When is Intel going to take "budget overclocking" seriously?

[2blzd]

FYI this guy is a huge troll and you're wasting your time participating in any dialogue with him.

 

[VirtualLarry]

FYI this guy is a huge troll and you're wasting your time participating in any dialogue with him.

I'm a troll now? Because I start interesting discussions, and have different POVs than most of the "high-end gamers" on here?

I mean, you're entitled to your opinion, but I just ask you to be a little more open-minded.

Edit: In regards to this thread, I just think that Intel could do a bit better in supporting overclocking enthusiasts, especially the budget kind, by having a full lineup of unlocked CPUs. (In addition to their lineup of locked CPUs.) Whether they have to charge more for them, to prevent eroding their ASPs or whatnot, then so be it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Intel k processors are the best selling DYS processors, Just check out newegg select Best selling 1151 CPU.

Which is why, I don't think that they would be such a bad idea, for the lower tiers of CPUs as well. Say, an $80-90 unlocked Pentium, and a $140-150 unlocked i3 CPU. I think that they would be good sellers, and those ASPs are higher than what they would charge for the locked entry-level versions.

Plus, as pointed out, they segment their market carefully, and based on CPU features, core/thread count, and cache, and iGPU, such that even if they were to introduce an unlocked model of their lower-end CPUs, it would hardly touch the performance of their next class of CPU of that same generation. (Edit: In throughput - but overclocked, like my G4400 @ 4.455Ghz, it has blazing single-threaded speed.)

 

[crashtech]

I've always thought that an unlocked i3 would be a great CPU, but it would compete against the lower end i5s, right now the top i3 (6320) is pretty dang close to the i5-6400 due to the large clockspeed difference. Intel would have to make all their i5s better to compensate, and that in turn might take away from i7 sales. The i7 quads can't get much higher in performance without a core count increase. Maybe if hexacore comes to mainstream, there will be an opening for an unlocked i3, but by then, it might be looked at like the G3258 is now, a fun toy, but nothing too serious.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I'm a troll now? Because I start interesting discussions, and have different POVs than most of the "high-end gamers" on here?

I mean, you're entitled to your opinion, but I just ask you to be a little more open-minded.

Edit: In regards to this thread, I just think that Intel could do a bit better in supporting overclocking enthusiasts, especially the budget kind, by having a full lineup of unlocked CPUs. (In addition to their lineup of locked CPUs.) Whether they have to charge more for them, to prevent eroding their ASPs or whatnot, then so be it.

Intel's "K" series CPUs saw 23% year-over-year growth last quarter, you won't find many franchises within the semiconductor industry, especially one as mature as CPUs for gaming, that can grow at that kind of clip regularly.

Seems that Intel is doing a great job delivering products for enthusiasts, despite the repeated protestations on this board and elsewhere that the company isn't putting out interesting products for such enthusiasts.

 

[wingman04]

Intel's "K" series CPUs saw 23% year-over-year growth last quarter, you won't find many franchises within the semiconductor industry, especially one as mature as CPUs for gaming, that can grow at that kind of clip regularly.

Seems that Intel is doing a great job delivering products for enthusiasts, despite the repeated protestations on this board and elsewhere that the company isn't putting out interesting products for such enthusiasts.

That is very cool where did you find those statistics.

 

[Maxima1]

Intel's "K" series CPUs saw 23% year-over-year growth last quarter, you won't find many franchises within the semiconductor industry, especially one as mature as CPUs for gaming, that can grow at that kind of clip regularly.

You just put out a number with absolutely no context. For one, the US and other nations are basically becoming gaming nations.

Seems that Intel is doing a great job delivering products for enthusiasts, despite the repeated protestations on this board and elsewhere that the company isn't putting out interesting products for such enthusiasts.

That's like saying movie theaters are doing a great job at providing popcorn. People still buy it despite it having a big markup.

 

[DrMrLordX]

FYI this guy is a huge troll and you're wasting your time participating in any dialogue with him.

. . . seriously? No. Says the guy who joined the forum in May.

That's like saying movie theaters are doing a great job at providing popcorn. People still buy it despite it having a big markup.

Exactly! Captive audience.

There's nothing wrong with Larry pining for the old days when it was essentially between the end-user and the motherboard OEM to decide how high a chip could clock within physical limitations of the silicon going out to market. And honestly Intel has already done such a good job segmenting products between sockets, core counts, and cache levels that allowing mobo manufacturers some leeway to tinker with bclk OC would not be a disaster for Intel's sales. It might help them push some high-end chipsets if they were clever. But hey what do I know, I just enjoy tinkering with and overclocking relatively-inexpensive PC hardware.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Seems that Intel is doing a great job delivering products for enthusiasts, despite the repeated protestations on this board and elsewhere that the company isn't putting out interesting products for such enthusiasts.

That's great, if you're at the high-end. But you forgot the key word, in my argument - "budget". Where are the chips for the "budget enthusiast", besides the token G3258? (Or let me re-phrase, why aren't they continuing that unlocked Pentium CPU tier in the Skylake and KBL generations? Edit: I thought that the G3258 was a pretty successful SKU... well, until it met up with games that really require a quad-core. But it certainly generated plenty of buzz, both within the budget enthusiast category, and in the online trade press.)

Edit: I mean, Intel's unlocked quad-cores (and with HyperThreading), are the bee's knees for gaming rigs these days, I'll give them that. They ARE catering to the enthusiasts, at the high-end.

I'm just asking for something a little cheaper, that would give good "Facebook grunt" to lower-end, budget machines.

Granted, maybe I'm making the wrong argument here... Intel explicitly doesn't want whitebox resellers marking up overclocked CPUs and selling them as if they were faster CPUs, and I guess, if I look at it honestly, that's exactly what I would like to do, at least for family and friends, people that I can "keep an eye out" on the overclock, and check it every 3-6 months and see if it's degrading, if it needs to be scaled back in clock, or boosted in voltage (but only to a point).

Edit: Another way of stating it is - I'm part of an under-served market. High-end AAA games these days require quad-core CPUs. Intel provides quad-core CPUs, that are unlocked, for enthusiasts, for a slight premium on the SKU. Web browsers like Firefox and Waterfox, are largely single-threaded (except for media-playback tasks), and thus, for maximum performance, require single-threaded "grunt". Yet, we don't really need "moar cores". It's those people that I'm speaking out for. Where are our monster single-threaded speed dual-core CPUs, for blazing web browsing (not gaming) speed? Why should we have to buy more cores, just to get the CPU we need, with the unlocked single-threaded overclocked speed? Why isn't Intel providing for that market?

Edit: I guess I'm a bit old-school, and assume that people want to use an (overclocked) desktop PC to access Facebook. Maybe that's no longer true, with the newer generation(s).

Maybe the market niche that I want to see served by Intel, is in actuality much smaller than I imagine it is.

 

[NTMBK]

Overclocking is a toy to play with on systems you can afford to destroy, an amusement for teenagers with too much time or twenty-somethings with plenty of money. If your computer is a tool you need to function, don't screw around overclocking.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If your computer is a tool you need to function, don't screw around overclocking.

I agree, if you use your computer for "work" at any point, I wouldn't suggest overclocking. But there are plenty of PC users that are "casual", and only use it for Facebook or gaming or whatever, and don't do spreadsheets on it. For those people, overclocking isn't so bad, assuming that they are capable of doing it successfully.

And even given the instabilities of overclocking, the number of BIOS updates for Skylake DDR4 motherboards related to RAM, shows that even with non-overclocked CPUs, you can have platform instability, with various RAM mfg / board mfg / chipset combinations.

Edit: Although, you could argue that XMP RAM is overclocking too. After all, Skylake is only officially supported for DDR4-2133, anything over that is overclocking.

 

[wingman04]

Why is Intel offering the Performance Tuning Protection Plan?
Intel has received feedback from customers who want to implement overclocking on eligible processors, that because of the lack of any replacement coverage for the eligible processors, the risk of overclocking is too great. We understand this position, and while we cannot endorse overclocking, we want to provide a limited remedy if issues arise as a result of their decision to enable overclocking. The limited remedy consists of a replacement processor (i.e., replacing the processor damaged solely as a result of the overclocking). http://click.intel.com/tuningplan/faq

 

[superstition]

Overclocking is a toy to play with on systems you can afford to destroy, an amusement for teenagers with too much time or twenty-somethings with plenty of money. If your computer is a tool you need to function, don't screw around overclocking.

That's vastly overstated. Take a look at the 8 core FX Piledriver processors. All are unlocked. All are soldered. All are basically the same. The only difference is binning. As long as one stays within specs (VRM current at temp, CPU/socket temp, VCore, etc.) one can overclock with no risk to the hardware. All it takes is capable supporting hardware and the correct settings.

Now, when you start having to resort to BCLK and are dealing with Intel designs that apparently artificially tie things together to impede overclocking it's a different story.

 

[bystander36]

The honest truth:

Intel will allow budget OCing when you stop caring about OCing budget CPU's.

 

[superstition]

The honest truth:

Intel will allow budget OCing when you stop caring about OCing budget CPU's.

Enthusiasts don't care about overclocking quads?

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Maybe when it's competing against a whole line of unlocked Zen chips that are about as fast and cheaper or the same price? :fingers crossed:

 

[HiroThreading]

Maybe when it's competing against a whole line of unlocked Zen chips that are about as fast and cheaper or the same price? :fingers crossed:

AMD will not unlock Zen if it's a competitive CPU design. Ergo, if Zen is uncompetitive, we will have the exact same situation as we do now.

AMD only started unlocking everything because even their fastest desktop SKU was uncompetitive with Intel's midrange SKUs.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Where are our monster single-threaded speed dual-core CPUs, for blazing web browsing (not gaming) speed? Why should we have to buy more cores, just to get the CPU we need, with the unlocked single-threaded overclocked speed? Why isn't Intel providing for that market?

If you take out the lowest-end Celerons (G3900/G3920), the Pentium budget segment already hovers around 3.5GHz and have done since Haswell. A 3.5GHz Skylake core is nothing to scoff at for basic web-browsing.

For me at least, the real issue is in the mobile budget segment. All those Brazos/Kabini and various Atom derivatives are really painfully slow. On the desktop side this isn't an issue for the reason above, unless you count all the OEM tablet-towers...

 

[bhtooefr]

Granted, maybe I'm making the wrong argument here... Intel explicitly doesn't want whitebox resellers marking up overclocked CPUs and selling them as if they were faster CPUs, and I guess, if I look at it honestly, that's exactly what I would like to do, at least for family and friends, people that I can "keep an eye out" on the overclock, and check it every 3-6 months and see if it's degrading, if it needs to be scaled back in clock, or boosted in voltage (but only to a point).

And that's ultimately the problem.

A K-series chip right now is expensive enough that you're more likely to know what you're getting into, and there's not really a higher-end part that a reseller can claim your K-series part is.

Low-end overclocking falls into the problem that Intel had in the old days, of remarking. You see, back then, you'd often see things like a 486SX 25 remarked as a 486SX 33, a Pentium 90 marked as a Pentium 120... and you'd just set the multiplier and FSB accordingly when building the system. Then, with the Pentium MMX (IIRC), Intel started doing top-locked multipliers, and with the Pentium II, they started doing fully-locked multipliers (to avoid FSB overclocking). (Unless, of course, you got a mobile CPU with SpeedStep, as that worked by reducing the multiplier.)

The G3258 wasn't trying to attract the "moar cores" AMD fanboys, it was trying to go after the general low-end OC market (which doesn't exist nearly as much nowadays), as well as the extreme niche of liquid nitrogen competitive overclocking.

If you want an actually good $150 unlocked i5... well, there's i5-2500Ks that are actually under $100 on eBay. Even at stock clocks, they're still competitive, and they can overclock well. Enjoy. At the same time, this "mainstream overclocking" market that you think exists doesn't exist, other than unscrupulous whiteboxers. The mainstream is largely buying 15 W dual cores, 6 W Atom-based dual/quad cores, or 2 W ARM dual/quad/octacores.

Now, do I think that if AMD made a competitive $150 unlocked quad, Intel would respond accordingly? Yes. But, Intel has no reason to right now.

 

[bystander36]

Enthusiasts don't care about overclocking quads?

Besides the fact I was clearly joking, with the whole Murphy's law thing, we are talking about dual cores, not quads.

And you can OC quads already by getting the K versions.

 

[bystander36]

AMD will not unlock Zen if it's a competitive CPU design. Ergo, if Zen is uncompetitive, we will have the exact same situation as we do now.

AMD only started unlocking everything because even their fastest desktop SKU was uncompetitive with Intel's midrange SKUs.

I don't know about that. It's possible, but they certainly wouldn't need to.

 

[superstition]

Besides the fact I was clearly joking, with the whole Murphy's law thing, we are talking about dual cores, not quads.

And you can OC quads already by getting the K versions.

I was also clearly joking.

AMD will not unlock Zen if it's a competitive CPU design. Ergo, if Zen is uncompetitive, we will have the exact same situation as we do now. AMD only started unlocking everything because even their fastest desktop SKU was uncompetitive with Intel's midrange SKUs.

AMD needs to regain marketshare. The "AMD is going to make Zen pointless by not offering consumers enough value" angle runs contrary to the market conditions. It might have some credibility if AMD were already matching Intel in marketshare and mindshare — but even then it would be overstated because there is no point in introducing a product that doesn't offer added value unless you have a monopoly and can degrade a product/service due to no competition.

 

[XavierMace]

Edit: I guess I'm a bit old-school, and assume that people want to use an (overclocked) desktop PC to access Facebook. Maybe that's no longer true, with the newer generation(s).

That was never true, at least not for the masses. I've been doing this a very long time having worked on several thousands of computers and I've never had a single person that uses their computer just for basic web browsing ask about overclocking unless an enthusiast put the idea in their head in the first place. My dad is what I would call a light gamer, plays Civilization, Anno, and games of that sort. His first and only overclocked computer was a Celeron 300 and even that took a lot of convincing despite how much cheaper it was than a Pentium.

Edit: Another way of stating it is - I'm part of an under-served market. High-end AAA games these days require quad-core CPUs. Intel provides quad-core CPUs, that are unlocked, for enthusiasts, for a slight premium on the SKU. Web browsers like Firefox and Waterfox, are largely single-threaded (except for media-playback tasks), and thus, for maximum performance, require single-threaded "grunt". Yet, we don't really need "moar cores". It's those people that I'm speaking out for. Where are our monster single-threaded speed dual-core CPUs, for blazing web browsing (not gaming) speed? Why should we have to buy more cores, just to get the CPU we need, with the unlocked single-threaded overclocked speed? Why isn't Intel providing for that market?

The mistake you are making is the belief that you represent some sizable market that's being neglected. Latest numbers I saw showed Google Chrome at 60+% of the browser market share. It's multithreaded. I'd far rather have a quad when using chrome than a dual core. I'm aware you don't like Chrome. That doesn't change the fact that your usage case is an extremely tiny market. This would be like me complaining new servers are too expensive and HP/Dell should sell cheaper ones for home lab people. That's such an insignificant market, you'll never see it mentioned in a budget meeting.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This would be like me complaining new servers are too expensive and HP/Dell should sell cheaper ones for home lab people. That's such an insignificant market, you'll never see it mentioned in a budget meeting.

That's a very good point. I'm still crossing my fingers, that there might be a Zen SKU for the home server community that includes at least one of the 10GbE ports enabled.

 

[2blzd]

I'm a troll now? Because I start interesting discussions, and have different POVs than most of the "high-end gamers" on here?

I mean, you're entitled to your opinion, but I just ask you to be a little more open-minded.

Edit: In regards to this thread, I just think that Intel could do a bit better in supporting overclocking enthusiasts, especially the budget kind, by having a full lineup of unlocked CPUs. (In addition to their lineup of locked CPUs.) Whether they have to charge more for them, to prevent eroding their ASPs or whatnot, then so be it.

Sorry sir, I wasn't referring to you, but the poster above the comment. I should have been more specific. I quite like your posts, I apologize for the confusion.


And to the good Dr. - I've been around since the forums were first created.