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

[scannall]

How many of you Intel fans would be cheering, if NVidia locked down overclocking on their newest video cards too? If you HAD to purchase a TitanX to overclock, instead of any NV card? How quickly some of you would be changing your tune...

It's not that people hate the idea. Quite the opposite. It's just in answer to your question is all. If you had asked "How many people would like it if Intel unlocked all their CPU's?" then I'm fairly certain the answer would be nearly unanimous.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

How many of you Intel fans would be cheering, if NVidia locked down overclocking on their newest video cards too? If you HAD to purchase a TitanX to overclock, instead of any NV card? How quickly some of you would be changing your tune...

That's not really a good comparison/hypothetical. (More like, if they locked it down, but there were 1060K, 1070K, and 1080K versions available for an extra $30 or so. We'd gripe about it, but we'd all the buy the -K versions, and when we do a Call of Duty build for our nontechie friends, we'd drop in the non-K versions. As would OEMs.)

A much larger % of nVidia users overclock their product, and there are a much smaller number of units sold, especially at the high end. So the market math is different. It probably makes MORE MONEY for nVidia to simply have a single unlocked SKU. (Especially since their products, by and large, overclock themselves within thermal limits, and their board partners have factory overclocked options as a staple product offering - two factors which don't really play into Intel's business.)

 

[Arachnotronic]

That's not really a good comparison/hypothetical. (More like, if they locked it down, but there were 1060K, 1070K, and 1080K versions available for an extra $30 or so. We'd gripe about it, but we'd all the buy the -K versions, and when we do a Call of Duty build for our nontechie friends, we'd drop in the non-K versions. As would OEMs.)

A much larger % of nVidia users overclock their product, and there are a much smaller number of units sold, especially at the high end. So the market math is different. It probably makes MORE MONEY for nVidia to simply have a single unlocked SKU. (Especially since their products, by and large, overclock themselves within thermal limits, and their board partners have factory overclocked options as a staple product offering - two factors which don't really play into Intel's business.)

I wish I could double-like your post. You nailed it on the head.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Nvidia has disabled OC on some products in the past, with predictable griping. Granted, those were mobile products, but still . . .

 

[VirtualLarry]

A much larger % of nVidia users overclock their product, and there are a much smaller number of units sold, especially at the high end. So the market math is different. It probably makes MORE MONEY for nVidia to simply have a single unlocked SKU. (Especially since their products, by and large, overclock themselves within thermal limits, and their board partners have factory overclocked options as a staple product offering - two factors which don't really play into Intel's business.)

I would be willing guesstimate that a much larger percentage of Intel Socket 775 users used to overclock too, before Intel took that away.

So why wouldn't Intel make MORE money, as you claim that NV probably is doing, by making all of their SKUs unlocked, or at least bus-overclockable, like Socket 775 was?

 

[poofyhairguy]

Honestly it might be a good thing for consumers. I was super excited about a G3258, and was happy to pick up one on sale to play with. Turns out it sucks for games, and was probably a waste of my money outside of Dolphin performance (which does matter to me). I will probably replace it with whatever quad-core Haswell I can get cheap off of ebay so my 480 isn't held back anymore and I can play the games I want to play.

What I really want isn't an overclocking i3, I want a $150 i3 with 4 real cores in it so that way it is useful for gaming for more than a few years (look how well the 2500k stock still does in graphs). But I also want a sub-$300 hexacore and an option for a low-end Intel CPU with its top tier GPU bolted on. All of these are fantasies as long as AMD doesn't provide competition.

 

[daxzy]

I would be willing guesstimate that a much larger percentage of Intel Socket 775 users used to overclock too, before Intel took that away.

So why wouldn't Intel make MORE money, as you claim that NV probably is doing, by making all of their SKUs unlocked, or at least bus-overclockable, like Socket 775 was?

Because you cannot get the level of performance boost from a similar Nvidia overclock. There is no way a GTX-1060/70/80 can be overclocked so it is anyway superior to the succeeding model.

If you get a GTX-1070K and overclock it to GTX-1080 levels (by unlocking the disabled SP units), you can sure bet that Nvidia would put a stop to that ASAP. The reason is they're are created from the same die and will likely overclock to the same speeds. A large enough portion of people would just skip a 1080 and get a 1070K, and Nvidia will a lot of missed margins from these high margin products.

I seriously cannot comprehend how you think that if Intel made every modern CPU overclockable on any chipset, the ASP's would still be the same? There would literally be no reason to get a higher end CPU, once you get the core count you want.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I seriously cannot comprehend how you think that if Intel made every modern CPU overclockable on any chipset, the ASP's would still be the same?

I didn't suggest that they couldn't charge extra for overclockable SKUs. If every CPU was overclockable, then they would all carry that premium. Bam! ASP increased.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

...

So why wouldn't Intel make MORE money, as you claim that NV probably is doing, by making all of their SKUs unlocked, or at least bus-overclockable, like Socket 775 was?

For nVidia, the picture is simple. As far as retail boxed discrete GPUs go, they're unit sales have been dropping for years, because IGPs (specifically Intel IGPs) have basically reduced the low-end discrete market to nearly zero (except for the rebadged-of-a-rebadge OEM cards that get upsold in HP and Dell "gaming" PCs and laptops.) All nVidia - or AMD, for that matter - can do is compete (with each other) in the enthusiast/high end space, which means that the only customers they have to worry about are the same people who are buying -K series CPUs.

So they offer a product for that market, and beat each other up while their market share shifts between 40/60 and 60/40. That's also why they've so aggressively pursued other markets. nVidia in HPC and mobile. AMD developing APUs and getting into consoles.

Not so much for Intel. They have a ridiculous market share, they're mobile strategy didn't pan out, and, well... remember - they're amoral corporate robots. They don't care about you and they don't owe you anything.

Because the number of CPUs they sell is basically equal to the number of computers people buy, and that tends to be a function of global economic activity, Intel can't really sell more CPUs by clever marketing or having the hottest booth babes. Instead, they have to behave like a monopoly - extract maximum revenue given X unit sales. To this end, Intel purposefully segments their offerings to maximize the amount of money they make. (Hence removing non-Z OC, not offering an i3 -K, requiring a Xeon to get ECC RAM with 4 or more cores, disabling virtualization tech in the dual core CPUs, etc.) At each step in the ladder, there is a potential "killer app" which will have you sorely tempted to spend more to get into the next product segment. No free lunch.

Because they're basically the only people selling $200+ CPUs, their market share is likely even higher in the enthusiast space then overall. Whatever overhead costs they incur by offering -K SKUs to retail, they more than make up for by steering enthusiasts to -K CPUs and HEDT platforms. Extracting that much more cash from the few people who wouldn't DARE consider not buying an OC'able product. (And FWIW, people who will spend $100 on a fan are a completely different market than the value-focused Celeron 300A generation. The overclocking scene isn't what it used to be. Somebody start playing Ashokan Farewell and get Morgan Freeman in here. I feel plaintive.)

The G3258 was, IMO, a one-time marketing stunt, to get their CPUs out there posting ridonkulous GHz numbers, and get the few remaining AMD overclocking enthusiasts playing with an Intel rig.

So of course, they also have products/offerings in the low end realm - any/every computer needs a CPU. And they sell retail boxed CPUs for the DIY and strip mall system integrator out there. But as we've discussed upthread, a locked i3 already offers equal or better performance than an OC'd Pentium at a similar total price, so there's no real world need for an unlocked Pentium. At least not for the ~99.99% of value-conscious buyers, most of whom would be less that totally enthusiastic about buying a "hot rodded" PC that will become unstable with age.

As for an unlocked i3, it would:

• Likely cannibalize sales of unlocked i5s, because it more than likely WOULD benchmark on par with them in a lot of tests.
• But it would not magically make more people start an overclocking hobby. That's some geeky stuff, dude.
  
• Be an underwhelming OC "experience". The i3s are already clocked pretty high - compare the base model i3-6100 @ 3.7GHz to the base model i5-6400 @ 2.7 Ghz. Real world performance gains from an OC to 4.4 or 4.5GHz would be kinda meh.
  
• Likely be bottlenecked by the slow RAM, spinning rust, and the rest of a typical low-end build. (And if they're not bottlenecked because somebody built a top-of-the-line PC around an i3... why not spend the extra $80 on an i5? You're already in the hole a grand or more anyway; as a matter of principle, your CPU should be more expensive than your motherboard.)
• The entire computer enthusiast market is driven by the gaming industry - dual cores are soooooo 2013 - that i3-K would choke on the latest titles anyway, leaving a lot of dissatisfied customers with nothing better to do that badmouth Intel. Marketing disaster.

So there's little incentive to offer those parts. At least not from Intel's perspective. No matter how much some people would like one.

/Off the top of my head.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I didn't suggest that they couldn't charge extra for overclockable SKUs. If every CPU was overclockable, then they would all carry that premium. Bam! ASP increased.

Their price points are the result of careful market analysis, and not really reflective of manufacturing costs. (The lowest end Celeron is exactly as expensive to make as the i3-6320, which is ~4x the price.)

If the price of the $44 CPU went up to $64 because it was OCable, they would still have to have a CPU available for $44.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If the price of the $44 CPU went up to $64 because it was OCable, they would still have to have a CPU available for $44.

That's probably true, but by the same token, I'm not so "sure" that they NEED to have a CPU in the market for the $44 (or whatever lowest-end) price point, given the spotty availability and higher prices of the G3900 CPUs. They're practically non-existent, and when you do find one, the price is so close to the G4400, it doesn't make any sense to buy the G3900, because of the Mhz disparity.

The lowest-end Intel CPUs have become "the cheap mattress" (*), a marketing tool, rather than an actual purchasable product.

(*) Referring to a web article about Staples, and "basket" sales, and product insurance/replacement policies, that recalled a marketing stunt from a mattress seller, that advertised a "cheap mattress", that, if any customer was actually allowed to purchase said mattress, that salesperson was automatically FIRED.

So, effectively, Intel's lowest-cost (available) CPU SKU is the G4400, at $65 ($60 on fire-sale). So the low-end price-point has already gone UP $20, but we, the customer, didn't get overclockability in the bargain.

 

[bystander36]

If they unlocked the CPU's, they wouldn't sell as many models. Instead of several i5's that are locked and a couple K models, they'd just sell 1, and call it a day. They'd then price them at the average of what they sell now, or at the K price.

Basically, if they did what you want, you'd be forced to spend more money than you do now, because as a bargain basement hunter, you'd lose all those budget parts as they get lumped into 1 product.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If they unlocked the CPU's, they wouldn't sell as many models. Instead of several i5's that are locked and a couple K models, they'd just sell 1, and call it a day. They'd then price them at the average of what they sell now, or at the K price.

That kind of presumes that everyone overclocks, and that there are no customers that want minimum guaranteed clocks. I think that both types of customers exist, and, like the title suggests, that "budget overclockers" are currently under-served by Intel's current lineup, seeing that it lacks an unlocked Pentium or i3 model.

 

[bystander36]

That kind of presumes that everyone overclocks, and that there are no customers that want minimum guaranteed clocks. I think that both types of customers exist, and, like the title suggests, that "budget overclockers" are currently under-served by Intel's current lineup, seeing that it lacks an unlocked Pentium or i3 model.

Let's say they did leave every given CPU as is, and just unlock them. You do realize that they now open up the doors to a lot of warranty issues of people who try to OC and do stupid things. As a direct result, everything will be more expensive. Your "free" performance will come at a cost.

 

[XavierMace]

That kind of presumes that everyone overclocks, and that there are no customers that want minimum guaranteed clocks. I think that both types of customers exist, and, like the title suggests, that "budget overclockers" are currently under-served by Intel's current lineup, seeing that it lacks an unlocked Pentium or i3 model.

Do you honestly think "budget overclockers" represent anywhere near a noticeable portion of their market share? More importantly, right now that group has two options. Buy a the budget processor and deal with no OC or buy a slightly more expensive chip that can OC. What percentage do you think choose the latter?

In either case, Intel is making money off you already and releasing new products to fill this ever so small niche gains them very little. Businesses don't build their product lines around minorities.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Businesses don't build their product lines around minorities.

Never heard of "FUBU" clothing? ("For Us, By Us") It's completely minority-centric.

What about the high-end versus mainstream Audio/Video market? Certainly a minority, but also a highly-profitable one.

Besides, what's wrong with building a little goodwill among enthusiasts?

 

[XavierMace]

Never heard of "FUBU" clothing? ("For Us, By Us") It's completely minority-centric.

What about the high-end versus mainstream Audio/Video market? Certainly a minority, but also a highly-profitable one.

Besides, what's wrong with building a little goodwill among enthusiasts?

Apples and Oranges. FUBU's a company who's entire product line caters to one niche.

High-End vs Mainstream... Here's the critical difference. That's highly profitable, as you mention. What you want is not. More importantly, here's the other difference. High-End has more features than the mainstream. You want all the bells and whistles of high end, but with a budget (not even mainstream) price.

Intel has no incentive to "build a little goodwill" either. What are you going to do, buy AMD? Ok, have fun with that.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

That's probably true, but by the same token, I'm not so "sure" that they NEED to have a CPU in the market for the $44 (or whatever lowest-end) price point, given the spotty availability and higher prices of the G3900 CPUs. They're practically non-existent, and when you do find one, the price is so close to the G4400, it doesn't make any sense to buy the G3900, because of the Mhz disparity.

The lowest-end Intel CPUs have become "the cheap mattress" (*), a marketing tool, rather than an actual purchasable product.

When a VP of product development from Dell or HP calls up Intel and says, "hey man, gotta shave $3 off my margin to make %!" Intel sells them the G3900 by the semi-load. Just because they'd rather charge you $65 for basically the same silicon doesn't mean anything.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Never heard of "FUBU" clothing? ("For Us, By Us") It's completely minority-centric.

What about the high-end versus mainstream Audio/Video market? Certainly a minority, but also a highly-profitable one.

Besides, what's wrong with building a little goodwill among enthusiasts?

That minority is 15% or so of the US market and God-knows overseas. How many people build their own computer. And overclocking. And care about low end overclocking.

Face it, man. Just admit it. You want your toys, and you want them cheaper.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Face it, man. Just admit it. You want your toys, and you want them cheaper.

Yeah...

 

[PliotronX]

I am certain this will never happen because the focus now is on market segmentation rather than boosting performance by anything significant each generation. This segmentation has reached over into Xeons as the E3 series cannot use RDIMMs so the super high density modules won't work with them. I am more irked by the fact that I have to pay for a pathetic iGPU that I will never use. That and the pricing of yesteryear's generation of processors being exactly the same as when they launched defeating the purpose of buying into the platform with a lowend CPU and waiting for the right price on a better (quad core) model.

 

[daxzy]

I am certain this will never happen because the focus now is on market segmentation rather than boosting performance by anything significant each generation. This segmentation has reached over into Xeons as the E3 series cannot use RDIMMs so the super high density modules won't work with them. I am more irked by the fact that I have to pay for a pathetic iGPU that I will never use. That and the pricing of yesteryear's generation of processors being exactly the same as when they launched defeating the purpose of buying into the platform with a lowend CPU and waiting for the right price on a better (quad core) model.

That is correct. Since minor clock speed differences is mostly irrelevant, features (core count and TDP as well) are being used more frequently to differentiate.

However, I would like to point out that none of the 1S server CPU's (dating from the Core days) could use the more dense memory configuration. They've all only ever used Unbuffered ECC memory. Registered (and Fully Buffered) ECC were always in the 2S+ server CPU's. Also, if you can look at ark.intel.com, there are plenty of E3 Xeon SKU's from every single generation since Sandy-Bridge that don't have the iGPU. So I'm not sure why you think you have to buy an iGPU.

Skylake E3 v5
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88210/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-v5-Family#@Server

Haswell E3 v3
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/78581/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-v3-Family#@Server

 

[PliotronX]

That is correct. Since minor clock speed differences is mostly irrelevant, features (core count and TDP as well) are being used more frequently to differentiate.

However, I would like to point out that none of the 1S server CPU's (dating from the Core days) could use the more dense memory configuration. They've all only ever used Unbuffered ECC memory. Registered (and Fully Buffered) ECC were always in the 2S+ server CPU's. Also, if you can look at ark.intel.com, there are plenty of E3 Xeon SKU's from every single generation since Sandy-Bridge that don't have the iGPU. So I'm not sure why you think you have to buy an iGPU.

Skylake E3 v5
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88210/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-v5-Family#@Server

Haswell E3 v3
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/78581/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-v3-Family#@Server

Sorry I was jumping around too much, I meant I'd like a K series processor without a POS iGPU. Obviously there are not any K series Xeons... As far as Xeons, E3 processors are typically single socket but mulit-socket support is not as crucial as being able to use RDIMM. You basically restated what I had; that E3s have only ever used UDIMM. My point is that this is an arbitrary line drawn where if there had been competition, it may not have come to pass. Intel is just going nuts with this segmentation business.

 

[superstition]

The G3258 was, IMO, a one-time marketing stunt, to get their CPUs out there posting ridonkulous GHz numbers, and get the few remaining AMD overclocking enthusiasts playing with an Intel rig.

AMD enthusiasts pretty much value having a bunch of cores, the opposite of the Pentium. Pretty much the only enthusiasm I’ve seen for that chip comes from the Intel-centric crowd. Perhaps the small minority of overclockers who go for APUs or 4/6 core FX chips might have been a bit interested but not the 8 core buyers unless they planned to build an emulator box.

Whatever overhead costs they incur by offering -K SKUs to retail, they more than make up for by steering enthusiasts to -K CPUs and HEDT platforms. Extracting that much more cash from the few people who wouldn't DARE consider not buying an OC'able product.

Moreover, people thinking that Intel might ban overclocking need to remember the delidding fad. What’s more profitable than having someone destroy a K chip by cutting the capacitors or cracking the die?

And FWIW, people who will spend $100 on a fan are a completely different market than the value-focused Celeron 300A generation.

Nah. People who bought the DS3L + E2140 combo frequently went with something like the Tuniq Tower. One could still save good money despite investing in stronger cooling. Plus, it’s not like the top-end coolers aren’t going to have brackets available for system upgrades. A strong cooler is a good investment, like buying more PSU than you need to help to offset the capacitor loss and reduce the noise level. Enthusiast overclockers of any even slightly serious stripe generally aren’t going to want to hear a jet engine stock cooler and deal with its shoddy efficiency.

The entire computer enthusiast market is driven by the gaming industry - dual cores are soooooo 2013 - that i3-K would choke on the latest titles anyway, leaving a lot of dissatisfied customers with nothing better to do that badmouth Intel. Marketing disaster.

The Anniversary Pentium was already a problem back in 2014. Eurogamer found stuttering with anything higher than a 750 Ti in BF4 and Crysis 3 and warned people about trying to buy it for gaming. Another gaming site flatly said not to buy the chip for gaming. Yet, Intel made significant revenue from its carrot on a stick, a carrot on a stick that was considerably worse for gaming than an overclockable i3. Intel simply wanted people to pay more for an i5.

 

[wingman04]

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