Intel to Stunt Overclocking on Sandy Bridge CPUs

[jecastej]

AMD. AMD. AMD...

The market needs you, we need you. What can I say, I don't have any AMD CPU processor but it may change for my next system

 

[K-zon]

Another round of limiting users of their consumers products. Having to get into deveus mind thoughts and activities to find what we are looking for in the things we buy.

Value changes as in no one know what they are maybe, idk. Either way, hopefully they do what they are intended too upon release.

 

[TunaSoda]

"single single" rofl

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]utengineer[/nom]Intel already simplifies their MB. Just check out their mainstream and entry level solutions. These are used in business class solutions.Intel's first roll-out of Sandy Bridge is for the mainstream market. Overclockers will be given choices with the Sandy Bridge-E platform which will have a range of processors to choose from. I think most of the people commenting are just getting their panties bunched up prematurely. That being said, I will anticipate SB-E, get a 6/8 core proc and rest assured whatever AMD puts out will 6-months to a year behind in dev. This is the circle of life people and Intel is the Lion King![/citation]

Obviously, this simplifies it further, and makes it cheaper. That's a good thing for most people.

 

[BulkZerker]

[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]Obviously, this simplifies it further, and makes it cheaper. That's a good thing for most people.[/citation]
Not when the cheapest solution is stilll $20 more than the competition's midrange offering.

Also, simba "lion king" never had to tangle with THE BULLDOZER! Intels low end is going to get black balled because amds offerings will either undercut inte by a great margin, or offer bettter performance for the. Sme prrice, even if it runs faaster. In the end its how much joe user has to pay, not how fst the processor runs.

 

[Lamiel]

[citation][nom]LenoxLV[/nom]That`s why Intel is stopping overclocking. Why should you purchase sandy bridge when you have a i7-920 overclocked witch will server you for years? This is why they are trying to stop overclocking, so people need to buy need CPUs.[/citation]

That makes no sense. First you ask why someone would buy a new CPU that doesn't OC when they already have an i7-920, and then you say that Intel's doing this to force people to buy new CPUs. The logic you began with totally counters your last statement.

Like others have said, I'll believe this when I see it. I fell for it last time, when everyone was saying that the Nehalem's would be crippled when it came to OC'ing, and I ended up feeling like a chump after the i7-920 blew everything out of the water. I'm sure Intel knows that they would be pretty much losing the enthusiast market if they did something like this, and since when has Intel wanted to lose anything? They want to put AMD out of business, not drive all the gamers to the underdog. Just think about it...

 

[hakesterman]

Just another reason NOT to buy Intel Processors.

 

[utengineer]

[citation][nom]LeJay[/nom]Erhm,... A one day timemachine is still pretty cool.[/citation]
The one-day time machines will be powered by AMD. THe time machines that go faster and further, will be by Intel.

 

[anamaniac]

My chip is capable of running much higher than stock frequency while remaining at stock voltage while remaining stable. This is abusive.
At least ship the good chips at a lower voltage (if the chip can run at 1.10V stably, but is 1.25V stock, just put the damned voltage down then).

I'm hoping this isn't true, but if so, AMD it is.

 

[christop]

Good luck with busted bridge...

 

[BulkZerker]

[citation][nom]Lamiel[/nom]That makes no sense. First you ask why someone would buy a new CPU that doesn't OC when they already have an i7-920, and then you say that Intel's doing this to force people to buy new CPUs. The logic you began with totally counters your last statement.[/citation]

It made perfect sence to me. If you don't already have a core 2 or core i then you better buy it now or got to AMD if you want to overclock. Intel of course is not thrilled that in the general market that they are getting hosed with new PC sales because they don't have anything that offers enough more performance for anyone to want to buy a new chip because they overclock so well. So they make it even harder for OC users to OC without paying for the extreme edition type chips taht have an unlocked multiplier.

 

[gr33nf00t]

[citation][nom]utengineer[/nom]Will AMD even be around in 10 years? They just had their first profitable quarter in like 4 years.[/citation]

A lot of that has been the cost of acquiring ATI, as well as all the restructuring of Global Foundries. With regards to the former at least, AMD has been seeing some real returns, and all things considered, AMD seems to have a good handle on things to come. So yes, AMD will be here in 10 years.

 

[dEAne]

Thus making overclocking hard in intel chip - so another choice is amd.

 

[Digital Dissent]

Screw you intel. Dont push it I WILL go over to AMD if I have to.

 

[doyletdude]

Just so we are all clear, they are only stunting overclocking on their midrange and lower platforms. The platform that is intended to replace x58/i7 is still supposed to be highly overclockable. While this is bad for business and reputation compared to AMDs lowest level stuff being overclockable, i'll personally survive because i don't see myself downgrading from x58/i7 to the sandybridge. the sandybridge-e is being made for us overclockers.

 

[wrazor]

Dont know whats so funny about the statement "single single clock generator". It means that there will be one clock(only) capable of generating a single timeframe for THAT clock. That is what I can make out of and it does makes sense. So, this means the earlier architectures had more than one clock generators which took independent cycles for the other components like usb and pci slots? hmmm intriguing. Wish somebody could shed some light on this.

 

[yyk71200]

Bulldozer kills everything Intel has and Intel can't even overclock anymore. Talking about turning the table, lol.

 

[JonnyDough]

I buy the CPU that has the best performance for the money. Performance/value ratio is everything. Why should we even care about overclocking if the chip is already capable and a solid purchase? People that want something for nothing are the same that probably pirate software. There is nothing wrong with getting what you pay for, as long as it meets your expectation.

 

[psychotek71]

i core 7 may beat amd but Amd 6 core is 1100 cheeper

 

[Matthias99]

If I'm reading those diagrams correctly, this looks like it should only be a problem for the "Cougar Point" chipset. The "Patsburg" configuration has divisors for the PEG and other busses so that you can run the CPU at a higher clock rate.

The last bullet point on each of the diagrams even spells it out -- "Cougar Point" only supports a "2-3% overclock" due to "Processor DMI/PEG DLL limitation".

What this *would* mean is that you won't be able to OC with cheap Sandy Bridge motherboards -- at least ones using Intel chipsets -- unless the MB vendors implement some kind of alternate clocking solution.

 

[Matthias99]

Also, processors with unlocked multipliers could still easily be overclocked on either platform (up to the limit of their allowable multipliers).

Of course, Intel tends to charge a substantial premium for those chips.

 

[buzznut]

[citation][nom]one-shot[/nom]They said the same about Bloomfield/1366 i7s being unable to overclock, too.Does anyone remember this?http://news.softpedia.com/news/Int [...] 4019.shtmlI'll believe it when I see it.[/citation]
sounds a little suspect to me too.

 

[OvrClkr]

Intel has already confirmed :

Details of Sandy Bridge were leaked to the media in July 2009. The specifications are reported to be as follows:

* 2.8 GHz to 3.4 GHz clock speed with Turbo Boost Technology disabled.
* 3.0 GHz to 3.8 GHz clock speed with Turbo Boost Technology enabled.
* Processing cores will feature Hyper-Threading Technology that is also present in Intel Nehalem-based processors, as well as Intel Pentium 4 processors.
* 4 cores by default, but processors with 6 and 8 cores will probably be available in Q2 2011.
* Approximate 225 mm² die size by default.
* Without SSE: 8 DP GFLOPS/core (2 DP FP/clock), 32 DP GFLOPS per processor.
* With AVX: 32 DP GFLOPS/core (8 DP FP/clock), 128 DP GFLOPS/processor.
* 64KB L1 cache/core(32 KB L1 Data + 32 KB L1 Instruction) (3 clocks).
* 256KB L2 cache/core, (8 clocks).
* 8 MB shared L3 cache (25 clocks). This L3 cache will also be shared with the integrated graphic core.
* 64 bytes cache line width.
* Integrated graphics core running at 1 GHz to 1.4 GHz.
* Integrated Memory Controller with maximum 25.6 GB/s bandwidth, supports DDR3-1600 dual channel RAM.
* 256 bit/cycle Ring bus bandwidth. The ring bus connects the cores.
* Maximum Thermal Design Power (TDP) of 85W by default.
* Release date is expected in Q4 2010.

According to some PC Watch articles:

* Sandy Bridge will be an evolutionary step from Core i5/i7.
* Sandy Bridge will focus on power efficiency.
* Performance will be increased without a core size increase (similar to the Netburst to Core transition).
* The CPU core is scalable.
* Dynamic Turbo allows the CPU power to exceed the TDP value when the rest of the platform is relatively cool. The frequency gain can be up to 37% for one minute, and over 20% in most cases.
* Sandy Bridge is released for the mobile segments, which would split the markets into two CPU lines.
* Sandy Bridge's CPU and GPU are likely to be on one die (unlike the two-die approach of Nehalem).
* Because of the high-performing CPU and off-chip components, it may be necessary to improve bus interconnects. The internal bus is to be improved.
* The Sandy Bridge microarchitecture is also said to focus on the connections of the processor core.
* If the transition to 22 nm is difficult, then Sandy Bridge may go over three generations (Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and another Bridge) as opposed to two with Core 2 and Nehalem.

The mobile Sandy Bridge version is expected to be released at the same time as the microarchitecture. The platform chipset's northbridge is referred to as the 'Sandy Bridge System Agent' rather than 'MCH'.[10] These CPUs will be on the Huron River mobile platform also to be released in Q1 2011. This platform is expected to provide wireless 1080p playback, up from the current 720p.


The top-of-the-line dual-core mobile Sandy Bridge is expected to be 20% faster than the top-of-the-line Arrandale.

Intel has said that Sandy Bridge will have new instructions called Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX).[11] These instructions are an advanced form of SSE. The data path is widened from 128 bits to 256 bits, the two-operand instruction limit is increased to three operands, and advanced data rearrangement functions are included. AVX is suited for floating-point-intensive applications. Features of AVX include mask loads, data permutes, increased register efficiency and use of parallel loads, as well as smaller code size. The improvements of AVX will allow it to deliver up to double the peak FLOPS compared to before. Sandy Bridge will also have a new extensible VEX opcode prefix.

Sandy Bridge using the Cougar Point chipset will be able to support 4 displays, two using the CPU integrated graphics and two off the chipset USB (2.0). The integrated graphics will also support DisplayPort for up to 2560x1600 resolution as well as HDMI 1.3.

The package size of mobile Sandy Bridge is 22% smaller than that of mobile Westmere.

Overclocking is limited to only 2-3% over the factory clock speed due to Intel locking the speed of every bus to the base clock.

IDK but 3.8Ghz max OC w/ Turbo is not impressive unless Intel surprises us with some bang for buck options which are highly unlikely. As for the "unlocked" CPU's, well if the 980x is 999.99$, just imagine how much one of those CPU's will cost.

 

[razor512]

even with a unlocked multiplier, unless the multiplier allows for such fine tuning that you can increase the clock speeds in 1-10MHz increments, overclocking will still be harder. When ever overclocking, you will always come to a point where one multiplier setting will be stable and another will be completely unstable but somewhere in between is the CPU's max overclock. This move that intel is making will make that impossible even on the unlocked CPU's as changing the bus speed will be too risky.

Also remember, intel controls the chipsets also. This means that they can also prevent the changing of the multipliers for the other components in the system and there's nothing the motherboard makers can do. if intel wants to stop overclocking, they will make sure the motherboard makers do not find a way around..

Also overclocking is not just about the core clock speed, you also need to overclock the bus speeds also, even after a good overclock, you can generally get an extra 2-3% performance boost from the CPU by also overclocking the bus speeds.

 

[buzznut]

Well, if this is accurate it would appear these are more mainstream components. Turbo boost on the graphics core is interesting, if that is what I am reading here.
Maybe its just a range depending on the CPU since the FSB is "locked."
Not all bad but I would imagine they will continue to provide enthusiast parts.