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Taken from here..
Could be a bad thing if it's true, this won't go down too well with the overclocking fraternity..
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Overclocked Memory Breaks Core i7 CPUs
- Thread starter riddlermarc
- Start date
Could be a bad thing if it's true, this won't go down too well with the overclocking fraternity..
*Sigh*
This is because the memory controller sits on the Core i7 CPU proper. Stick too much voltage through it and *BANG*, you need a new CPU (even if the logical core is unaffected, which is also highly unlikely).
The same thing happened with the first load of AMD64 chips: people stuck too much voltage through them, being used to the old P4C/Athlon XP series of chips and melted the poor IMC as a result (the fact that BH5 DDR would happily take 3.3V didn't really help, I suppose).
*Sigh* 
Thanks for the heads up mrthingyx...
I clocked dual core athlon64's and never had any problems - nor did i hear of any issues when reading through the forum.
Clocked my Opteron 165 over 3ghz on air and despite high voltages never had a failure. I only thought voltage 'on the ram' effected 'only the ram'?!
Very surprised at that TBH.
gt
Thanks for the heads up mrthingyx...
I clocked dual core athlon64's and never had any problems - nor did i hear of any issues when reading through the forum.
Clocked my Opteron 165 over 3ghz on air and despite high voltages never had a failure. I only thought voltage 'on the ram' effected 'only the ram'?!
Very surprised at that TBH.
gt
Soldato
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By first load of A64, he means early hammer cores.
Soldato
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kinda thing we still need AMD for really, lol
So what did they do to prevent it in the future chips?
Soldato
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Witchcraft or similar, so I heard... Either that or improved the mem controller in a way that's overly complicated to someone like me.
Its a 45nm process, thats just about the maximum its can take most likely. It just means that carefull choice of memory will be important, and there's most likely options to change the multiplier on the memory when you overclock. Its probably one of the the reasons intel went for a tripple channel memory controller. It's got a lot more bandwidth at lower frequencies. Intel processors are pretty good at prefetching data to avoid bandwidth bottlenecks, and even with the slowest ddr3 is going to have a lot more bandwidth than Core 2 had.
Timings may be important, but dont get too caught up on the, after all 10-10-10-24 @ 1600mhz is the same latency in time as 5-5-5-12 @ 800mhz, or 2.5-2.5-2.5-6@400mhz. i7 will have reduced latency compared to core 2 because its got rid of the external memory controller.
You cant compare it to an opteron, plenty of people blew P4 Northwoods, because they were used to putting 2.0V into their 180nm processors and the 130nm's were more sensitive. Everytime the processes is shrunk, the chips get more sensitive to over voltage.
The only difference here, is both CPU voltage, and Memory voltage can both fry the CPU, because the memory controller is on the cpu die. Im sure the memory manufacturers of "overclockers" memory will qualify new batches of memory as "nehalem/i7" approved for overclocking at low voltages.
The CPU itself should be plenty overclockable, and the people cooling with air should have no worries, just be sensible. Water and Phase overclockers, well they will have to work out whats best for them. Most likely high CPU clocks, but not pushing the memory too far.
Timings may be important, but dont get too caught up on the, after all 10-10-10-24 @ 1600mhz is the same latency in time as 5-5-5-12 @ 800mhz, or 2.5-2.5-2.5-6@400mhz. i7 will have reduced latency compared to core 2 because its got rid of the external memory controller.
You cant compare it to an opteron, plenty of people blew P4 Northwoods, because they were used to putting 2.0V into their 180nm processors and the 130nm's were more sensitive. Everytime the processes is shrunk, the chips get more sensitive to over voltage.
The only difference here, is both CPU voltage, and Memory voltage can both fry the CPU, because the memory controller is on the cpu die. Im sure the memory manufacturers of "overclockers" memory will qualify new batches of memory as "nehalem/i7" approved for overclocking at low voltages.
The CPU itself should be plenty overclockable, and the people cooling with air should have no worries, just be sensible. Water and Phase overclockers, well they will have to work out whats best for them. Most likely high CPU clocks, but not pushing the memory too far.
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Maybe this is the issue that produced the "nehalem won't overclock well" stories we had not so long back that were supposedly completely incorrect but now seems they might have been right. Either way given that overclockers and enthusiasts at large would form a lot of the customers for new tech i am surprised intel havn't sorted this out.
