The Sandy Bridge Preview (Anand)

[v0dka]

So. No more clocking of the bus speed. Only multipliers if you shell out extra cash for a K type CPU. Else you will have to settle for a few turbo multi's. And they took out memory clocking in the same nightmare scenario move. Someone change the threads title because this is the real news.

I'm amazed that there is no outrage here. People actually defend it. I guess the blind adoration of a company really has no limits for some.

Bullldozer here I come.

[rado992]

So. No more clocking of the bus speed. Only multipliers if you shell out extra cash for a K type CPU. Else you will have to settle for a few turbo multi's. And they took out memory clocking in the same nightmare scenario move. Someone change the threads title because this is the real news.

I'm amazed that there is no outrage here. People actually defend it. I guess the blind adoration of a company really has no limits for some.

Bullldozer here I come.

What extra cash? You don't appear to be running on a tight budget, so if the rumor about the $200 i7 2500K turns out to be true, I dont know what the problem would be. IMO It all depends on how they handle the K-series CPUs on LGA2011 since that's the real enthusiast platform. I'm not defending anyone, multi overclocking is nowhere as fun as FSB overclocking, and you don't increase RAM performance, but if it's still faster than BD, I don't mind getting one to replace my trusty Q9550@3,9GHz. If BD turns out to be as fast/faster and more fun, my money will go to AMD this time round. It's as simple as that, really.

[Chaserjzx100]

I'm amazed that there is no outrage here. People actually defend it. I guess the blind adoration of a company really has no limits for some.

.

yeah... im pretty much amazed too i thought this was xtremesystems not xtreme stock ghz on my pc forum

[geo]

yeah... im pretty much amazed too i thought this was xtremesystems not xtreme stock ghz on my pc forum

i mentioned that back in the thread and im suprised people on xs would ok with lack of overclocking choice.

[Sam_oslo]

i mentioned that back in the thread and im suprised people on xs would ok with lack of overclocking choice.

Those people you are taking about will keep using the high-end on socket 1336 until the high-end SB hits the marked. Those people you are referring to are not into mainstream. But what do you mean by lack of OCing? do you mean all these CPUs are locked on stock speed?

[geo]

Those people you are taking about will keep using the high-end on socket 1336 until the high-end SB hits the marked. Those people you are referring to are not into mainstream. But what do you mean by lack of OCing? do you mean all these CPUs are locked on stock speed?

imo its intel being greedy making design decisions to monetize mainstream overclocking. id rather spend extra dough on better hsf than pay intel for the 'privilage'. especially when privilage happens to be limited multipliers. not everyone buys $1000 cpu and §700 motherboards.but looking at the performance and no competetion from AMD i'll hold my nose and buy one

[JumpingJack]

imo its intel being greedy making design decisions to monetize mainstream overclocking. id rather spend extra dough on better hsf than pay intel for the 'privilage'. especially when privilage happens to be limited multipliers. not everyone buys $1000 cpu and §700 motherboards.

Mainstream overclocking is a blip on their balance sheet.

[geo]

Mainstream overclocking is a blip on their balance sheet.

then why not unlock multipliers on all mainstream chips? they are obviously trying to monetize it trying to make even the blip count.

[v0dka]

Mainstream overclocking is a blip on their balance sheet.

How do you know? Not trying to be antagonistic, just a question.

I think you mean that the sale and use of extreme editions is a blip on the balance sheet. It's more of a prestige thing than serious sales. Don't be too quick to dismiss "mainstream" overclocking as irrelevant.

And even if it is true that only an abolutely tiny amount of users overclock their systems, these are the guys that generally work in the field of IT or have some sort of connection to it. Meaning that they are more often than not the gateway to regular consumers. For example, I am convinced that the great overlockability of C2D was an important reason for it's huge success. And not only because enthousiasts were pushing C2D to their relations. I believe that everyone started overclocking his C2D at home because it was just so easy to get a 1Ghz incrase for free. Doing so on A64 was not that easy.

Intel is tired of seeing the higher binned CPU's gathering dust as everyone is buying low end and overclocking the snot out of it. This is especially worrying for Intel as the crowd that overclocks is generally the only group that would buy a high end CPU in the first place. So they have to force these K type CPU's onto them, better yet, make them get the more expensive socket with quad DDR3 channels at the end of 2011 to be able to change the bus speed and the multi's.

So we are stuck with a blunt tool called multi overclocking for "mainstream" SB (read: everyone in 2011, and probably over 90% of the market after 2011 as well). What is there to tweak other than Vcore and multi? It's like trying to make a painting using a pneumatic drill.

There seems to be no technical reason for this limitation to multi clocking either. If there was a technical reason to it why would they allow changing the bus speed on S2011 (I'm going by what Terrace215 said earlier in this thread btw)? SB on S2011 is the same architecture with quad channel DDR3 after all, right?

My point is Intel invented an artificial way to milk overclockers (which actually seems to contradict your statement that the overclocking market is tiny). They can do this if they want to, it's their company, but the real reason is that they limit the bus speed clocking just because mobo manufacturers will probably find a way to keep "mainstream" SB overclocking alive if the BCLK can be adjusted. Going the multi way gives Intel absolute control of what we can do. It's just wrong to destroy our hobby with pragmatic thinking like that. It dumbs down overclocking and quite frankly, takes the fun out of a place like XS. I'm directing this at everyone that thinks it's all fine and dandy what is happening now btw. Not at you JumpingJack.

[Hornet331]

imo its intel being greedy making design decisions to monetize mainstream overclocking. id rather spend extra dough on better hsf than pay intel for the 'privilage'. especially when privilage happens to be limited multipliers. not everyone buys $1000 cpu and §700 motherboards.

Its funny how you still say the same thing over and over again, when its wrong.

You dont need to spend 1000$ to get a unlocked cpu, plus with unlocked multis you don't need expensive mobos, hell i bet with SB even the cheapest mobos gets the same exact oc as a highend SB 1155 board. The only thing that has to be up for the task is the power circuit.

[geo]

Its funny how you still say the same thing over and over again, when its wrong.

You dont need to spend 1000$ to get a unlocked cpu, plus with unlocked multis you don't need expensive mobos, hell i bet with SB even the cheapest mobos gets the same exact oc as a highend SB 1155 board. The only thing that has to be up for the task is the power circuit.

i doubt quad channel mobo will be under$400 at the very least and cheapest quad under 350 . thats 400 extra for overclocking choices other than multipliers. quad channels dont mean much performancewise and 2011 quads wouldnt be that much performance increase over 1355 quads. so yeah 400extra for 2011 overclocking.

sure hex/octacore will be huge but they will be atleasst 600+ not mainstream..

[Iconyu]

imo its intel being greedy making design decisions to monetize mainstream overclocking. id rather spend extra dough on better hsf than pay intel for the 'privilage'. especially when privilage happens to be limited multipliers. not everyone buys $1000 cpu and §700 motherboards.but looking at the performance and no competetion from AMD i'll hold my nose and buy one

I'm sure Intel will hold their nose when they take your money...

[BatteryOperated]

imo its intel being greedy making design decisions to monetize mainstream overclocking.

Your opinion, huh? Imagine that : a corporation intent on becoming ever more wealthy. What a concept.

[RPGWiZaRD]

Well it could be more down to the architecture than anything else that sets the limits rather than Intel deliberately trying to cut down on users taking advantage of overclocking low budget CPUs to extreme variants or above, I doubt Intel takes overclocking capabilities into account when designing a new architecture (ofc clock frequency scaling is an important part but hey they can do it using higher multis so). We might just have been lucky with Core 2 - Core i7. What I'm saying is the FSB overclocking as we're used to might just have been a coincidence and that this time it won't happen as easily. Now you could even look like it from this perspective, what if Intel was kind enough to please enthusiasts to be able to overclock further with the K variants. You then might say well why not provide unlocked multis for all parts? Well overclocking community is just too small. But i7-2500K will be cheap at least, for majority of people the K variants won't make any sense.

Makes me remind of emulator community and the common view about "speed hacks", it was just a coincidence it works, they don't code the emulator in order to be able to support them. :p

[JumpingJack]

i mentioned that back in the thread and im suprised people on xs would ok with lack of overclocking choice.

yeah ... however, if Intel serves up K skus for reasonable costs it will make up for their decision a little.

But I, like many, believe that for the enthusiast community this is a poor move. I can see both sides of the argument. Enthusiast want the option to void their warranty and push to the limits. They want the most performance for the least cost.

The other side of the argument is Intel wants to make money every public corporation does (and Intel obviously really wants to make money, lots of it )... so they have 2-3% of the market (DYIer overclockers) asking for liberally peppered cheap skus to overclock, where has they have some 80% or more (my guess) who wants to cut system level manufacturing costs.... who do you think they are going to listen to?

AMD unlocked their skus as a nice bonus to attrack more enthusiast over clockers over while they worked on getting better products out to take on Intel's lead ... Intel released K skus to counter this, but imo, was more to make up for the eventual movement of the clock gen on package/die. It is actually quite amazing to me that Intel would even do that considering past behaviors.

[kl0012]

yeah ... however, if Intel serves up K skus for reasonable costs it will make up for their decision a little.

But I, like many, believe that for the enthusiast community this is a poor move. I can see both sides of the argument. Enthusiast want the option to void their warranty and push to the limits. They want the most performance for the least cost.

The other side of the argument is Intel wants to make money every public corporation does (and Intel obviously really wants to make money, lots of it )... so they have 2-3% of the market (DYIer overclockers) asking for liberally peppered cheap skus to overclock, where has they have some 80% or more (my guess) who wants to cut system level manufacturing costs.... who do you think they are going to listen to?

AMD unlocked their skus as a nice bonus to attrack more enthusiast over clockers over while they worked on getting better products out to take on Intel's lead ... Intel released K skus to counter this, but imo, was more to make up for the eventual movement of the clock gen on package/die. It is actually quite amazing to me that Intel would even do that considering past behaviors.

You've pretty good nailed it down.
Some ppl here somehow tend to forget who actually invited the idea to fine premium for an unlocked multipliers.

[Iconyu]

i mentioned that back in the thread and im suprised people on xs would ok with lack of overclocking choice.

I'm not buying the mainstream version that's why I'm not bothered, as I know the version I will buy allows me to do what I want.

If I do build a machine for someone and they do ask for a overclock, a multiplier overclock is much easier to keep stable than current methods. If they want that level of control I'll tell them what they need for it but I don't want to be holding their hand for that stuff all day long.

I doubt we see a SKU in that price bracket for S2011, more like in the next higher bracket (think 940).

On the other hand we already had models overlaping between S1156 and S1336, so it might be possible that we get SKUs that are cheaper.

Actually I think there will be a lot of price brackets covered in socket 2011, as Intel might release quad, hex and octal core versions.

[Hornet331]

So. No more clocking of the bus speed. Only multipliers if you shell out extra cash for a K type CPU. Else you will have to settle for a few turbo multi's. And they took out memory clocking in the same nightmare scenario move. Someone change the threads title because this is the real news.

I'm amazed that there is no outrage here. People actually defend it. I guess the blind adoration of a company really has no limits for some.

Bullldozer here I come.

Whys there no outrage?

Quite simple -> S2011. I don't really care for Mainstream SB the features and performance improvment are nice and it give a glimps at what we can expect from S2011.

So i don't really care if there is a oc lock on mainstream SB, now if there would be also a oc lock on S2011 that would make me rage.

[Manicdan]

Whys there no outrage?

cause a VIP on this forum, in this thread, made a good point,

OCing isnt a right, its a privilege. a few of us got a bit of a giggle out of it.

i think a few people will switch sides just cause they like the challenge, not even worried about performance differences.

and it is a good point that even though K series have unlimited multi, its just not sounding very fun.

[Sam_oslo]

cause a VIP on this forum, in this thread, made a good point,

OCing isnt a right, its a privilege. a few of us got a bit of a giggle out of it.

i think a few people will switch sides just cause they like the challenge, not even worried about performance differences.

and it is a good point that even though K series have unlimited multi, its just not sounding very fun.

The hard core OCers have been spending extra to get unlocked multi, because they don't want the limitations made by MB, RAM and Uncore. I haven't seen many Ocer who are pushing the BCLK on 980x, actually. So the K-series doesn't need to be something negative, on the contrary it is a strength. The fun part is to get most out of what you got and a new architecture will always present new ways to have fun too.

[Manicdan]

The hard core OCers have been spending extra to get unlocked multi, because they don't want the limitations made by MB, RAM and Uncore. I haven't seen many Ocer who are pushing the BCLK on 980x, actually. So the K-series doesn't need to be something negative, on the contrary it is a strength. The fun part is to get most out of what you got and a new architecture will always present new ways to have fun too.

i believe in a simple theory that with more time involved, the outcome is more rewarding. if it takes 20 minutes to find the max overclock, your probably going to be bored the rest of the weekend. but if you have 4 voltages, 3 multipliers, all the ram latencies, the base clock, and sweet spots that work well together, you can really have a weeks worth of fun getting every last percentage out of it.

[Sam_oslo]

i believe in a simple theory that with more time involved, the outcome is more rewarding. if it takes 20 minutes to find the max overclock, your probably going to be bored the rest of the weekend. but if you have 4 voltages, 3 multipliers, all the ram latencies, the base clock, and sweet spots that work well together, you can really have a weeks worth of fun getting every last percentage out of it.

I got finished OCing my SR-2 in 20 minutes anyways, , mainly because we know all the tricks of the good old i7-architecture by now, but i see what you mean. A new architecture will always have it's own new tricks and give us a couple of days fun, don't worry.

Bet lets agree the unlocked multi on k-series is not something negative, but is actually positive.

[terrace215]

So. No more clocking of the bus speed. Only multipliers if you shell out extra cash for a K type CPU. Else you will have to settle for a few turbo multi's. And they took out memory clocking in the same nightmare scenario move. Someone change the threads title because this is the real news.

I'm amazed that there is no outrage here. People actually defend it. I guess the blind adoration of a company really has no limits for some.

Bullldozer here I come.

Erm, the parts that are positioned against BD (LGA-2011) have the stuff you're complaining about.

But even on these 1155 mainstream parts, even on the non-K parts, you can overclock the memory on all p67 mobos.

So yes, lets all get outraged.

[v0dka]

Erm, the parts that are positioned against BD (LGA-2011) have the stuff you're complaining about.

But even on these 1155 mainstream parts, even on the non-K parts, you can overclock the memory on all p67 mobos.

So yes, lets all get outraged.

Oh now it's ""mainstream" and no one should care (funny though that you insist on calling 3.4Ghz parts mainstream). Ever thought of the fact that 99% of users buy mainstream products?

And what will S2011 bring exactly? Extreme editions @ € 1.000,-? No thanks I'll pass on that great offer.

[JumpingJack]

And what will S2011 bring exactly? Extreme editions @ € 1.000,-? No thanks I'll pass on that great offer.

The I7-920 was not a $1K processor and launched in socket S1366 at the same time. I suspect this will also be the case with S2011.