Intel Removes "Free" Overclocking From Standard Haswell CPUs

crookedvulture writes "With its Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors, Intel allowed standard Core i5 and i7 CPUs to be overclocked by up to 400MHz using Turbo multipliers. Reaching for higher speeds required pricier K-series chips, but everyone got access to a little "free" clock headroom. Haswell isn't quite so accommodating. Intel has disabled limited multiplier control for non-K CPUs, effectively limiting overclocking to the Core i7-4770K and i5-4670K. Those chips cost $20-30 more than their standard counterparts, and surprisingly, they're missing a few features. The K-series parts lack the support for transactional memory extensions and VT-d device virtualization included with standard Haswell CPUs. PC enthusiasts now have to choose between overclocking and support for certain features even when purchasing premium Intel processors. AMD also has overclocking-friendly K-series parts, but it offers more models at lower prices, and it doesn't remove features available on standard CPUs."

Comments

Nice biased wording there

[KZigurs]

AMD also has overclocking-friendly K-series parts, but it offers more models at lower prices, and it doesn't remove features available on standard CPUs.

It is also significantly slower buck for buck in real life workloads.

Re:Nice biased wording there

[Squiddie]

I try to practice the good enough philosophy, and AMD is good enough. I don't get the whole Intel/AMD fanboyism. I certainly would feel cheated if I just had to have Intel, though.

Re:Nice biased wording there

[Rockoon]

It is also significantly slower buck for buck in real life workloads.

Buck for buck? Are you on crack?

AMD wins the price/performance comparison. Intel wins the peak performance comparison.

Looks to me like you are practicing the big lie for your masters at Intel.

Re:That is dumb

[tapspace]

Guh. Premium, not primium! And annecessary = unnecessary. I suck.

Meh.

[nitzmahone]

I've never found overclocking to be worth the trouble. Anytime there's a stability issue with an overclocked PC, there's always that nagging doubt that all my troubleshooting is for naught, because it was a fluke bit fail due to the overclocking. Life's too short- skip the anxiety and run your processor at it's rated speed.

Re:Meh.

[girlintraining]

In my experiences, they have always outperformed Intel's processors, and generally cost half as much.

That hasn't been the case for several generations of processor design, unfortunately. The top end of the AMD processor line can't compete with Intel on performance. That's why they've gotten so cheap -- so OEMs build systems on them. The 'Intel Tax' puts a lot of their mid-range and above stuff out of reach of the average consumer, and generally you're only finding them in laptops now because of the superior power usage and thermals...

If you want per-unit performance today, you buy Intel. If you want commodity, you buy AMD.

Re:Does MHz matter anymore?

[BLKMGK]

Add to the list below rendering and those of us who compress and process video - of which I am one. Faster clock speeds can save me HOURS of time and is why I run an overclocked Sandy i7 at over 4ghz. It runs for hours at a time fully slammed with no problems.

So yeah, there are use cases for this outside of your sphere of knowledge.

Is it necessary these days?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Yes, I remember the good ol' days when you can get a $100 CPU and make it work like a $800 one. I remember in particular the days of buying a cheap Celeron and having it perform like much more expensive Pentium II or even P3.

And I also remember days of headaches with stability issues, over heating and other stupid problems all to squeeze a few extra FPS out of Doom.

Nobody overclocks anymore, and if they do, it like getting a trophy for trolling a blog. Its completely unnecessary and doesn't really offer anything except a feel good, slap on the thy own back when you see your completely arbitrary and virtual benchmark numbers rise up while you ruin your CPU.

What needs the extra performance these days? You need to Tweet faster? Like on Facebook faster? Browse a website factions of milliseconds faster?

Games used to drive overclocking but GPU's are where game performance lies these days. Sure maybe overclocking your CPU by 50% might offer 1% more FPS, but who the fuck really cares, nobody with a life that is.

Intel realizes that the enthusiast market for PC's has nose dived and its obviously cheaper to produce CPU's where you don't have to worry about the kind of performance tolerances that are required for overclocking.

And I don't think "enterprise" level developers are buying cheap computers and then overclocking to get better VM performance. I mean really? If you consider yourself an "enterprise" developer then get the "enterprise" to buy you a decent workstation or VM server. I don't think your "enterprise" wants you to spend days trying to optimize performance on your workstation, I'd fire anybody that wastes any amount of time in a BIOS.

I would say Intel should focus on offering one "enthusiast" level CPU that is completely unlocked for overclocking. I mean if people want to burn out their CPU repeatedly its more money from a market segment that is drying up, but I think in general Intel or any CPU company should not have to worry about providing overclockable CPU's across their product line.

The bottom line is that benchmarks aside, if you ever looked at your Task Manager you'd probably realize that your CPU is idling at 1% usage 99% of the time, so you want to make the System Idle task run faster? I don't get it anymore.