SB H67 Can't Overclock?

[Hogan773]

I just was told by a poster on another forum that none of the H67 SandyBridge mobos will allow overclocking? Is this right?

I was planning on getting an H67 with a 2600k and using the integrated graphics. I'm not a gamer. Wanted ability to OC for video editing, etc.

All I need to do is change the CPU multiplier. Is it true with H67 one can't even do that? If so then I need to spend extra money on a GPU and "waste" the integrated graphics that comes with SB?

Or is this other poster mistaken?

 

[StrangerGuy]

I was under the impression that while SB does not allow FSB OCing but an unlocked chip like the 2600K can be multipier OCed with any board.

 

[Raswan]

From Anand's preview of Sandy Bridge: "As is the case today, there are two lines of chipsets for consumer desktops: H and P series. The H series supports Sandy Bridge’s on-die graphics, while the P series is strictly for discrete graphics."

"First and foremost we have the K-series parts. These will be fully unlocked, supporting multipliers up to 57x. Sandy Bridge should have more attractive K SKUs than what we’ve seen to date. The Core i7 2600 and 2500 will both be available as a K-edition. The former should be priced around $562 and the latter at $205 if we go off of current pricing.

Secondly, some regular Sandy Bridge processors will have partially unlocked multipliers. The idea is that you take your highest turbo multiplier, add a few more bins on top of that, and that’ll be your maximum multiplier. It gives some overclocking headroom, but not limitless. Intel is still working out the details for how far you can go with these partially unlocked parts, but I’ve chimed in with my opinion and hopefully we’ll see something reasonable come from the company. I am hopeful that these partially unlocked parts will have enough multipliers available to make for decent overclocks.

Finally, if you focus on multiplier-only overclocking you lose the ability to increase memory bandwidth as you increase CPU clock speed. The faster your CPU, the more data it needs and thus the faster your memory subsystem needs to be in order to scale well. As a result, on P67 motherboards you’ll be able to adjust your memory ratios to support up to DDR3-2133.

Personally, I’d love nothing more than for everything to ship unlocked. The realities of Intel’s business apparently prevent that, so we’re left with something that could either be a non-issue or just horrible.

If the K-series parts are priced appropriately, which at first indication it seems they will be, then this will be a non-issue for a portion of the enthusiast market. You’ll pay the same amount for your Core i7 2500K as you would for a Core i5 750 and you’ll have the same overclocking potential."

With regards to memory: "With P67 you lose integrated graphics but you gain the ability to run two PCIe x8 cards off of the CPU. You also get fully unlocked memory multipliers with P67, whereas H67 is locked to whatever official DDR3 speeds Intel supports with Sandy Bridge (currently DDR3-1333)."

That's all that I can find about the h67 and p67 differences. I was under the impression the only difference was integrated vs non-integrated, as the OP mentions. Check out the article if you want, but I think the other guy was wrong. Overclocking is on page 4 I think: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row

 

[Hogan773]

Hmmmm ok thanks. Not sure everything in that preview is really coming to pass anyway (partially-unlocked parts??? haven't seen that recently)

So maybe the P67 boards allow changing the memory speed but H67 doesn't....that could be what the guy was thinking when he said you "can't overclock". I bought some 1600 Ram and based on what I've heard, the memory speed isn't much of a factor in increasing overall system speed anyway. I don't need to burn up my RAM at 2133 or whatever.

Here I was all ready to just choose between 2500K and 2600K and then select whatever ASUS or Gigabyte mobo seemed best price with reasonable features. Now I have to do some more due diligence to make sure I don't end up buying a 2600K and then I can't find the OC section in BIOS cause it's not there on the H boards!! That would not be a happy moment.

 

[Raswan]

That would suck. About a month ago I was trying to decide whether to go SB or just get an i5-760 and a P55. Found some great deals, and along with not wanting to deal with those inevitable little issues that pop up, just decided to do the build. And very happy with it

That preview is also a couple of months old, I think. So yeah, maybe double-check the difference. Is there a big price difference between the H and P boards? I'm assuming that's why you're checking up on it.

 

[Hogan773]

That would suck. About a month ago I was trying to decide whether to go SB or just get an i5-760 and a P55. Found some great deals, and along with not wanting to deal with those inevitable little issues that pop up, just decided to do the build. And very happy with it

That preview is also a couple of months old, I think. So yeah, maybe double-check the difference. Is there a big price difference between the H and P boards? I'm assuming that's why you're checking up on it.

Not sure....I think the H boards are a little cheaper, but the P boards disable the onboard graphics so then you need to buy a separate graphics card too. Not being a gamer, I was attracted to SB in part because I could get decent onboard graphics. I'm sure I can get a basic GPU for $50-75 that would be fine, but then tack on a higher P67 mobo price and I am paying $75-$125 more than I really need to, "wasting" the onboard graphics option and spending money on a discrete card. Hopefully this is not actually the case, and the lowly H67 buyer can be granted the ability to change his multiplier too.