Intel plans to deliberately limit Sandy Bridge overclocking

[saaya]

ya sure ok companies arent concerned in the least about making money

thats not what i said... the people who make these decisions at intel dont know the retail market and dont know about overclocking and how powerful of a marketing tool it is... hence, they didnt care about extra logic for overclocking. now its up to the retail guys at intel to fix this by releasing unlocked cpus and trying to implement a divider for dmi to split off bclock from the other clocks again.

You still have a reference clock aka base clock and from this clock all other clock domains are sprung off. The difference is, that for mainstream SB you have locked DMI and PCIE multiplicators. So if you increase reference clock you also increase both of this clocks.

you think they already HAVE a divider in place? that makes no sense... if they would, then the ES cpus would have them enabled to debug it... they clearly arent capable to altering bclock without dmi because there isnt any divider in the current 1155 cpus. and i doubt there ever will be...

Well it hasn't to be the PCI-E bus but more like the DMI bus, since on currenct platforms its locked at a fixed frequency and uneffected by increasing the reference frequency. But now for the value/mainstream platform its directly tied to the reference clock.

And if the signals form the DMI bus get "unclear" you lose the comunication to the PCH.

You don't have this problem with the enthusiast plattform since there you can chage the multis and keep them in certain frequency spectrum.

Anyway as some posters already said, it to eraly to say anthing absolute. We'll know more next IDF in september.

i wouldnt be surprised if the problem is caused by timings not matching up and maybe too small buffers...
dmi is largely based on pciE and pciE is fine with higher clocks, so whatever intel added protocol wise to make it dmi, must be responsible for this... either that or they altered the interface and reduced buffers and cut down the design to safe transistors resulting in worse clock margins...

The CPU distributors have the instrument to check if the CPUs are burnt by OC.

thats what they told you
all those "tools" do is meassure the internal resistance between the different ground and power planes, you cant conclude from that HOW the cpu burned, actually you cant even tell whether it burned our not as it might as well be a pcb or pad issue causing those readings... :P

i am the only one with real Perf data in hands ...

houston to francois, houston to francois, we lost track of you, are you still in the solar system?

same crap as when the i7's first released. Apparently back then, bclks were locked and we couldn't use more that 1.65v vDIMM. Lol on both counts.

no, bclocks were limited by the same clock buffer but luckily some people in intel found a way to work around the buffer. and luckily they managed to fix the vdimm issue as well.
in this case the change they would have to do to fix overclocking would be pretty big afaik, so im sceptical if they will do it... BCLOCK overclocking that is... i think they will just release multi unlocked cpus... but for what price? :/

i think theres a lot of misunderstanding about this...
there wont be bclock overclocking, most likely, but whoever is claiming that there wont be ANY overclocking is talking bs...

what many people ARE upset or worried about though is not the claims of no overclocking, BUT:

1. there will be unlocked cpus, but not all of them will be unlocked... which means there will be cpus with locked multipliers and no bclock adjustments either, which will be FULLY LOCKED and wont be able to overclock beyond 5-10%.

2. the unlocked cpus will most likely come at a price premium, so yes, we will still be able to overclock, but this time around we will have to PAY for it... there wont be any free overclocking, and there wont be any massive percentage and price performance overclocks using entry level cpus and pushing them into the realms of the super highend performance wise...

and that sucks...
i sure hope intel or a mainboard maker figures out a way to improve or enable proper bclock overclocking...

I have heard this just before Nehalen was launched. I believe when I see it. Probably this is just another crapload created.

it wasnt a load of cr4p then and it isnt now, its getting blown out of proportion, YES! but its not made up or nonsense...
last time around intel solved it, luckily, this time its a bit tougher to solve but lets hope they will get if fixed within the next couple of months...

Albert Einstein said "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" , so, I am going to say it as simple as I can, and you guys can quote me to reply to those silly stuffs:
"Overclocking will be different on SB, but it will still be a lot of fun too, and it will be as good/high as usual, and Anybody who claim the opposite just have an agenda"

Sorry for not sharing my results ... hehehe ... but well, you guys are slow on your SuperPi results and so on .... hahahahahaha

Drwho?

o rly?
so we will see something like this on 1155?
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=255305

and yes, i do have an agenda, i love the overclocking spirit and that thread right there is full of it. getting a cheap piece of equippment and tweaking the cr4p out of it, THATS the true overclocking spirit!
not spending shtloads of money on custom gear and then simply pushing the buttons other people set in place for you...

"Intel plans to deliberately limit Sandy Bridge overclocking" ... The tittle is totally BS, but still ...

on that i actually agree with you
i dont think intel did it on purpose, its more like they unplugged the cables, put them in a different way and all major channels worked for them, but they didnt notice that they unplugged their customers from the playboy channel

oh please... come one you guys are both in +35years old and you still act like kids?

what??
just cause their having a joke on the side?
i think you misunderstood their posts, i dont think either of their replies was meant in a bad way at all, they are both joking...
and francois, respect, im surprised you replied the way you did

Sandybridge -DT= 4core /8 threads, LGA 1155 3.0ghz clock speed 3.8 turbo , TDP 65-95W all i can really find, Bet you guys didnt know after ivry bridge their bringing out haswell and rockwell which are 16 nm

haswell is 16nm now?

ok ppl when ever you see a thread by me, and you dont like the title....blame the article. i never change the titles, i believe it is more journalistic to leave them as is (no matter how flaming them are). so stop attacking me ok?

i dont think anybody meant to attack you

[Iconyu]

ok ppl when ever you see a thread by me, and you dont like the title....blame the article. i never change the titles, i believe it is more journalistic to leave them as is (no matter how flaming them are). so stop attacking me ok?

Don't worry if you hadn't posted the thread, the Dr would probably not have bothered to show up at all, I bet he's looking for a Tamiya Nissan GTR to assemble.

[Hornet331]

no, bclocks were limited by the same clock buffer but luckily some people in intel found a way to work around the buffer. and luckily they managed to fix the vdimm issue as well.
in this case the change they would have to do to fix overclocking would be pretty big afaik, so im sceptical if they will do it... BCLOCK overclocking that is... i think they will just release multi unlocked cpus... but for what price? :/

Lol reading that paragraph you are beliveing that engineering only consists out of luck?

What vdimm issue? If you allude to the 0,5V "issue", nope its still there. If you want to kill your nehalem cpu fast just increase ram voltage 0,5V above the qpi voltage and watch it die (over several days).

Creating and fixing problems has hardly something to do with luck, but rather with hard work, knowledge and determination.

[Johnny87au]

@ saaya

[Mechromancer]

So Intel is pretty confident SB will be faster than Bulldozer it seems. Is Intel confident that their integrated GPU will be faster than AMD's GPU? If so, that is FAR more interesting than hearing about the CPU cores.

[-Sweeper_]

@ saaya

thats rockwell, haswell is still 22nm...

[terrace215]

So Intel is pretty confident SB will be faster than Bulldozer it seems. Is Intel confident that their integrated GPU will be faster than AMD's GPU? If so, that is FAR more interesting than hearing about the CPU cores.

My guess is that the GPU in SB won't be quite as strong as the GPU in Llano (Bulldozer does not come with an iGPU, at least not until some future part), but that both will be strong enough that the discrete GPU market will shrink considerably; Only "serious gamer / designer" folks will bother adding one.

[Drwho?]

Originally Posted by Drwho?
i am the only one with real Perf data in hands ...

houston to francois, houston to francois, we lost track of you, are you still in the solar system?

Do you really Think that the parts out there has final tuning in? look at the stepping ...

SandyB is very different than what you are use to ... may be you are a little bit over confident ... To quote morphius, "Don't think you are, know you are!"

in my case, I prefert Kouros ... Houston is not launching as much space craft than Kouros.
... and i am in perfect synch with what I know about SandyB

[Computurd]

Francois, i would like to thank you for participating here, it is great that you take the time to talk to us!

But, i do have a question, any timeframe on the G3 intels? and will they have 6gb/s interface?

[informal]

DrWho,to get things straight, you are denying 2 of the Hans' speculations about the L3 cache located next to each core and about the SSE unit organization?

[Hornet331]

Do you really Think that the parts out there has final tuning in? look at the stepping ...

SandyB is very different than what you are use to ... may be you are a little bit over confident ... To quote morphius, "Don't think you are, know you are!"

Are there even "classic" steppings with SB, cause with SB we should get upgradeable firmware? I still wonder what capabilities this FW has, and how much you can influence the CPU with it.

[Drwho?]

Are there even "classic" steppings with SB, cause with SB we should get upgradeable firmware? I still wonder what capabilities this FW has, and how much you can influence the CPU with it.

well, this is not firmware, this is the regular systems, but it is much more advanced now that things are getting integrated. Especially on the power management side, you don t want laptop parts and desktop parts to behave the same. Nothing new, just more nodes to adapt to where stuff go. If you look at the literrature about Nehalem, it is already in. Thinking that the receipe to optimize all of this is in those leaked sample is funny. What would mean that Intel People are so good that we don t need the silicon to tune the CPU ... lol I wish! But sorry very much like you and me, Human!

Let's take an example, turning OFF the top of the 64 to 128bits of an SSE execution can save 50% of the power, in the mean time, turning it back on is not instantanious ... so, for a workstation, you don t want that feature ON, while, on a laptop , you really want this ... Now, if you go through the all design of a core like Nehalem, you ll find many places where you can enable those kind of power saving. you want to turn off your cores when you see only single threaded workloads, etc ... all of those policies need to be tuned.
The new generation of CPUs are not what people are use to, there are reason why the Core i3/i5 have those amazing level of performance with the same power envellope as Penryn ...
Power gating is very powerfull if you take the time to do it very deep everywhere and you have a power control unit smart enough to do it right.

Those new processor architectures are really amazing, provide awesome flexibility, with billion like transistor count.
Intel Rarely speak about it, but we do have performance counters all over the CPU, monitoring all the phenomena inside the machine, and vTune allow you to get access and see the statistics about all of this. If you are really into performance and CPU architecture, there are documentation and free version of vTune. help yourselfs, and look at all those nodes that can be monitored. The CPUs are not 486 or Pentium like for a long time, NEhalem toke it to a much higher level, and this was only the 1st step.

Francois

PS: by the way, i just posted this using Wimax enable Core i7 620M, and I am in the middle of the silicon valley, Indoor , using WIMAX-4G

This is the way to go ==> http://www.clear.com/

[Chumbucket843]

If you are really into performance and CPU architecture, there are documentation and free version of vTune. help yourselfs, and look at all those nodes that can be monitored. The CPUs are not 486 or Pentium like for a long time, NEhalem toke it to a much higher level, and this was only the 1st step.

Francois

where? i must have this.

[Movieman]

well, this is not firmware, this is the regular systems, but it is much more advanced now that things are getting integrated. Especially on the power management side, you don t want laptop parts and desktop parts to behave the same. Nothing new, just more nodes to adapt to where stuff go. If you look at the literrature about Nehalem, it is already in. Thinking that the receipe to optimize all of this is in those leaked sample is funny. What would mean that Intel People are so good that we don t need the silicon to tune the CPU ... lol I wish! But sorry very much like you and me, Human!

Let's take an example, turning OFF the top of the 64 to 128bits of an SSE execution can save 50% of the power, in the mean time, turning it back on is not instantanious ... so, for a workstation, you don t want that feature ON, while, on a laptop , you really want this ... Now, if you go through the all design of a core like Nehalem, you ll find many places where you can enable those kind of power saving. you want to turn off your cores when you see only single threaded workloads, etc ... all of those policies need to be tuned.
The new generation of CPUs are not what people are use to, there are reason why the Core i3/i5 have those amazing level of performance with the same power envellope as Penryn ...
Power gating is very powerfull if you take the time to do it very deep everywhere and you have a power control unit smart enough to do it right.

Those new processor architectures are really amazing, provide awesome flexibility, with billion like transistor count.
Intel Rarely speak about it, but we do have performance counters all over the CPU, monitoring all the phenomena inside the machine, and vTune allow you to get access and see the statistics about all of this. If you are really into performance and CPU architecture, there are documentation and free version of vTune. help yourselfs, and look at all those nodes that can be monitored. The CPUs are not 486 or Pentium like for a long time, NEhalem toke it to a much higher level, and this was only the 1st step.

Francois

BUT..BUT what about those of us that don't want any powersaving anything turned on.My machines run at 100% load 24/7/365.25...

Although I have a pair of L5630 32nm quads that I'm testing in my SM X8DA3 board right now and seeing 175w usage(8C/16T@2130MHz) on a kill-a-watt is very pleasing to my wallet!

[Drwho?]

BUT..BUT what about those of us that don't want any powersaving anything turned on.My machines run at 100% load 24/7/365.25...

Although I have a pair of L5630 32nm quads that I'm testing in my SM X8DA3 board right now and seeing 175w usage(8C/16T@2130MHz) on a kill-a-watt is very pleasing to my wallet!

well, let s say for example that you run a non optimized code, like PhysX (lol) where the code is only using x87 ... or scalar SSE for the x64 version (low 64 bit), then, Nehalem architecture will turn off the high part of the execution unit, and save power to give you more frequency using Turbo ... helping to maximize your experience and processing power. In the case of overclockers, well, when you OC, those features mostly turn off when they are tuned well ... and this is where we go back to the point that tunning needs to be done and applied right.
early proto stepping never get the final tuning.

[NBF]

where? i must have this.

I think hes talking about this
http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-vtune/

[Movieman]

well, let s say for example that you run a non optimized code, like PhysX (lol) where the code is only using x87 ... or scalar SSE for the x64 version (low 64 bit), then, Nehalem architecture will turn off the high part of the execution unit, and save power to give you more frequency using Turbo ... helping to maximize your experience and processing power. In the case of overclockers, well, when you OC, those features mostly turn off when they are tuned well ... and this is where we go back to the point that tunning needs to be done and applied right.
early proto stepping never get the final tuning.

Thanks for the info..
Will we see dual socket SB boards?
( and when,chips I can get, boards you have all locked away for yourself! )

[Drwho?]

where? i must have this.

http://search.intel.com/default.aspx...=en_US&q=vtune

Here are some of the litterature on vtune ...

here is some usefull resources ...
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/manual/252046.pdf
http://search.intel.com/default.aspx...0documentation

You can see a lot of very intimate details of the architecture if you spend the time to read all of this.

Francois

[Chumbucket843]

I think hes talking about this
http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-vtune/

i want the free one. im not paying $700 for vtune because it's not worth it for me. all i want to do is check out statistics on ipc, branch prediction, caching etc.

[NBF]

i want the free one. im not paying $700 for vtune because it's not worth it for me. all i want to do is check out statistics on ipc, branch prediction, caching etc.

Its free for evaluation for a 30 day period.

[Hornet331]

i want the free one. im not paying $700 for vtune because it's not worth it for me. all i want to do is check out statistics on ipc, branch prediction, caching etc.

http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...ware-download/

but only for linux. But v-tune offers a lot of information for basic information you also could try: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/perfmonitor.html

edit: damn didn't noticed perfmon doesn't work with nehalem...

and thx for the reply Francois.

[Sam_oslo]

@Drwho?
The mainstream Sandy Bridge is getting out earlier than expected, maybe the same will be the case for high-end SB?. Do you have any estimate when we can expect the real existing stuff?

[terrace215]

@Drwho?
The mainstream Sandy Bridge is getting out earlier than expected,

It's been shipments in Q4, launch in Q1 for a long time now. Some dope wrote an article saying it was coming early after misinterpreting Otellini's CC comments that the SB *ramp would be faster* due to strong customer interest. Intel did not say anything was coming *sooner*, and Intel has repeatedly said that customers do not care for Q4 launches, they prefer Q1... so even if they COULD launch it in Q4... they wouldn't.

[cegras]

It's been shipments in Q4, launch in Q1 for a long time now. Some dope wrote an article saying it was coming early after misinterpreting Otellini's CC comments that the SB *ramp would be faster* due to strong customer interest. Intel did not say anything was coming *sooner*, and Intel has repeatedly said that customers do not care for Q4 launches, they prefer Q1... so even if they COULD launch it in Q4... they wouldn't.

Indeed.

[Drwho?]

@Drwho?
The mainstream Sandy Bridge is getting out earlier than expected, maybe the same will be the case for high-end SB?. Do you have any estimate when we can expect the real existing stuff?

I can t answer those kind of Question ... I love my job too much ;-)