Quote Originally Posted by Donnie27
The NO overclocking people at Intel always complained about VAR and shady OEM overclocking and lying about it. Intel didn't get all buddy up with Fugger to squander that good-will gained in this market.

I don't think any of us here really know what is going on in the minds of Intel corporate folks. However, I would guess that Intel would actually prefer to stop or at least hinder overclocking if they could, at least in the lower bins. As long as it doesn't cost them too much to do so. I don't remember anyone taking them seriously when they claimed that the reason they introduced multiplier locking was due to concerns about chip remarking. That is what they said, but I believe they were a lot more concerned about about losing money to people who would otherwise pay more for a higher clocked chip. What did you expect them to say? Would you expect them to actually admit that it was also an inexpensive way to stop overclockers? That would be bad PR. If they choose to take a few extra steps to make it difficult or impossible to overclock nehalem, you can bet that they are going to have some PR approved reason. The question is are you going to believe that as well?

I don't think Intel is going to make any kind of huge effort to prevent overclocking, but if it is easy and inexpensive for them to do so I think they might give it a try. 'Good will' means very little when you have the fastest chips by a large margin. They are well aware that that is exactly the sort of offer that 'enthusiasts' like us simply can't refuse. As a percentage of the market I cannot imagine that overclockers represent a large portion of their income anyway. Which is why it is not worth it to them to spend much in either preventing or allowing it. Still, I would guess that it would slightly enhance their bottom line if overclocking became impossible due to an architectural change.

Personally I would have paid up to $500 or so for my new CPU, but I only had to pay $200 for my E8400. It clocks about as high as anything else and my apps are mostly single threaded. Why should I pay more? Also keep in mind that overclocking has become a lot more popular than it was when they introduced the multiplier locks. I am sure they are not unaware of that.