be measured in the Ivy Bridge because of the higher thermal resistances.

      I think this is a non-issue for the average consumer. However, overclockers would probably be better off with the Sandy Bridge hardware.

    2. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by tommasorepetti · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Completely agree. The overclocking community is somewhat overrepresented in reviews of computer hardware. Overclockers are, in general, very knowledgable, so I am not saying that their voices as part of the reception are a problem--it is, after all, often overclockers who push the limits of current generation architectures and empower consumers. It is important to note, however, that thermal issues when overclocked are secondary to efficiency and power consumption for well over 99% of all computing applications. I work in HPC and obviously care about eeking out performance from my platforms, but I have never overclocked a CPU. A modest performance increase is completely secondary to jeopardizing the reliability of a computer system. As far as I am concerned, this particular critique is irrelevant, and I think that many other lay people and professionals would feel the same way. I am much more interested in knowing if the logevity of the new chips is commensurate with that of the previous generation.

    3. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by muon-catalyzed · · Score: 2

      E1 stepping Ivy 3770K CPU can hit 4.6Ghz (while keeping temps under 70'C benched), the current Sandy Bridge 2600K CPU easily reaches 4.9Ghz under the same conditions, that is 300Mhz more, the power consumption after overclocking is greater too, for enthusiasts this means no deal. Hopefully this is only an early model issue, people are now waiting for a new stepping or a different Ivy line up.

    4. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anthony+Mouse · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is true as far as it goes, but the behavior when overclocked is telling for more than how well you can overclock: At the risk of stating the obvious, the chips the overclockers are having heat issues with are the ones Intel is manufacturing. That means Intel isn't going to be able to ramp the clock speed very easily for the same reasons that the overclockers are running into trouble, unless there is some significant and avoidable flaw in the chip or the process that they can remove in future revisions.

      On the plus side, this gives AMD a little breathing room to try to catch up a little.

    5. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is normal marketing from Slashdot. Almost every one of the headlines resembles yellow press. The "Science News Cycle" is here, only in reverse. That's a pity, really. Idiocracy here we come.

    6. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, need to nitpick. Power dissipation does not increase exponentially with increases in frequency or voltage. P = a*C*(V^2)*f for dynamic power (a is the expected value of switching). So linear increase with frequency, quadratic increase with voltage.

    7. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Overclocking had its day back when the Celeron 300A was out. Now its all poseurs OCing to get a few more framerates and burning out their CPUs. Very VERY few of them OC it for anything more then penis. Sure you'll get some folding guys or dudes running triple 4k monitors. When I OC'd back in the day it was so i could MOVE faster in Quake 3, not so i could post benchmarks. Overclocking should be used to reach a performance level you couldn't otherwise get with money.

      --
      Good-bye
    8. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Even though TDP has gone down from 95 to 77W the die size has shrunk from 216 to 160 mm^2, so energy density is up from 0.44 to 0.48 W/mm^2. It's probably getting harder and harder to make heat sinks to spread it effectively enough, particularly with overclocking. For the non-overclocker I'd say the new chips are clearly better though as they're fan noise, battery life and electricity-bill friendly with a small boost in performance and $5-10 cheaper than the equivalent SB. And a better IGP if you'll ever use it without a discrete graphics card. Too bad there's no IGP-less versions, a six-core Ivy Bridge chip with no GPU would have approximately the same die size and kill their high end line.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    9. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by MagusSlurpy · · Score: 2

      The general benchmarking consensus seems to be that IB is ~10% faster than the comparable SB chips, without OCing. Throw that "invisible" 10% onto the OCed clock speed, and IB should still be coming out ahead, at a SB-style 5.1 GHz.

      (I haven't seen any OC benchmark comparisons yet, to see if this is actually true)

      --
      My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
    10. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I also care deeply about how other people use their hardware, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

    11. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Mattsson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Also, if a large part of the reason why the Ivy Bridge CPU runs hotter is the smaller area of the chip and the changed thermal interface materials, this means that while the new CPU chip might run hotter than the previous one, it doesn't put out more heat.
      The CPU is hotter but the heat sink is cooler since the energy can't be transferred from the chip to the heat sink fast enough.
      If this is the case, then Intel need to do something about the CPU package before going to higher frequencies.
      It also means that people needing the extra heat in their cold rooms would be disappointed since the heat output would be lower, not higher. ;-)

      --
      /.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
    12. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't agree. I've never burned out a CPU. I've never posted a benchmark. I don't post my "specs". I just enjoy overclocking. And if I get a few more FPS when blasting aliens, all the better. I think *most* overclockers are like me. It's just the ones posting all over forums are the other sort.

    13. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I completely agree. You can also save yourself a lot of money by overclocking by buying a lower end model. I've got a Phenom II X6 1055T that's stock 2.8Ghz, OC'd to 3.8Ghz. I saved about $100 off the 1100T model and have the same performance. To me, it's fun and beneficial. I don't post benchmarks. I just use my CPU cores and every hert counts.

    14. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ditto.

      I've been OC'ing since the 300A days, I have a high end watercooling setup yet a 5 year old graphics card.. haven't played games in years. I OC because it speeds up my compilation times, thus makes me work faster.

    15. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by jason777 · · Score: 1

      I dont know. I got a core i7 950 @ 3ghz for my new workstation at home, and with a corsair bolt on water cooler I was able to easily get it to 4.2ghz stable. It runs cool and only uses a couple hundred watts. It crushes anything I throw at it, so why not overclock?

    16. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by WrecklessSandwich · · Score: 2

      Typical Slashdot sensationalism to leave that out of the headline. I clicked expecting another Prescott/Pentium D fiasco, but no. It's not even some kind of non-story with no merit, just being misrepresented by the submitter. It was even tagged "false" in Firehose and got posted as-is anyways.

    17. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Golden_Rider · · Score: 2

      I dont know. I got a core i7 950 @ 3ghz for my new workstation at home, and with a corsair bolt on water cooler I was able to easily get it to 4.2ghz stable. It runs cool and only uses a couple hundred watts. It crushes anything I throw at it, so why not overclock?

      If you overclock because you enjoy tinkering with your hardware or if you actually need every little clock increase for whatever it is you're using your computer for, more power to you. But I think he has a point - overclocking is not as necessary anymore for "standard" users/gamers as it was a few years ago.

      I, too, overclocked everything back in the days of the 486, Pentium, P2, P3 (plus the various AMD alternatives). But that was mostly because back then the clock increase actually made a huge difference when playing games, because most stuff was CPU limited. Overclocking my PII-400 to 450 actually meant I could choose more graphical details or maybe a higher resolution in the games without getting FPS which were too low to play.

      But today, when I overclock my i7-2600K (which cost much much less than my PII-400 back then), I notice no difference at all in games or in any other application, even stuff which should be only about CPU speed (say, zipping a couple hundred megs of files). Yes, maybe I save a second or two when I zip files, but does that matter? Any CPU which you can buy right now (if you do not choose something extraordinarily slow like an Atom CPU etc.) is fast enough that it does not limit you in any meaningful way when you do normal stuff or even games on your computer. Gaming performance today is limited by the graphics card, not the CPU. So if you have a decent graphics card which allows you to play at the native resolution of your screen with full details, overclocking your CPU won't give you any noticeable benefit. And that's why I do not overclock anymore. I just don't notice any difference to the standard clock speed.

      Like I said, if you overclock because it's fun for you or because you need to run extreme calculation tasks 24/7, go ahead. But for games or normal applications? Nah, not needed anymore.

    18. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      However, overclockers would probably be better off with the Sandy Bridge hardware.

      At the same clock, probably, but with the die shrink, Ivy Bridge should get better performance per watt than the Sandy Bridge OC'd to the same power. I may be making the silly assumption that OC is still about getting more performance and not just pushing hardware beyond its limits.

      How Intel prices those isn't directly relevant to their performance, of course, since Ivy Bridge is the "new hotness".

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    19. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      Intel need to do something about the CPU package before going to higher frequencies

      This is the story of die shrink - more performance per area, less heat per performance, but more heat per area.

      I remember when my 486's ran without any passive (much less active) cooling at all. Today even my Atoms struggle with passive cooling solutions.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    20. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by jason777 · · Score: 1

      I noticed a big difference from 3 to 4.2ghz. If youre just browsing the web fine. But I do development, run VMs, video editing, games, etc. All I needed was a $99 cooler, and I got another 1.2ghz. Totally worth it, and I've been running this for a year and a half and have had zero problems.

    21. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by realityimpaired · · Score: 1

      As a card-carrying dyke who's fully paid up on her membership dues, I couldn't care less about e-peen.

      My computer is overclocked because I do a lot of video encoding. For gaming it doesn't make a difference (and if you check the logs, most of the time in most games the CPU underclocks itself to 1.6GHz anyway), but when you're doing a video encode, particularly a large video encode or a lot of transcoding (the kind of operation that will keep your CPU pegged for 3 days in a row, and I'm talking about a Core i5 2500k oc'd to 4.7GHz, with 16GB of RAM), having an overclocked system means a real savings in electricity usage and time, because the marginal increase in power usage for the CPU is offset by the decrease in power usage for everything else by completing the task earlier.

      And if saving electricity isn't an argument for you, there is another financial reason to go with the i5 in this situation: it's more than $100 cheaper than the i7 2600k was, and gives a very significant boost in performance over a non-overclocked i7.

    22. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Not to mention how many actually DO OC their chips now? 2%? 3%? if it reached even 5% frankly I would be amazed. i too OCed back in the MHz wars but that was because both the hardware AND the software was leaping ahead so quickly that unless you were uberrich that machine you bought last week would have struggled to run the latest software sometimes not even a year later. My CPUs went from 300 to 733 to 1100 to 1700MHz and that was like a 4 year stretch max and I wasn't always able to be the latest and greatest which was jumping even faster, with some of those jumps happening so quickly you barely got the wrapping off the first machine before a machine 40% faster or more came out. So for many of us OCing was a way to keep that machine useful just a little longer instead of having to have a new machine every 6 months.

      Now with the exception of those that just want ePeen bragging rights on some leaderboard (not that there is anything wrong with that, if that makes you happy enjoy) frankly even the low end chips are so insanely overpowered compared to the work most have for them it just isn't funny. there are a few niches, say folding at home or having to do constant video transcoding, where a speed boost might help but by far those would be the minority. Hell even though my motherboard comes with what has to be one of the easiest OCing tools I've ever seen (Asrock, great board BTW highly recommend) and I was able to get nearly a 1GHz OC with ease I'm running at stock speed...why? Because with 6 cores I can't keep fed with work as it is shortening the life of the CPU just so it can be idle longer is stupid. it is certainly nothing like the old days where as you pointed out an OC was the difference between whether a game was playable or not, now even the most hardcore games are lucky if they slam 3 CPUs, most are lucky to even fill a dual.

      As for TFA the only way to answer the question is for someone to take apart the finished products like they have the engineering samples and see what kind of heat conductor they are using. Personally until someone has opened a couple and confirmed they are actually using cheap thermal compound in the new chips I just can't believe it, sure they did that with some of the engineering samples but they were just that, samples. I just can't picture Intel being stupid or cheap enough to hamstring their own CPUs like that, it just wouldn't make good sense from either a business or PR standpoint to hobble their chips like that.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    23. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is that AMD fucked up so bad Intel is just playing games with them, pushing out fast fucking chips that are underclocked to match AMD performance. Most first gen i5 chips can be OCed from 2.8ghz to 3.8ghz prime95 stable with stock cooling and the performance difference is vast and noticeable, that's a 35% increase. I've been building and OCing chips for 20 years and never had one burn out, you're much more likely to have ram or a hard drive go bad. You're right, it isn't as needed as it was 10 years ago, but if I can get the speed of a $100+ more expensive chip with a quick bios setting it's a no-brainer.

    24. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by citizenr · · Score: 1

      Not to mention how many actually DO OC their chips now? 2%? 3%? if it reached even 5% frankly I would be amazed.

      Intel wouldn't be actively fighting OC in his products if it was only 2-3%. 775 socket was the last one that allowed you to OC the shit out of every cpu you put in it (Im typing this from C2D 2.4@4GHz, Celeron 420 1.6@3GHz before that). Basically almost 100% more cpu with few bios changes, a lot more fps in games (especially on weaker cpus).
      It used to be possible to buy $25-40 cpu and OC to $100-150 performance level.

      This time has passed with new sockets. Now Intel has OC tax, OC'able CPUs start at $200 and are targeted at people someone described few posts above (OCing to grow epenis).

      OC used to let you buy cheap hardware, now its for posers.

      --
      Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
    25. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      But what you are talking about is not because the market is large, quite the contrary, it is because Intel knows that the market isn't large and wants to be able to force an upsell on those that are into OCing. I mean why let someone OC a $200 CPU and get the same performance as a $400 CPU when you can force them to buy the $400 CPU just to be able to OC at all? This also lets them build OCing as a market for the "elite" and as we have seen many will try to buy the more expensive unit if they think it somehow makes them "better" than those that do not.

      This is why I'm still using AMD socket AM3+ for a lot of builds, because it not only allows OCing on a lot of affordable chips (The Asrock and Gigabyte boards even have great OCing tools that will get good OCs on even locked AMD chips) but with core unlocking one can often get a better chip for less money. My customers naturally love it when they buy a dual and get a triple, or unlock a triple to a quad, certain chips even have better than 50% unlock rates like the Zosma chips quite often unlock to hexacores from quads.

      Now THAT type of OCing I can see, because no matter what you are running a free core can always be used if for no other reason than performing background tasks. But Intel is simply trying to monetize OCing and turn it into a high end club, which considering some of the crazy money I've seen the guys wanting to win the benches spend frankly isn't a stupid move.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    26. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well if you encode your videos to something reasonable like DVD quality, you won't to speed days crunching out the frames.

      Anything that requires more than a few hours of encoding deserves its own server farm.

    27. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by iinlane · · Score: 1

      I overclocked my i7-920 from 2.66 to 3.7GHz and noticed significant change in cpu limited games like skyrim or civ 5. It's defenitely worth it if you want to get a few extra years out from your old system.

    28. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... And get off my loan!

    29. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Faffin · · Score: 1

      The day has come again. An i5 2500k can be overclocked to the same degree as a 300A could.

    30. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by gidyn · · Score: 1

      Build times have improved significantly since overclocking my i5-750. Visual Studio starts noticeably faster, and even /. pages load in under an eon. Not everybody's workload is CPU bound, but it's not just benchmarkers that benefit.

    31. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by drsmithy · · Score: 1

      Overclocking should be used to reach a performance level you couldn't otherwise get with money.

      When the 300A was released, you could already buy a full Pentium 2 at 450Mhz.

    32. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by drsmithy · · Score: 1

      Intel wouldn't be actively fighting OC in his products if it was only 2-3%.

      Intel don't block overclocking because of some insignificant number of computer enthusiasts, they do it to help prevent widespread fraud by unscrupulous operators who pass off overclocked chips as genuine.

    33. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by drsmithy · · Score: 1

      But what you are talking about is not because the market is large, quite the contrary, it is because Intel knows that the market isn't large and wants to be able to force an upsell on those that are into OCing.

      If you think Intel don't let you overclock so they can upsell to some single-digit (being _very_ generous) percentage of customers (who are nearly entirely budget-driven in their purchasing), you're off in la-la land.

    34. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Uhhhh...you haven't actually BEEN to any of the OCing forums of late, have you friend? the guys on those sites are frankly spending more on their liquid coolers than I did on my whole PC. they are RAIDing SSD, dual and triple SLI or Xfire is the norm many are sporting 24 and 32Gb of RAM, hell check the top 30 leaderboards of any OCing forums these guys are NOT cheap.

      So I'm sorry friend but while OCing USED to be poor folks squeezing a little more performance out of a Celeron 300A those days are long past. The guys ruling that scene now wouldn't touch a budget chip like AMD if their lives depended on it and the only reason they are running single socket Intel is there aren't any board that allow dual sockets with 4 SLI and a shitpile of RAM. the guys on the boards now spend more on their PCs than jocks do on their cars which is fine and dandy, but don't think any poor folks can play in their sandbox friend, like many other things in this country OCing has become a rich man's game.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    35. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by drsmithy · · Score: 1

      Uhhhh...you haven't actually BEEN to any of the OCing forums of late, have you friend? the guys on those sites are frankly spending more on their liquid coolers than I did on my whole PC. they are RAIDing SSD, dual and triple SLI or Xfire is the norm many are sporting 24 and 32Gb of RAM, hell check the top 30 leaderboards of any OCing forums these guys are NOT cheap.

      I'd be astounded if any more than a vanishingly tiny proportion of people overclocking did this.

      It's like going to a $CAR forum and concluding everyone who owns $CAR is hotrodding them.

      Not to mention most top-end CPUs (which presumably this tiny portion of money-is-no-object people you're talking about are buying) aren't locked.

    36. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Hairy is correct. The OCing scene is a lot like the PC version of street drag racing. Just as expensive too. OCing used to mean cheating the system. You cranked up a shitty little Celeron 300 with a better HSF and called it a day. Now, it's all about who's the better benchmark queen.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    37. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by drsmithy · · Score: 1

      The OCing scene is a lot like the PC version of street drag racing.

      Which pretty much proves my point.

      Unless you think every Tom, Dick & Harry who chips his car's engine or puts on a high-flow exhaust is a street racer ?

    38. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Thanks, but notice how he STILL doesn't get it? He thinks the poor are still OCing but the simple fact of the matter is that poor folks are happy with what they have, frankly they don't have enough work to push the CPU they have so OCing (which naturally shortens the life of the CPU, just as drag racing shortens the life of the engine) simply holds no appeal to them.

      But you look at even the top 50 slots on any leaderboard or go to ANY forum that deals in OCing (which of course if one were poor and OCing that is where they would go to learn) and they ALL have their specs listed, often in their sig or UID, and the costs are just insane. in the end I know of which i speak because i build PCs for a living and sell most to 'ordinary Joes' and frankly they simply aren't interested in OCing, all they care about is will it run FB games, play HD video, and let them listen to tunes and even my $350 netbook does all of those tasks with cycles to spare.

      Its just not like the old days where if one didn't OC then a year after purchase the PC couldn't run the latest software anymore, and its definitely not the poor OCing to get a better value, because again even the bargain chips are insanely overpowered for the tasks they have. Hell I used to OC all the time and now I have an AMD hexacore that I'm running stock, why? its not because it won't OC, in fact with the easy Asrock OC Tuner I got nearly a 1GHz OC without needing to bump voltage, its just that the chip simply is fast enough as it is and lowering its life so it can finish a transcode a few seconds faster simply isn't appealing.

      But you have a good analogy there in drag racing, because in a way that is what it is. each of these guys spend insane amounts to shave a few seconds off a benchmark or get a little higher score and Intel knows this which is why they aren't worried about the OCing potential of the low and midrange SKUs, because those into the scene wouldn't be caught dead with a midrange chip anymore than a street racer is gonna want an economy car.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    39. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Depending on what you were doing, the full speed on-die 128k L2 cache on the overclocked 300A could be faster than the half-speed off-die 512k cache on the P2.

    40. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by drsmithy · · Score: 1

      Very much corner cases, however. Only things like RC5 that could fit into the L2 cache.

    41. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      I got out of OCing mid-2003. Case modding was kinda cool, but OCing went insanely beyond the laws of diminishing returns. Effectively, it became a really expensive pissing contents of who could aim higher and farther. Never mind the fact these people are pissing for all the wrong reasons to begin with.

      I'm looking to replace my current Q6600 CPU rig with one of these newer Ivory Bridge chips. I've got quite a few DVDs and BDs that I've been transcoding in batch jobs lately. I've also been doing it for friends and co-workers for all their "iDevice" units. Funny how I ended up becoming the go-to person for all this, but that's how it worked out. Anyways, I won't be OCing just as I haven't with my current setup. Over volting shortens the life, causes all sorts of random stability issues, and the slightest of timing changes of RAM will cause all sorts of data corruption once flushed back to disk. If you're lucky, the system starts throwing BSODs early so you can address the issue rather than being lead to believe an OCed system is running flawless (which they rarely if ever do). In fact, I haven't decided if I want an extra layer of protection and go with ECC memory. AMD would be the cheaper route far and away. Intel intentionally segments that market to require Xeons and a capable motherboard supporting ECC as well. That's the one area that really makes me angry about Intel.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    42. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by parlancex · · Score: 1

      You're painting with some pretty broad strokes there. I overclocked my Sandy Bridge i7-2600K by about 20% to 4.4ghz on air, without increasing any voltages (ergo, durability will be the same as it was at stock) and it actually runs colder than it did on the stock cooler at the stock clock speed (ergo, it is actually MORE stable). I didn't do it so I could brag to anybody about it, I did it because for the $40 more the cooler cost me I got a 20% faster CPU out of it.

    43. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by jaymemaurice · · Score: 1

      Except what the overclocker considers a flaw in the chip or process is not necessarily so... it could be an easy way to save costs while staying in the design parameters. This heat issue sounds to me like the issue is caused by removing some over-engineering in thermal conductivity to save money - maybe at the expense of some overclockers - but has nothing to do with the main user base. AMD doing or not doing the same does not mean they are doing/not doing something more right then Intel. Intel may be able to ramp up the clock speed by again changing the thermal interface material or heat spreader to a more exotic material for the higher end chips. They may also be able to simply change the layout on the die and spread out the hot spots.

      I think you are trying to find importance where there is not. I mean do you not think Intel's R&D department has limited access to the engineering skills or materials that a lowly hobbiest does? This same mentality should also be applied to performance auto parts purchases...

      --
      120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
    44. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by cheekyboy · · Score: 1

      Spend that extra saturday at McDonalds, and buy the i7, it truely rocks.

      And if you want faster transcoding, use either AMD or NVIDIA cuda/opencl tools to do it for you using the 1600+ cores of the latest AMD. SLI it, and you get 4 TFLOPS of power. 3200 cores.

      --
      Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
    45. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      But a current gen celeron or pentium can hardly be overclocked at all because intel has locked the multipliers and tied the clocks of timing sensitive interfaces to BCLK (making any significant overclock by BCLK impossible).

      So rather than an overclock taking you from "low end" to "pretty high end" it takes you from "pretty high end" to "faster in threadcount limited tasks than any CPU running at it's stock speed".

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    46. Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat by Mattsson · · Score: 1

      The best thing about the 486 was that with a small forced air cooler, they could be overclocked by 100%.
      I ran my 25MHz 486SX at 50MHz. Performance was awesome when running the bus at 50MHz, but not all mainboards or graphics-cards could handle this.
      In a lot of situations, a SX at 50MHz could outperform a DX2 at 50MHz, simply because the bus ran at 50 instead of 25MHz, like it did with the DX2-chips, even though the SX lacked an FPU. FPUs didn't really become important to mainstream computing until 3D-games became popular.

      --
      /.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
  4. Speed? by cbreak · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Ivy also requires a much bigger step up in voltage to hit the same speeds as Sandy Bridge.

    I get the feeling that they have very weird notions about what constitutes CPU Speed...

    1. Re:Speed? by Surt · · Score: 2

      They omitted the word clock, but I'd still say their meaning was clear.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  5. Not the biggest deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Go back in time to the introduction of 32nm and you'll see stories about how the 32nm chips don't overclock as well as chips the mature 45 nm process.
          Intel's 22nm process is currently tuned for the lower-clocks used in mobile devices where the early reviews are very favorable to IB. It will take some time for the process to mature and for us to see more overclocking headroom.

    Even in its current state, Ivy bridge does overclock fine up to about 4.5Ghz. Where you see issues are at the very highest ends of the OC spectrum where the power density of the 160 mm^2 die becomes an issue compared to the larger 216 mm^2 die of Sandy Bridge. Ivy Bridge does use less power than Sandy... the problem is with sucking the heat out of an increasingly tiny area. Especially for overclockers who usually use discrete graphics and disable the GPU, the activated die area on Ivy Bridge is likely only about 100 - 120 mm^2, which is very hard to keep cool.

  6. 3d tri-gate not as good as promised by edxwelch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remember a year ago Intel was bragging about their new 3d tri-gate process would be 50% more power efficient: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/standards-22nm-3d-tri-gate-transistors-presentation.html.
    Comparing the i7 3770K against the 2600K, which is clocked at the same frequency it's only 17% more power efficient: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-review/20
    Also you have to bare in mind some of the power saving is due to the DDR controller power gating

    1. Re:3d tri-gate not as good as promised by rtaylor · · Score: 0

      Yes? So Intel was right and there are things in a CPU other than gates.

      --
      Rod Taylor
    2. Re:3d tri-gate not as good as promised by gstrickler · · Score: 5, Informative

      Read the Anandtech review, that's total system power consumption. If you compare just the CPU power consumption it's ~33% more power efficient (66W increase from idle to load for Ivy Bridge vs 98W increase for SB). And if you look at the GPU intensive comparisons, IB is ~20% more power efficient, but that's including a ~33% increase in GPU cores and an increase in GPU clock, for an ~40% increase in performance while using 20% less power. For the first generation chips on a brand new production process, those are very good results. I expect to see them improve as their 22nm tri-gate process matures.

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    3. Re:3d tri-gate not as good as promised by SurfsUp · · Score: 1

      Remember a year ago Intel was bragging about their new 3d tri-gate process would be 50% more power efficient: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/standards-22nm-3d-tri-gate-transistors-presentation.html.

      Yes, the slides are unambiguous: "Greater than 50% reduction in active power going from 32nm to 22nm". Now, Intel tells us they have been predicting modest efficiency gains all along. For the last few months mabe. The truth is, Intel realized months ago the process would not meet expectations and already fired up the spin machine back then.

      --
      Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
    4. Re:3d tri-gate not as good as promised by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

      People are just whiny these days. They expect every new product to completely blow away the old one in all respects, and cry when that doesn't happen.

      Same shit with the nVidia GTX 860. It is by all accounts a great card. The fastest single consumer GPU ever, much more efficient power wise per work done, emits less heat, and so on. However it doesn't completely crush the previous generation of hardware. It is only faster, not crushingly faster. So people get all mad about it as though if evil nVidia had just tried harder, they could have made it batter.

      Same thing we see here. Intel's 22nm process is efficient and not to mention the only working full scale production 22nm process in the world right now, but people are mad because it isn't some amazing leap over their last chip. Better isn't good enough, they want crushingly better.

      It also shows ignorance of Intel's tick-tock cycle. The node changes feature minor, if any, architecture changes and thus usually don't have big performance jumps, unless the new process allows for much higher clocks. The performance jumps come when they stay on the same node, and make a new architecture. Sandy Bridge was one of those, they stayed on 32nm but released a new architecture, one that is seriously good.

      They've used this method for a long time, they alternate a size shrink and an architecture update. Makes sense, since both are complex propositions and when you try to do them at the same time, sometimes you have a lot of trouble.

      Personally I'm happy as can be about IB. Will I be running out and upgrading my SB chip? No, it works fine, this isn't some major change. However I'm happy about more efficient chips being available, and I'll be wanting one in my next laptop that I'm looking at later this year.

  7. Subject needs "overclocking" by ganjaganja · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not all of us do overclocking. Subject is misleading.

    1. Re:Subject needs "overclocking" by arbiter1 · · Score: 1

      I agree, i mean only enthusiast overclocks really, for MOST people stock speeds cpu is way more then fast enough. I am a pretty heavy gamer and i have a first gen i7 870, most Overclocking i do on it, is the turbo boost from 2.9 to 3.2 ghz built in the cpu and its a fast cpu, on everything i use it for. No need to overclock it.

    2. Re:Subject needs "overclocking" by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      If you have a sandybridge CPU you overclock by default. The CPU supports dynamic OCing to increase performance based on available cooling capacity, and CPU/GPU demand.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    3. Re:Subject needs "overclocking" by jaymemaurice · · Score: 1

      Is it still overclocking if it's running in it's predefined default clocks?!

      I mean, you can call it:
        overclocking when cool and busy
      - or -
        underclocking when idle or hot

      To me its still just enhanced speed step and good marketing...

      --
      120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
    4. Re:Subject needs "overclocking" by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Except it's not. Read the technical papers on it.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  8. Re:Engineering Samples, or Actual CPUs? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    >wouldn't have it been possible for the engineers to figure out some sort of solution

    They did. The solution is "Don't overclock your processor".

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  9. You're slipping, intel. by game+kid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So lemme see here...Intel's new CPU dies are now smaller (good), which makes them less dissipative of heat (bad), so they decide to use worse thermal paste stuff?

    Seems legit.

    --
    You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    1. Re:You're slipping, intel. by Osgeld · · Score: 0

      it runs fine when your not voiding your warranty. You seriously want them to find the right balance between all the factors while accommodating some dipshit gamerz that want to run their cpu a GHz out of spec?

    2. Re:You're slipping, intel. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The point of the K models is that they're unlocked and are specifically meant for overclocking... But we'll see when IB comes out officially..

    3. Re:You're slipping, intel. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you are overclocking, you are also using your own cooling system, right? Right?

    4. Re:You're slipping, intel. by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      so they decide to use worse thermal paste stuff?

      I don't think I've used Intel or AMD-supplied thermal paste in 10 years - I haven't done the precise math, but I assume I make it back on the electric bill over time by using less active cooling energy. And I rarely overclock anything.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    5. Re:You're slipping, intel. by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They aren't talking about using thermal paste on the actual heatsink friend, they are talking about using thermal paste between the actual chip itself and the INSIDE of the heatsink which you then personally use whatever compound you wish. You see this is why i don't believe TFA because all of those rumors have so far been based on engineering samples which are just that, some samples of an unfinished chip given to reviewers. i just can't see a company as successful as Intel hobbling their latest chips by using some dirt cheap thermal paste at the critical juncture between the actual die and the heatsink just to save a few pennies.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    6. Re:You're slipping, intel. by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      As others have pointed out, the /. summary is highly misleading, the article is about heat at overclocked speeds, The CPU's disipate heat and use less power quite happily at normal operating clock speeds,

    7. Re:You're slipping, intel. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Delidded a retail i5 3570K. Phase-change paste.

  10. Re:What about running in spec? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    no colder, it uses even less than (almost halves electricity used/TDP)
    only problem is it is not real I7 (LGA 2011 socket) but just renamed I5 (LGA 1155 socket)

  11. Its an ENGINEERING SAMPLE by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 1

    Emphasis on sample
    If the retail releases also have this issue, then its newsworthy

    1. Re:Its an ENGINEERING SAMPLE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      From my experience, marketing samples are much much better than the normal consumer product.

  12. waste by haggus71 · · Score: 0

    So, the "new" processor burns more electricity, runs hotter, and most reviews have it doing marginally better than Sandy Bridge...all for what will be a higher price. Never buy a new framework when it first comes out.

    1. Re:waste by ericloewe · · Score: 2

      Ivy Bridge does not use more power than Sandy Bridge and it's as expensive/cheaper than Sandy Bridge.

      The only thing that isn't as good is overclocking headroom. Hardly sounds like a bad compromise, especially considering the much-improved GPU.

    2. Re:waste by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      So this Mustang Cobra uses more gas, runs hotter, and its only a half a second faster in the 1/4 mile then the stock mustang?

      P.S. You should check out the Ivy Bridge pricing before opening your stupid mouth.

      --
      Good-bye
    3. Re:waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People paying for these CPU are gamers and enthusiasms anyway, they have a discrete GPU and don't use the built-in one. I'm pretty sure less than 1% of the SandyBridge/IvyBridge sold use the built-in GPU since it's an horror compared to real graphic cards.

    4. Re:waste by realityimpaired · · Score: 1

      People paying for these CPU are gamers and enthusiasms anyway, they have a discrete GPU and don't use the built-in one. I'm pretty sure less than 1% of the SandyBridge/IvyBridge sold use the built-in GPU since it's an horror compared to real graphic cards.

      You'd be wrong, especially in laptops. I have a Sandy Bridge Celeron U3600 in my laptop, and I'm using the integrated graphics. They're plenty powerful enough for desktop compositing, and I get respectable framerates playing the occasional game.

    5. Re:waste by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      When you say "marginally", can you find a single source / release from the past year indicating more than a 10-20% speed boost for IB? Because this is what was predicted, and what has been delivered.

    6. Re:waste by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      My laptop has manually-switchable graphics (Sandy Bridge or extra-low-end AMD chip), and I've noticed that Sandy Bridge is actually a bit better at hardware acceleration (In IE9) than the AMD chip.

  13. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    “Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and two of his sons helped rescue a New Jersey family from a sinking boat over the weekend, a New Hampshire official said today.

      ''The Romneys took two of the passengers and brought them back to shore,'' Sergeant Robertson said...

    “Mr. Fehrnstrom, who spoke to Governor Romney on Sunday about the incident, said the governor's two sons hopped on a motorized water scooter, while the governor got on another. They went to the sinking boat, and Governor Romney brought people to shore while his sons stood by at the scene. The Romneys also saved the family's dog, he said... McKenzie, a Scotty, the family dog.”

  14. CARE FACTOR ZERO - don't over clock problem solved by aristotle-dude · · Score: 2

    The majority of people do not overclock their CPUs so this is not an issue for the majority.

    --
    Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
  15. Re:Obama ate a dog. by ad1217 · · Score: 2

    And I am guessing you eat other meat. Your point?

  16. Welcome to the future of scaling. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There's only so many tricks that Intel can pull off to keep the power dissipation down. Intelligent power gating, process improvements, optimized circuits, etc... and still, we have WAY more transistors on die that we can actually switch due to power constraints. Think about that for a second. Even ignoring the fact that 90% of the chip is very low activity cache, we cannot utilize all our transistors and get under 100 W/cm^2 (the limit of conventional fan + heatsink cooling). A lot of your chip is going to waste because of power constraints.

    And it's just going to get worse. Imagine what the power density will be like when 3D monolithically stacked ICs go into serious production? Multiply your power density times the number of vertical layers!

    There's only so much you can do when you're cooling your chip by essentially blowing on it. One of the big innovations is going to have to be improved cooling. Microfluidic channels, which were developed almost THIRTY YEARS ago, might be a good option.

    Traditional scaling has been over for a couple generations now (ask any Intel process engineer). Power and process variation are what matter now. And both of them are very, very difficult problems to solve that will get much worse with each generation.

  17. Upper limit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The CPU is 20C hotter, but does the upper limit it can reach safely is also 20C hotter or stay the same?

  18. I too run a little hot when overclocked. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I too run a little hot when overclocked.

  19. Re:CARE FACTOR ZERO - don't over clock problem sol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With Sandy Bridge Intel basically said it was normal and wanted to overclock the K series. I have a Corei5 3.3ghz and increased it to 4.4ghz with a single BIOS parameter change with no additional tweaking and no disadvantage at all. Paying for this CPU and not doing it would be stupid.

  20. Keep in mind... by kaws · · Score: 1

    I think that something that people need to keep in mind is this chip is ~31% smaller. Even with that it's using the same amount of power. I'm not surprised that a byproduct of compressing an area like that is more heat. Also, the chip uses Turbo Boost 2.0. This is automatic overclocking.

  21. Easily explainable by Ikkyu · · Score: 2

    Power consumption varies with the square of the voltage (p=v^2/r) while the power consumption varies linearly with the frequency, if it takes signicantly more voltage to over clock then it's no wonder the power usage is so high.

    1. Re:Easily explainable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Power consumption varies with the square of the voltage (p=v^2/r) while the power consumption varies linearly with the frequency, if it takes signicantly more voltage to over clock then it's no wonder the power usage is so high.

      That makes sense. But why does it require more voltage to get to the same overclocked rate compared to sandybridge?

    2. Re:Easily explainable by gstrickler · · Score: 1

      RTFA, it doesn't take more voltage (absolute), it requires a higher boost above "stock" voltage.

      There are several reasons for this:
      1. lower thermal conductivity of the packaging. Higher temperatures can increase resistance, and therefore, voltage requirements.
      2. 22nm process is brand new. Neither the process nor the CPU die have been optimized yet. Both will mature over the next 12 months.
      3. SB is a second generation 32nm design on a fully mature process, it's nearly as good as it will get.
      4. At 22nm, there is likely more resistive and capacitive loss in the interconnects. Those losses both increase with voltage & frequency.

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
  22. Heat transfer scales with area by grimJester · · Score: 1

    Ivy Bridge is smaller in area than Sandy Bridge. Assuming I got the right numbers from Wikipedia, 160 mm^2 vs 216. That's 74% the area for heat transfer.

    1. Re:Heat transfer scales with area by gstrickler · · Score: 1

      Clearly, you failed to read. The measurements are in mm^2, meaning they're area measurements, not linear. The GP is correct.

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    2. Re:Heat transfer scales with area by Alastor187 · · Score: 1

      Ivy Bridge is smaller in area than Sandy Bridge. Assuming I got the right numbers from Wikipedia, 160 mm^2 vs 216. That's 74% the area for heat transfer.

      Agreed, but it doesn't necessarily scale linearly when including spreading affects. Using the numbers you provided one would estimate a ~35% increase in temperature at a given power dissipation, when comparing the Ivy Bridge to the Sandy Bridge. Based on the linked article the increase was only ~30%, which seems reasonable if expecting slightly improved heater transfer performance due to spreading across an oversized heatsink.

      With the limited amount of hardware information in this thread, one could probably conclude that most of the increase in temperature is due to a reduction in die size.

  23. Re:Engineering Samples, or Actual CPUs? by MagusSlurpy · · Score: 1

    Or "Overclock it less, since Sandy Bridge spoiled everyone."

    --
    My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
  24. Re:Obama ate a dog. by damnbunni · · Score: 2, Funny

    You think that's bad?

    He was born in Hawaii. Odds are, at some point, he has actually eaten Spam.

    *shudder*

  25. I want a CPU that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    uses less power, and is comparable fast. That way, i can save literally hundreds of euro's each year. My PC is fast enough. I'm not even remotely interested in overclocking. All i want is a gaming-PC that uses only 25W power. Ty.

    1. Re:I want a CPU that by jpapon · · Score: 1

      You should worry less about the CPU and more about the GPU... they're the ones burning all the power.

      --
      -- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
  26. Re:What about running in spec? by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    its actually a bit cooler, intel does not give a shit about thermal performance outside of its defined operating parameters, and I dont blame them

  27. Hotter != more heat by Ken_g6 · · Score: 5, Informative

    After switching all my lights to LED bulbs, its a bit cold in my office. A new, hotter CPU could be just what I need.

    You're confusing temperature and heat. A candle burns hotter than a person, but a person puts out more heat (100W) than a candle (80W). Likewise, Ivy Bridge puts out less heat than Sandy Bridge, even though it's hotter.

    --
    (T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
    1. Re:Hotter != more heat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The final form of all energy is heat. Given the cpus will be of similar mass and will have a similar rate of convection, one can conclude that yes, the hotter cpu will produce more heat.

    2. Re:Hotter != more heat by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      You didn't RTFA, did you? The new IC has poorer heat conduction, so it is hotter but produces less heat.

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      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    3. Re:Hotter != more heat by Rozine · · Score: 2

      If you immediately know the candle light is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago...

    4. Re:Hotter != more heat by hey! · · Score: 1

      A candle burns hotter than a person? How did they find that out? Burn the test subject in a calorimeter?

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    5. Re:Hotter != more heat by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The take away comment here is if you want to heat a room forget about lighting a fire, just go invite some hot bodies over.

    6. Re:Hotter != more heat by Ken_g6 · · Score: 2

      (In heat production) I stand between the candle and the star.

      --
      (T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
    7. Re:Hotter != more heat by Skapare · · Score: 1

      The amount of heat produced is the power going in. The power going in is lower. So the heat produced will be lower. The temperature inside will rise until it reaches a point where the convection rate matches the input power. The more "insulated" the CPU die is from the outside, the hotter it will get to reach equilibrium. Think of the temperature as a form of heat movement pressure.

      --
      now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
    8. Re:Hotter != more heat by schroedingers_hat · · Score: 1

      Because you produce more heat per cubic metre than the star but less than the candle?
      Or because you produce more heat total than the candle but less than the star?

    9. Re:Hotter != more heat by Sebastopol · · Score: 1

      Can I restate what you said but a little more clearly?

      The candle has higher power density than a person.

      Or more specifically...

      IB power output (or heat output, same thing) is LESS than SB, but it fluxes out of a smaller die area, so the junction temperature on the lid of the package is higher. The package psi-JC (junction to case heat transfer rate, a physical property) has not improved significantly, so the same heat flux rate from the die, through the lid (and through the heatsink, and through the chassis, and to the environment outside the case) with a higher power density means higher average temperature at the lid.

      Sorry, just wanted to word your correct reply a little differently.

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      https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
    10. Re:Hotter != more heat by Angostura · · Score: 1

      >Can I restate what you said but a little more clearly?

      No, apparently not.

    11. Re:Hotter != more heat by Metabolife · · Score: 2

      The two processors are NOT the same mass. The Ivy Bridge has less surface area which translates into higher temperatures while dissipating an equal amount of heat. If you were to be speaking of two identical metal blocks, then yes.. temperature would directly correlate to the heat output.

    12. Re:Hotter != more heat by Sebastopol · · Score: 1

      LOL

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      https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
  28. Heat Spreader by Guppy · · Score: 1

    Looking at the pictures in the Overclockers.com link, you'd probably get better thermal dissipation if had Intel left the heat spreader off, with nothing expect the protective overcoat on the back of the chip.

    Actually, I bet modders are going to start cracking the IHS off for that very purpose, in order to directly contact their heatsinks.

    1. Re:Heat Spreader by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It'd be as good as impossible remove the IHS and leave the chip behind. Many times harder still to leave in behind and still all connected up so you could still use it.

  29. Re:Engineering Samples, or Actual CPUs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When I last overclocked my cpu, a decade ago, programs started crashing. Why do they only mention overheating problems, can it be done reliably now?

  30. Re:Obama ate a dog. by outsider007 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Dog is tasty. I just can't vote for someone who puts pineapple on his pizza.

    --
    If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
  31. Re:Obama ate a dog. by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Why, was he visiting Korea?

  32. *ahem* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so let me get that right. The summary states that they have the same power consumption and a smaller area?

    i am a physicist. If you have the same heat flow trough a smaller area then i expect that the higher thermal resistance causes a higher temperature difference.

    \Delta T \lambda A t = P

    where \Delta T is the temperature difference to ambience, \lambda the thermal conductivity A the are an t the thickness of whatever coupled you to outside, and P the power dissipated.

    I am still looking for the mystery. The most interesting question is if the performance is higher.

  33. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

    Dog is tasty. I just can't vote for someone who puts pineapple on his pizza.

    Practically nobody in Hawaii puts pineapple on pizza. Hardly anyone in Hawaii even cooks pineapple, we eat it fresh or at worst canned. I never even heard of "hawaiian pizza" until I moved to the mainland. Wikipedia says it was first created in Canada.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  34. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 0, Troll

    Dogs and man are the primary cursorial hunters on this planet, and we have formed a partnership. It is no surprise that Obama devours his partners, something no honorable man would do.

    Lol. What a fabulous display of ignorance. You sound like those Taliban who said George Bush was a dishonorable man because he doesn't wear a beard.

    Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese are just a few of the cultures where eating dog is unremarkable. As for being a "partner" a lot of muslims consider dog to be a dirty unclean animal.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  35. Re:Obama ate a dog. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Practically nobody in Hawaii puts pineapple on pizza

    I sure did when I lived there. So did other people. Called it pineapple and ham though, not 'hawaiian.' The Dominos Chicken Pestoza was good too, but I don't know if they serve it anymore over there.

    And spam musubi is the best bra.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  36. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Did someone mention that Obama ate a dog?

  37. This is a Feature by Sarusa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's hotter when overclocked. Overclockers love having to run pipes and submerge things. How are you going to justify hauling out the liquid nitrogen if it's running cool?

    Meanwhile everyone else is happier that it runs cooler, takes less power, is faster, and even costs less than Sandy Bridge.

    This is Win Win, people.

  38. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's "brah." We don't call people boobslings.

  39. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Nicknamename · · Score: 0

    You think that's bad? He was born in Hawaii. Odds are, at some point, he has actually eaten Sperm. *shudder*

    FTFY.

    --
    Hitler hates pedophiles.
  40. Re:Engineering Samples, or Actual CPUs? by realityimpaired · · Score: 1

    Depends on the CPU, but most (~90%) Sandy Bridge i5 CPU's will take 4GHz without any problem, and about 50% can hit 4.5GHz without breaking a sweat. This is for an i5 2500k, which comes with a stock clock speed of 3.2GHz. My 2500k is currently running at 4.7GHz and it doesn't have any stability problems at all, even when I run video encodes that keep the CPU at 100% occupancy 24/7... when I push it to 4.8GHz (change the multiplier from 46x to 47x, with system bus at 103MHz), it starts to crash. I suspect that if I had a better cooling setup (using a Cooler Master Hyper 212+ heatsink, which is air cooled and keeps the CPU max temperature around 65'C at 4.7GHz) I may be able to squeeze a few more clock cycles out of the processor, but it's not worth $200 for a water cooling setup.

  41. Why are you OCing Ivy? by gelfling · · Score: 1

    Seriously. What kind of quantum chromodynamics calculations are you simply not getting done today?

    1. Re:Why are you OCing Ivy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      10Gb intrusion prevention. Not 6Gb, but 10.

      yeah, 20% faster really matters.

  42. Intel TurboBoost by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    I think these days technically ALL of us do overclocking thanks to Turbo Boost and similar such technologies which up the frequency of the processor when only some cores are loaded.

  43. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I never even heard of "hawaiian pizza" until I moved to the mainland. Wikipedia says it was first created in Canada.

    It's our country's revenge for that stuff you guys call "Canadian Bacon".

  44. Re:Obama ate a dog. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    It's "brah." We don't call people boobslings.

    Oh I know. I would never mock Hawaiianspeak on purpose.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  45. Why is this funny? by bdwoolman · · Score: 1

    I partially heat my home office with my Pentium 4.

    Really. Sometimes I boot my old box just because the room is chilly.

    --
    "No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
    1. Re:Why is this funny? by lightknight · · Score: 1

      Do some BitCoin mining on your GPU, with aggression set to maximum.

      It'll be like a tropical island within the hour, except without the wonderful ocean breeze that normally accompanies it.

      --
      I am John Hurt.
  46. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Too bad I allowed 5 mod points to evaporate today.

  47. Heh heh heh by sidthegeek · · Score: 2

    This brings new meaning to the term "burning bridges". ;-)

  48. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every place that serves tourists puts pineapple on everything. Hawaiian pizza is common, even if not among the locals.

  49. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Practically nobody in Hawaii puts pineapple on pizza

    I sure did when I lived there. So did other people.

    Why did the haole put pineapple on his pizza? Because he was a haole.

  50. Re:CARE FACTOR ZERO - don't over clock problem sol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The majority of people do not run a Athlon XP without a heatsink. So bursting into flame is not an issue.

  51. Re:Obama ate a dog. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Aaaaand it was so delish.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  52. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's that you say, Obama is a muslim?

  53. Re:Obama ate a dog. by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

    As for being a "partner" a lot of muslims consider dog to be a dirty unclean animal.
    Yes, Muslims are hateful bigots. Your point?

    Irony meter overload.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  54. Re:Engineering Samples, or Actual CPUs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Incredible how many morons are willing to risk data integrity for a simple speed increase.

  55. Excellent. Or maybe some folding to warm the chips by bdwoolman · · Score: 1

    Perhaps I'll flip the fan around on the side of the case to blow outwards. Then I'll have the breeze.

    I've been trying to fry that P4 for nearly a decade. But. It. Just. Won't. Die.

    --
    "No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
  56. Re:Engineering Samples, or Actual CPUs? by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    these are CPUs with unlocked multiplier, just as it was before the pentium 2 and Athlon era. only on the expensive models muiltiplier is unlocked though, and other forms of o/c have been severely limited. What does that mean? pretty much only the CPU clock moves, typicaly at default core voltage. No memory and no bus are overclocked : the biggest offenders against data integrity aren't involved in the O/C at all. so it feels pretty safe.