Amateur Question

[wirefan]

If, Intel and AMD can make chips which can be Overclocked by x amount under standard cooling (ie E660 (2.40ghz) can manage 3.0ghz+ AND even further under after market / water cooling, then why is one manufacturer not taking the lead over the other and releasing their chips at higher standard, albeit still reliable, speeds?

I dont really get it. Sorry, very amateur question I'm sure.

 

[sablabra]

They're supposed to sell their more expensive cpus as well. If all cpus were sold at more or less same clock frequency who would buy the more expensive cpus? And they have to guarantee stability as well... Silly question tbh

 

[mame]

There's other factors. Maufacturing is quite inconsistant. If you took 3 CPU's rated at 2ghz from the same production line, one might be capable of running at 2.12ghz, one might do 2.36ghz and one might do 3ghz. They need to be able to just release them all at the same speed and all work. Other things like cooling. I have found that changing a PC case to have a huge effect on temperatures but Intel or AMD couldn't really release a CPU with a minimum spec case? Memory has a big part in overclocking, again it would be hard to release a CPU that is fussy with memory. Cheap motherboards (and i mean CHEAP) have no options for overclocking.

Take an athlon 64 for example, the default FSB is 200 for all their chips. The only way to make them run faster is to increase to FSB (or increase the multi for fx). A cheap board can only run them at the default 200fsb so its impossible.

 

[sablabra]

That's right, more money would be used for quality testing...

I don't think it raises a problem for intel to increase multiplier above what we know as stock.