Intel plans to deliberately limit Sandy Bridge overclocking

Freddie1980 said:
Don't believe everything you read I would still wager Intel is going to give us a very overclockable CPU when Sandy Bridge finally comes out.
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why would they! the I7 920 made the rest of the range irrelevant to the overclocker.

If its to do with keeping the chipset (therefore the Motherboards) cheap (under £100) i wouldn't mind spending a extra £100 on a CPU with an unlocked multiplier.

Its going to be an interesting year, i hope bulldozer is something special and both have company s have a competitive high end next gen, it will keep Intels prices down a bit :)
 
Having had my intel for a while now i have the hankering to go AMD next and if this is true and it's a big if then there is simply one more reason to go away from intel. Rumours though fun are not something to base concrete decisions on so will wait to see what is delivered first before deciding. Though if amd can get a 12 or 16 core part out and available even though it will be total overkill for nearly everything the fun of playing might be too hard to resist :).
 
I think the people that make these claims are talking through their ***.

How many times has this been said before and become untrue.

I`m sure the same thing was said just before the Core 2 was released and the Core i7 that Intel is limiting/disabling overclocking on their chips, so now all us Intel users are all doomed.
 
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Yeah this does seem to be a persistent rumour about intel maybe someone somewhere overheard something that might have just been an idea and the ol chinese whispers started and never stopped lol.
 
Sayso said:
why would they! the I7 920 made the rest of the range irrelevant to the overclocker.
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This i believe might be the crux of the matter. I dont have any recent experience OCing AMD, but my understanding of most intel OCing recently has been buy the cheapest chip in the series i3 530, i7 920, and you can ramp that little lovely up to 4.0 with a nice motherboard. Although not making other chips irrevelant, I think AMD have more linear progression do they do? With chips being able to add a similar %? Thus making purchase of the more expensive varieties a better idea for faster overall speed?

Intel may wish to redress this balance, and arrive at a structure enabling them to sell more of their higher end chips.
 
I guess the concern for consumers will be even if highend/enthusiast overclocking is possible, that will only be on the expensive chips carrying a price premium. Personally I've been building my own PCs for well over a decade and not once have I paid over £200 for a cpu (so very much mainstream options for overclocking).

And to be fair, who can blame Intel? Imagine if you couldn't overclock any of Intel's current cpus costing under £250. So for example the i7-920/930, i7-860/870, i5 range etc were all locked at their default speed. I reckon some enthusiasts would be seriously tempted by the i7-875k; £50 more expensive than the 870 but unlocked multiplier letting them shoot for 4ghz+.
 
So long as the lowest-priced clockable SB is reasonably priced and has the same cache/features as the other SKUs, it wouldn't be too bad. It would suck for people on a budget but they'd still have i7/i5/i3 or AMD. An i7 @ 4GHz won't magically get slower after all.
 
Still just rumours at the moment but it kinda makes sense from Intel's point of view. Why would somebody buy your more expensive stuff if cheaper kit can be made just as good for less. At the same time though, they could shoot themselves in the foot and give AMD a lot of custom if AMD don't follow the same route
 
EvilOne said:
With prices like this on one of there mainstream chips, who's going to be able to afoird a chip that has OC abilities lol.
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Thats not a mainstream part, thats pretty far up the performance/enthusiast branch.

The i7 8xx series are the top tier of mainstream i7 quads. (or Arguabley the lowest performance tier)
 
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They can try and limit overclocking, but let's be honest; we have heard all this crap before.

It's like IWnet and Valve saying there will be no cheaters on COD6 :D

Every time I hear about this, 6 months later come release time for the CPU's they are already at omgwtf 4 GHz overclocked speeds.

Until I see a limitation with my own eyes and money I have spent on said hardware then this will come under the category of internet scare tactics again.
 
typical intel being greedy as well i really hope ati spank them in the mainstream department due to overclocking, i think intel have long needed a good kick in the rear.

i dont see what the problem is, i see what intels is though the i5 running at 4.2ghz is clearly making them unhappy and giving performance intel would not like you to have unless your going to pay a premium for the unlocked versions or step up into the enthusiast i7.

sigh i just hope this isnt some incoming trend, overclockings been the lifeblood for me personally through the years of pc building i dont know what id do without it, AMD barton 2500M, E6300 core 2 duo, p3 800 which i ran at 933mhz 111! fantastic chips and so far thier the only 3 cpu's ive ever owned.

ah yes the good old days that intel want to crap on (
 
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Nothing is confirmed yet above the mainstream cpu's and even that might not be set in stone so i don't see the point in getting all worked up yet. If bulldozer comes out and is good i doubt intel will do this as they would have to know it will push a lot of people over to amd.
 
Monkeynut said:
Well the thing is although it will only affect a very small number of people that small number of people are very vocal on the subject and so would advise less informed friends and family members on what's the best to buy.
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It doesn't work like that, face it the overclocking portion of the market probably isn't even 0.000001% of the general customer base even if they each influenced 10 peoples opinions, it still counts for zip.

The rumour probably isn't even true anyway, there were rumours that overclocking was to be disabled completely on nahalem (i7 etc) before it was released but what happened there eh?
 
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