Intel to drop overclocking for mainstream Nehalems

[V3NOM]

well F*CK YOU INTEL. looking forward to Deneb even though i know jack all about it 😀

 

[one-shot]

I've heard from an engineer at Intel that Gamers/Overclockers make up 5% of their total revenue. Big deal to them. Nehalem is oriented towards the server market. A business wouldn't plan on making the 5% happy if they also account for a very small increase in revenue. We just gotta face the facts and decide with our money what we're going to do.

 

[anartik]

Its really about wait and see... and those that jump on the bleeding edge will likely get burned IMO. There are still a lot of questions to be answered about Nehalem. From what I have gathered Nehalem is Intel’s answer to the more popular AMD server chips (and of course the dark empires attempt to deliver the coup de grace to AMD). As a consequence of that Nehalem has smaller cache which will probably adversely effect game performance and leave Wolfdale and Yorkfield the better choice for some time to come (not to mention price/performance). Of course the folks over at Intel marketing will take full advantage of the insignificance of AMD and stick it to the consumer in the form of outrageous prices, non-overclockable chips(w/o a large premium), unnecessary multiple platforms, disabling of HT w/o a premium etc. etc. I'm sure there will also be an additional mobo premium because of new Intel patents and of course Nvidia licensing for SLI. A 4|8 core with 8|16 threads is nice but hardware is ahead of most PC software and it could be years before the majority of games and applications take advantage of more than 1-2 threads even with forced affinity. I still have not seen a true answer to the memory voltage limitations of Nehalem. Until the memory manufacturers can pull it out your going to use slower DDR3 in a new platform? Of course those enthusiasts that bought high voltage performance DDR3 (i.e. DDR3 2000) will get burned (not to mention needing a 3rd stick for 3 way). Although Nvidia has been rumoured to be getting out of the chipset business Intel can now monopolize the Intel chipset business even further with new patents and licensing requirements.

The way I see it the biggest advantage of Nehalem is in hopefully forcing down prices of Wolfdale and Yorkfield. I'm perfectly happy with the performance of my Wolfdale and I will likely extend the systems life later on with a cheaper high end Yorkfield. Perfect example of Intel's monopolistic spite towards enthusiasts/OC'ers is the Q9650 vs QX9650. Same chip, same cache but double the price for one because it is unlocked. I just hope Intel continues to crank up Yorkfield. I'll probably buy one if they hit 3.16 or 3.33 for non-extreme and the price is right. What we really need is for AMD to pull their head out of their aho and give Intel some competition. Barring that Intel needs a good smack in the head from Justice in the form of another anti trust lawsuit.

 

[Homeboy2]

(and of course the dark empires attempt to deliver the coup de grace to AMD).

Intel has no need or desire to kill off AMD. To do so would invite congressional hearings and possible indictments, especially with the likely incoming new administration

 

[V3NOM]

^and neither do we. monopolies FTL.