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

[VirtualLarry]

I mean, they gave us the G3258, which was IMHO a great little desktop chip. The greatness of which was magnified,, when mobo makers gave us H81 boards with non-Z OC capabilities. Finally, a great little under $100 budget overclocker combo was born.

But, that had three problems:
Even overclocked, it couldn't pass the performance of the stock-clocked i3, in many/most tasks and games.
It was limited to 1333 speed DDR3. This was an intentional crippling by Intel.
Most importantly, Intel forced mobo makers (and MS, in Win10), to include "microcode updates", that neutered the non-Z OC combo.

This all stems from the raw greed of Intel. Due to their "K" SKU / Z97-chipset mobo combo requirement for "allowed" OCing, Intel gets to collect the "overclocking tax", not once, but TWICE!

What I would like to see in the future from Intel, is a "more permissive" rather than "least permissive" overclocking scheme. One where if you pay the "overclocking tax" ONCE, then you are allowed to overclock.

For example, if you buy a "K" SKU CPU, you can overclock it in ANY compatible socket chipset. (AMD does this with FM2 / FM2+.)

Likewise, Intel should offer a "deluxe overclocking" chipset, and once you buy that mobo, you can then overclock ANY compatible CPU for that socket / chipset. (Much like the Z170 "SKY OC" capability.)

This would go a long way towards fostering an overclocking community, that is inclusive, rather than exclusive.

It would also allow a fully-sanctioned way of overclocking i3 CPUs.

 

[ozzy702]

Intel will care about budget overclocking when AMD has the same market share that Intel currently has in every single category. Realistically, until they are in the same position AMD is now, why would they care? What percentage of Intel's users overclock? For that matter, what percentage of Intel's users have even heard the term "overclock"?

The only reason they have "K" chips is because they can charge a premium for them. Budget overclocking cannibalizes their product stack so why would they do it?

 

[happy medium]

When they can make money from it.

 

[MongGrel]

I doubt Intel has ever taken budget overclocking seriously, it's just a thing that happened.

 

[jpiniero]

lol

I could see them offering an DC i3 above 4 Ghz at some point. Maybe.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Never.

It isn't in Intel's interests to do so.

 

[harobikes333]

Never.

It isn't in Intel's interests to do so.

Exactly....

 

[VirtualLarry]

Never.

It isn't in Intel's interests to do so.

I disagree. Look at the rumored KBL SKUs. Some of them are 4Ghz or more, stock. Intel is really pushing their 14nm process ("14nm+"?), and it's unlikely that those chips have significant headroom besides what they're already clocked at.

To put it another way, why wouldn't Intel sell a whole range of "K" SKUs (with the appropriate premium), for each model class, knowing that there wasn't much additional headroom. It's like free extra money!

 

[escrow4]

Overclocking is as dead as low end GPUs. Its a waste of time, I'd rather buy the highest clocked CPU I can afford in a given range rather than faff around with a dozen settings. And as I've always said here, overclocks are never stable. There will always be something somewhere that will cause it to fall over. Instead of a junk dual core, buy a non K 6600 with a tip top H170 gaming board with a slab of ports and have at it. Plug and play, no fuss.

This is why I bought a 5930K instead of a 5820K (yes MCE is technically overclocking quiet) and run it at 3.7GHz across 6 cores. If 3.7GHz ain't enough then 4.2GHz (a conservative overclock will be little better) and I should upgrade. Same why I bought a Strix 1070 OC, its ready out of the box.

 

[daxzy]

I disagree. Look at the rumored KBL SKUs. Some of them are 4Ghz or more, stock. Intel is really pushing their 14nm process ("14nm+"?), and it's unlikely that those chips have significant headroom besides what they're already clocked at.

To put it another way, why wouldn't Intel sell a whole range of "K" SKUs (with the appropriate premium), for each model class, knowing that there wasn't much additional headroom. It's like free extra money!

This is what Finance guys are supposed to emulate. Let's take the Skylake lineup as an example.

Let's assume there's a i3-6100K ($127) that's $10* more expensive than the current i3-6300. It overclocks real well and can trade blows with a stock i5-6500 ($202). How many % of the people will just get the cheaper i3-6100K and just ditch the i5-6500 versus what % people would've been too poor for the i5-6500, but would gladly give $10 extra for the i3-6100K? Now take the same numbers where you have a Pentium-K edition versus a stock i3-6100. My guess is (and what the Finance people agree on, apparently), the answer is probably that most people would skip the more expensive i5 and go for the cheaper i3-K (but not because they couldn't afford to), at least in the US and Western Europe. It would be conceivable in developing/poorer/high-tax countries that an i5 or i7 would be out of reach for the majority and an i3-K version might make Intel more money.

As for myself, I don't overclock anymore. I had an i7-2600K and got it to 4.4GHz. Then I realized I was GPU bottlenecked most of the time and ran it stock for 4 years. Recently, I got an i7-6700 (non-K), but mainly for the lower 65W TDP in a SFF setup (Silverstone ML08).

* 6700K is +$40 to 6600; 6600K is +$20 to 6600; so +$10 for the i3 equivalent doesn't seem too far off the mark

 

[ninaholic37]

This is what Finance guys are supposed to emulate. Let's take the Skylake lineup as an example.

Let's assume there's a i3-6100K ($127) that's $10* more expensive than the current i3-6300. It overclocks real well and can trade blows with a stock i5-6500 ($202). How many % of the people will just get the cheaper i3-6100K and just ditch the i5-6500 versus what % people would've been too poor for the i5-6500, but would gladly give $10 extra for the i3-6100K? Now take the same numbers where you have a Pentium-K edition versus a stock i3-6100. My guess is (and what the Finance people agree on, apparently), the answer is probably that most people would skip the more expensive i5 and go for the cheaper i3-K (but not because they couldn't afford to), at least in the US and Western Europe. It would be conceivable in developing/poorer/high-tax countries that an i5 or i7 would be out of reach for the majority and an i3-K version might make Intel more money.

As for myself, I don't overclock anymore. I had an i7-2600K and got it to 4.4GHz. Then I realized I was GPU bottlenecked most of the time and ran it stock for 4 years. Recently, I got an i7-6700 (non-K), but mainly for the lower 65W TDP in a SFF setup (Silverstone ML08).

* 6700K is +$40 to 6600; 6600K is +$20 to 6600; so +$10 for the i3 equivalent doesn't seem too far off the mark

So... how much more would it cost Intel to make i5-6500 than i3-6100K? You can take $202 (i5-6500) minus that difference, and make it the i3-6100K cost, so they don't lose any money.

Hahah, I should work for Intel!

 

[daxzy]

So... how much more would it cost Intel to make i5-6500 than i3-6100K? You can take $202 (i5-6500) minus that difference, and make it the i3-6100K cost, so they don't lose any money.

Hahah, I should work for Intel!

Nothing? IIRC, all the i3/5/7 desktop dies are the same (please correct me if I'm wrong).

The way CPU's are made, you have a wafer. The dies are then sliced up. Stuff on the outside are throw away (who wants half a die?). Some of the dies have defects that cause them to be 100% bad. Usually the center of wafer have the best dies. Those chips clock the highest. Those are your i7's. Next you have your i5's (maybe some defects on the cache area of the die). Next are the i3's (defects on cores and cache).

Usually whatever's packaged is just the demand. It's very conceivable there are i3 chips that could've been an i7 chip (remember the Athlon 500-650 or getting free Athlon II cores?). Since Intel has things fused off, we can never verify this.

 

[Sheep221]

So... how much more would it cost Intel to make i5-6500 than i3-6100K? You can take $202 (i5-6500) minus that difference, and make it the i3-6100K cost, so they don't lose any money.

Hahah, I should work for Intel!

There are quad core and dual core nodes, only i3 and i7 dies are made.

 

[HiroThreading]

I disagree. Look at the rumored KBL SKUs. Some of them are 4Ghz or more, stock. Intel is really pushing their 14nm process ("14nm+"?), and it's unlikely that those chips have significant headroom besides what they're already clocked at.

To put it another way, why wouldn't Intel sell a whole range of "K" SKUs (with the appropriate premium), for each model class, knowing that there wasn't much additional headroom. It's like free extra money!

That's simply because they need to convince users on Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell to upgrade.

It has very little with Intel's interests in supporting overclocking.

 

[NTMBK]

Never.

 

[ZippZ]

Intel is a business. The goal of business is to make as much money as possible. Allowing people to buy cheaper CPU/Motherboards to overclock to the levels of more expensive equipment will cause Intel to not make the maximum amount of profit.

Companies that work for the welfare of the people are called charities (or businesses that suck too).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Intel is a business. The goal of business is to make as much money as possible. Allowing people to buy cheaper CPU/Motherboards to overclock to the levels of more expensive equipment will cause Intel to not make the maximum amount of profit.

Alternatively, allowing overclocking, with the full technical knowledge that in doing so, the end-user will still not exceed the next model up in the lineup's performance, would build brand awareness and brand equity with enthusiasts.

Now, Intel being the dominant x86/64 market firm, may not care about brand equity, and may want to squeeze maximum profit from their customers, regardless of whether that scheme costs them brand equity in the future.

Edit: Look at where that plan got Comcast.

 

[fastamdman]

How can you guarantee that it won't exceed the next model up though? If just one person had the "perfect" silicone lottery type of chip and it exceeded the next level by just a little bit, then there is still the chance that people would take the gamble and risk of the lower end chip to surpass the higher end chip and that isn't in there best interest. Plus the majority of people who buy processors don't overclock them, hence why the K sku processors are more expensive then the non k. It's not because they are actually made from a better wafer and therefore cost more, it's just the fact that they are unlocked so people can overclock them if they want to and depending on how good the silicone and supporting hardware is, depends on there achieved overclock. Having intel have a K sku of lineups for all of there processor lines is highly unlikely to ever happen in my opinion because they want to squeeze the most money out of people but in the smartest ways. They don't want people to buy a chip to overclock it to have it hit the exact same speed that a chip 10 dollars more was, especially if the chip 10 dollars more is also unlocked.

In reality, I think Intel should just toss away the K sku completely and have all chips be unlocked and then increase all of there chip prices by the extra cost. This will give the people with the knowledge that want to overclock to be able to and the people who want to learn the ability to, without having to buy the expensive K sku line. The people that don't want to don't need to, but it's always better to have more options for consumers than it is to have less options in my opinion.

 

[jpiniero]

If anything, it's more likely Intel is going to get rid of overclocking completely on the mainstream platform.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

If anything, it's more likely Intel is going to get rid of overclocking completely on the mainstream platform.

I've had the same thought actually. If the current rumours of KBL-X can be believed, we'll get 4 cores with high clocks on the next HEDT platform. Besides, if the specs for the 7700K holds up, we're already looking at 4.2GHz/4.5GHz at stock. Not much point in OC'ing that thing. If we get i3's at similar clocks (>4GHz), its already way more performance then most consumers need. So in that sense, moving the current ultra high-end LGA-1151 SKUs onto the more feature rich HEDT platform could be a good idea.

 

[NTMBK]

I've had the same thought actually. If the current rumours of KBL-X can be believed, we'll get 4 cores with high clocks on the next HEDT platform. Besides, if the specs for the 7700K holds up, we're already looking at 4.2GHz/4.5GHz at stock. Not much point in OC'ing that thing. If we get i3's at similar clocks (>4GHz), its already way more performance then most consumers need. So in that sense, moving the current ultra high-end LGA-1151 SKUs onto the more feature rich HEDT platform could be a good idea.

Is the HEDT platform really more feature rich? The main feature is quad-channel memory, but that is controlled by the CPU's IMC, not the chipset.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Of course they wont allow it , except maybe on one model like the Anniversary Pentium. I am sure they have made studies and concluded (probably rightly), that the extra revenue gained from the few that would upgrade only if you could overclock a low end chip is less than the revenue gained from the extra price they charge for the K models. Not good for the consumer, but more profit for intel, which is the point of a business. And yes, with such high stock clocks, I would rather just buy a 6700k, run it at stock, and be done with it. No hassles.

At least they allow overclocking on the cheapest HEDT platform, although I would rather see 6 cores on the mainstream, but as others have said, Intel seems to be moving enthusiasts toward the HEDT instead.

 

[A5]

The Celeron 300A cost them a lot of money. They aren't going to let that happen again.

 

[cytg111]

Never.
But lets imagine an angle anyway.
Say Zen comes out semi competitive
Say that 'our' opinion is not without value, ie. marketing value, public opionion etc.
Intel could unlock the i3's to try and squat whatever 2-4C Zen AMD might launch.
A OC'ed ~4.5GHz i3 vs 4C/8T Zen @3Ghz would probably carry its own weight.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Is the HEDT platform really more feature rich? The main feature is quad-channel memory, but that is controlled by the CPU's IMC, not the chipset.

Another feature is far more PCIe lanes for extra controllers. Up to 40 lanes, and connected directly to the CPU. With current LGA-115x you get a 16x slot for graphics (that can be split 8x/8x or even 8x/4x/4x if you're really lucky) and the DMI link (PCIe 3.0 x4 equivalent) to the PCH. That's it.

If you want a full speed/width connection to both your PCIe SSD and graphics card, you've already used all available lanes from both the CPU and PCH. Leaving nothing for f.x. USB or SATA drives.