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Why do chip makers allow overclocking?

Nocturnal

Nocturnal

Lifer
I'm wondering with the entire Opteron fiasco, why chip makers let people overclock their chips? Surely there is a sure fire way to stop people from overclocking their processors. Is this something in the back of AMD/Intel's minds?
 
they do have restrictions on some chips that try to discourage overclocking but in reality, most chips are capable in running faster than it was originally labeled for. they label it to a safe speed then they don't get hit with warranty issues. Look at cars and RPM limiters and Turbo limiters.

BTW: I have no idea what im talkin about.
 
Originally posted by: jfall
overclockers account for a very small percentage of the chip makers sales
Click to expand...

Yup. It just seems like it's a widespread "problem" , if you can call it that, because most who overclock are also enthusiasts who use boards like these for research; whereas most who don't overclock and most who are just casual users probably don't dig through computer forums as aggressively.

Plus... if chipmakers had to make an entirely different line for each level of performance, so that nothing could be overclocked, I would imagine prices to be MUCH higher.
 
The clock drives the processor much like the drive shaft drives the wheels of a car. You can spin the shaft faster, and the car will speed up, etc. Can that be prevented? Sure, but then it presents other challenges. Most chip makers need to provide a variable clock rate, for power conservation etc. I don't see it going away.
 
also Mobo manufacturers have the same incentive to try to engineer around any OC limitations the chipmakers might try to implement. It would not be cost effective for the chip makers considering the small percentage of OC'ers out there.

besides just because i can OC a $180 chip to the speed of an $800 chip doesn't mean i'd be buying the $800 one if i couldn't OC at all.
 
B/c most people don't overclock. Over clocking was just really an issue back in the days of the Pentium 1 and 2. People would over clock processers and sell them as their faster counterpart. Today it i snot really an issue since the multiplier is now locked.

I used to overclock, but i don't do it anymore. Is it still done via the FSB?
 
A couple of reasons: 1. Doing so would be technically nontrivial. With current technology, as I understand it, the CPU is pretty much at the mercy of the motherboard. It can ask real nicely for conditions that suit it; but if the BIOS says jump, it jumps or crashes trying. I think Intel did try something with their CPUs or chipsets to make overclocking harder; but it was a matter of weeks before those tweaky OEMs in Taiwan worked their nuclear magic and started pumping out the cheap overclocker's boards we all know and love.

2. Doing so by legal means would be pretty draconian, and probably upset OEMs and customers, and give Serious leverage to their competitor. I imagine that, in these dark days of "DMCA" this and "Proactively protecting IP assets to build synergy and grow shareholder value" that, someone with sharky enough lawyers could ink a contract that effectively forbids any OEM from building an overclocker's board that works with your CPU, and makes any individual who modifies with intent to overclock a felon. (I jest; but only ever so slightly). This would pretty much just mean that the entire enthusiast market, and their suppliers would give the company that did that the single finger salute, so it wouldn't be worth it. Also, "accidental" leaks of "Unoffical testing BIOS versions" would probably become much more common.

3. Overclocking is actually a useful method of price descrimination: Basically, overclocking allows users to trade risk for performance instead of trading money for it. The sorts of people with high risk tolerance are usually the ones without too much money(the plutocrat overclockers who work with highest end gear are an exception; but they don't matter. Those guys buy the most expensive stuff possible, and sometimes kill it, so their overclocking obviously isn't hurting any bottom lines). Since overclocking is a risky activity, at least in that it voids the warranty, it already excludes pretty much the entire boring business box crowd, all real servers, mainstream systems from just about any OEM big enough for custom parts, people who don't care, etc. This is most of the market. For the part of the market that does overclock, overclockability is basically a method of providing a discount to enthusiasts in order to compete more effectively. For example, there was that period a year or two back where AMD had Intel pretty much beat, except for the fact that their low end P4s could pretty much always be wound up to match their top end; but for much less money. Because the Dell set doesn't overclock, the cheap 2.4s, or whatever they were at the time, didn't cannibalise sales of 3.4s. They probably did prevent the sale of a fair few AMD chips, though. Obviously, the specifics of the economic analysis vary sharply depending on what is on the market at the moment; but the basic fact of price descrimination remains.
 
Well, if they can lower and lock a very fast chip's multiplier just to increase sales of a more expensive one and make more money, then we should be able to overclock and get the true performance out of our products.
 
Originally posted by: Remy XO
they do have restrictions on some chips that try to discourage overclocking but in reality, most chips are capable in running faster than it was originally labeled for. they label it to a safe speed then they don't get hit with warranty issues. Look at cars and RPM limiters and Turbo limiters.

BTW: I have no idea what im talkin about.
Click to expand...

& that's why god made forced induction pulley kits!

 
but there's no way to know if a chip has been o/ced right, so how would they know to void your warranty?
 
Because most overclockers are honest enough to not try to use a warranty they deliberately voided, or so I would hope. I have burned a few pieces of hardware over the past years and have just absorbed the losses. The same goes with most other people, I think.
 
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