Do you think it might stick around on that supermicro motherboard? If it was a long time feature, then it might be a little weirder to just up and remove it.
This article reads like it is trying to persuade the reader that Overall this move is a good thing in order to save the pc market and reduce review workload. Looks like the kids running AT now are too young to remember that this is how all pc's used to work, and guess what we had reviews back then too lol. It is nothing but a 100% price fixing scheme by Intel that has led us to $500 mobos and cpu's and minor incremental upgrades since sandy bridge.
Like seriously why would AT care about system integrators overclocking CPUS? It's as if this was written by an Intel market strategist.
A new low AT, it's despicable, sad....and quite frankly embarrassing.
No, it doesn't seem apologetic at all. However, I can understand why people who view overclocking as important (I don't at all care one way or another if processors can be overclocked or not given how little relevance CPU speed has these days in situations where people are most likely to overclock -- to play games -- as the GPU is far more important.) would view any article that doesn't attack Intel directly as being apologetic even though it isn't. People with strong feelings in favor of overclocking will unsurprisingly want their feelings represented by the IT news media. When a journalist takes a non-aggressive stance and merely provides what they know, pitchforks and torches come out because the article didn't condemn anyone.
What really surprises me is that the people in a couple of the pictures that call themselves "Splave, L0ud_sil3nc3 and Fugger" didn't get a few giggles. Am I the only one who thinks those guys look like they're too old to use those kinds of goofy screen names?
This article directly states that locking down bclk is good because it will stop integrators from buying cheap CPUs and having them perform like high end, as well as introducing extra review "overhead". It's blatant. What possible motive or concern does AT have regarding integrators. The only one, I repeat the only party to "lose" in that situation is Intel.
Everyone else wins.
Oh and why do I keep posting here?
I didn't force AT to write this horse shit, they did it on their own free will. I'll stop blowing the whistle when they become a credible source of tech journalism again.
Stop the "review-ver-tising" and quit writing corporate shill PR pieces like this one.
What got me here in the first place was lacking a hardware review site I liked after Tom's Hardware changed significantly in the early 2000s. I miss Dr. Pabst's work, but anyway...
Yeah, your complaints are pulled out of the context in which the statements were being made in order to provide false validity to the claims you're attempting to make. You know as well as I do that you're reaching pretty far for them and that they're absurdly deep in the realm of comments trolling. But I'll leave you to your work. Have fun with that.
While gamers might be the most enthusiastic overclockers there are still good reasons to overclock both for games and for other applications. To this date a lot of software is still bottlenecked by lack of being multi-threaded properly.
Try something as simple as starting a sessions of World of Warcraft when many addons are installed. The whole of the lists of addon scripts is compiled through a single CPU core.
Try something like Adobe Lightroom (raw converter and photo library). Some operations - especially face recognition - run on a single core, other operations are capped at 2 or 4 cores or at least scale a lot worse after the fourth core.
And the list goes on: Firefox (1 - 2 cores), Faststone Image Viewer (2 cores), Splashtop or Teamviewer (1 to 2 cores at startup), Adobe Reader DC (1 core), Symantec Endpoint Protection (1 core during scan), Dropbox (1 - 2 cores), GDrive (1 core), iCloud (1 core), ElstarFormular (German taxes, 1 core), various services falling under the SVHOST moniker (1 core).
So in normal daily computing there are various (lots) of situation where users are CPU frequency bottlenecked. Of course this doesn't mean that the average buyer of non K components would try overclocking at all.
Exactly. I see a substantial boost in productivity apps like Sony Vegas Studio 12 when rendering video when I overclock my i5 4690K to 4.7GHz compared to stock 3.5GHz (on all four cores). What would take 20 minutes is shaved to a little over 17 minutes as an example.
I have to agree. I've lurked around AT since near the beginning. (though not on the forums) and it definitely feels like the wind was sucked out of the site when Anand left. Sometimes I question why I keep it in my daily browsing routine.
I check AT once a month or so, with adblock as aggressive as possible - just to see what is out there. Then I see things like this and remember why I shouldn't be reading anandtech anymore.
no normal person updates their bios EVER.. Enthusiast will do it religiously for overclock performance, or to upgrade the CPU to a newer stepping/revision, but most wont..
A "normal person" will want to upgrade a CPU or will straight up buy a MoBo and a CPU that don't go together because of the outdated BIOS. RAM compatibility is another issue. Also sometimes BIOS updates fix bugs like the usual ones related to sleep modes on a PC. Maybe not everybody updates the BIOS but definitely plenty of people do it.
I know, it's ridiculous because most serious overclockers would still be buying the 6600K (or some sort of K chip) anyway. The BCLK just added a little extra tweaking headroom after the multiplier would hit its ceiling (ie, getting that extra 35MHz when your multiplier increments are 50MHz and the chip couldn't hit that last 50MHz multiplier)
Just kind of cheap. What's next, they take away voltage adjustment so people can't underclock\undervolt?
We should hope. If Zen isn't anything like Bulldozer, then Intel will be forced to innovate, as well as price their processors lower with more features.
The problem was public expectations of Bulldozer were completely unrealistic. For the most part, dollar for dollar, it was competitive with Intel. It just capped out at $150, where the Core i3 did. AMD never tried to sell anything to compete with the i5 and i7, and if they did, it'd be a 200-watt monster because they are two generations behind Intel on lithography and fab manufacturing (or should I say their "partners" are.)
At one time, over a decade ago, AMD was ahead of Intel on manufacturing, but that was when AMD had their own Fab(s)
They don't have that control now, and nobody seems to care to compete against Intel's manufacturing prowess other than Samsung, which is to some extent an Intel partner (in display production)
And before somebody mentions it, I do realize AMD made a number of FX CPU's to compete with the i5 and i7, and in some cases exceed their performance, but these were Vishera-based; not the topic of the discussion.
They were also 220-watt's, requiring around 3x the power of an i7-4770 for basically the same synthetic performance.
You're mixing up AMD's codenames. Bulldozer was the CPU microarchitecture used in Zambezi family of FX processors (e.g. FX-8100), but the name is still used for the successive architectures that are based on Bulldozer. The first successor was Piledriver, which was used in Vishera FX processors and Trinity/Richland APU's. After that came Steamroller, only used in Kaveri APU's, and then Excavator, only used in Carrizo.
So when you were referring to Bulldozer, I assume you were talking about APU's in general.
Yes, that's specifically what I mean. I should have focused on APU's because so much of the die is used for non-APU/FPU performance. If they dedicate the entire package to "processor performance" like the FX-series then they entirely competitive with Intel on IPC, but at twice the power consumption.
The real Achilles heel for AMD's older packages (AM2+/AM3) is the chipsets are ancient. The USB 2.0 performance isn't even competitive with Intel and they completely lack M.2, USB 3.0/3.1, modern onboard network/audio codecs, and so on.
Zen has an insane up mountain battle. It would literally have to demolish the flagship i7 to really cause a buzz. Anything less, even if it was better dollar for dollar would be a loss. Just look at the Fury X, it almost made it to the podium for the crown, but Nvidia crashed the party with the 980Ti with just a little bit better performance to destroy all the Fury X thunder. If AMD could have gotten the Fury out before the 980Ti, the glowing reviews would have giving the the glimmer AMD needed. When you look everywhere for recommendations, you only get the 980Ti over the Fury just about every time. I'm thinking AMD will have an edge in VR with support very early on and lower latency architecture.
Not necessarily. Zen merely has to have roughly the same or better performance than Intel from the $50 range to the mainstream i7 range. Although, it would be cool to see it demolish the 5960X (but it probably would have to be a 200w chip).
But being equal to Intel means you have to have same IPC as Intel does. Or you have to clock higher, which isn't possible with manufacturing deficiency. i3 clocks to 3.9GHz so you have to match that single core performance, then its merely adding cores. But this core stuffing gets harder as you go as interconnect needs increases exponentially.
I hope reviewers will give Zen fair run. Comparing Zen+motherboards in equally prised competitors. And in gaming making reasonable assumptions. No one is going to buy $50 processors and $50 modo and pair them with $1k graphics cards. There is no need to produce that top charring competitor monster as they are not alternatives. No on compares 1.6litre family sedan to semi or super car either.
Well, I believe you are mistaken here. At launch, AMD so badly wanted to make it seem that the high end bulldozer models were performance competitive with the core i5/i7s and had priced it accordingly. If my memory serves me correctly, the top end bulldozer launched at $245. And it was only competitive or slightly faster than the i5s in highly multithreaded integer workloads. For everything else, the i5 whitewashed it in both performance and efficiency. It is only later that poor sales forced AMD to drive down their prices to achieve a respectable performance / dollar. The performance per watt to this day remains abysmal. Let's see what zen has on offer.
"I assume our readers want to see [overclocked performance of non-K chips] as well?"
In my personal opinion, no. Those who will run such a setup are hopefully technically savvy enough to do the necessary math to extrapolate how their BCLK-tweaked Skylake will run. You could certainly do a quick check to see how far you can push a specific chip, just for reference, but I don't think there's enough value to justify the time spent.
In a CPU bound task, if you get a 30% boost from BCLK does this mean that tasks performs 30% faster? If so, it's easy to extrapolate. However, based on older chips when you overclock via FSB it's more than linear, so is it 30%, 32%, 35%, 40%? Does the RAM have to run faster as well? Roughly, sure, we'd expect 33x121 to perform like 40x100 in most tasks because both configurations are 4.0GHz.
idk, but there needs to be some sort of real response. Intel cannot go around telling other businesses how to sell their product. If I make mobos and I want to offer BCLK overclocking, that's my choice. Clearly whatever Intel threatened with was strong enough to force a change and THAT is what needs to be responded to. I can't believe this is just to segment their products. They don't want them BCLK overclocked. Why?
Feb 9:"If you believe that Intel is worth pointing the finger at here." Well yes I kind of do.
Feb 8: Intel: “The latest update provided to partners includes, among other things, code that aligns with the position that we do not recommend overclocking processors that have not been designed to do so. Additionally, Intel does not warranty the operation of the processor beyond its specifications.”
You know, I was honestly rather hopeful that Intel would keep its marketing angle that overclockers were a small niche market, but that they still offered products out of the goodness of their marketing hearts. Since while overclockers are "not significant" in direct sales, they were just good PR, helping with promoting Halo products.
I mean, so what if i3 might be overclockable by the "average joe" ... nobody overclocks these days, right?
It's also a pretty weak argument that "oh no, OEMs will jump all over this..." No they won't. Dell isn't going to release an overclocked i3 Optiplex, that would be a support nightmare. And whatever HP/Compaq's current $399 laptop with the 13x7 screen isn't going to have enough power section to work normally, let alone have them enable overclocking w/o burning up before the warranty.
Sorry for the rant. I guess I don't really have a point there ;p
Another angle I could see though is if Intel left "normal" Skylake overclockable, it would be a constant thorn to them as future processor generations sacrifice performance for power savings. From the messaging Intel is giving these days, don't expect even unlocked 9nm or smaller chips to ever be able to reach the same performance levels of a hypothetical 5Ghz Skylake.
This is what happens when the Halo moves from performance to portability. I'm not saying that as a negative thing (although me being old-school I hate it) it's just how it is now.
"I mean, so what if i3 might be overclockable by the "average joe" ... nobody overclocks these days, right?" It's not like people were more computer-savvy back then.... so I wouldn't be sure. On the other hand, they surely were a bigger % of the buyers since average joes do not buy computer parts. There is the possibility that overclocked i3 could still cannibalize some profit today, otherwise it doesn't make sense not to do it, unless it costs more than it's worth.
"I assume our readers want to see [overclocked performance of non-K chips] as well?"
Um, yes? Heck how about even just using the 4790K in reviews instead of the 4770?
And no, not the lame "but it's in Bench" ... no, I want a 4Ghz Haswell in the main article charts, where the average reader can see with their own eyes w/o cross referencing.
It's always infuriated me that AnandTech never uses the 4970K in it's main articles. I don't expect overclocked results, I'd be happy with it as a data point at it's stock speed (Also props to Intel for having the non-K 4970 be only 3.6Ghz instead of 4... shrewd that). I kinda assumed this was due to some pressure from Intel, because you can't have your old chips being competitive with the new stuff... and 4790K always seemed like an oddball SKU that someone (awesome!) actually slipped past marketing somehow since it's almost too strong of a performer and has other... interesting features (everyone please note, 4790K is the ONLY K sku where features like VTx were NOT disabled - odd isn't it?).
And I'd hope even the lamest 4770K would be able to run 4.0Ghz if you're worried about be relevant to readers.
What, in your eyes, would be the point in using the 4790k over the 4770k? There is very little synthetic performance or real world performance between the two.
The difference? Default clock speed. I want a 4GHz Haswell on the charts. 4790K would just give Anandtech a way to show it as an "official" configuration. You and me both know that the stock 4770K speed of 3.5Ghz is a joke.
I don't want both on the chart, I want the 4790K to replace the 4770 on the chart.
Thanks for the clarification on VTd. I guess the difference lessened because 4790K also had TSX enabled before Intel discovered the errata. Still though, it is interesting to me that the 4790K was the only K sku that was different in that way.
I could understand your desire to see a 4ghz Haswell chip on the charts if there was a reason other than 4ghz. There is little to no performance gains that would show relevance in the i7 class on a comparison chart. As for clock speeds, there are 3.2ghz and 3.4ghz chips that outperform the 4770k. And let me remind you there is a 5ghz chip that doesn't fair well against the 4770k.
TSX was part of the Haswell architecture and Intel disabled TSX in all its chips, not just the 4970k. Regardless it would have provided no additional performance boosts in Anandtechs day to day becnhmark suite to begin with. Now whether Intel has re-enabled TSX I have no idea. Nor would VTd to throw that in as well.
Again. I see no reason why Anandtech should replace an already high end i7 with a slightly better i7 on the same socket. Just doesn't make any sense. So I ask again... WHY replace one cpu in with another chip that will offer little gains in either performance or comparison results?
That's the thing, I have no other reason than it being an "official" 4Ghz Haswell datapoint. But I'm making an assumption that anyone buying a 4770K (or any K sku) would at the very least run it at 4Ghz.
Thanks for the reply. That makes sense since the stock speed difference between the 4790K and the 4790 is really large compared to earlier generations. Normally it was only 100mhz from the 2500/2600 days even up to the 4770 vs 4770K.
Heh, that kinda makes 4790K ironically the first K sku that actually made sense to not overclock. ouch my head ;P
"here are 3.2ghz and 3.4ghz chips that outperform the 4770k" Uhh no there isn't. Broadwell and Skylake IPC increase are not greater than 20% over Haswell. Frequency is still king in single threaded performance (what really matters for client applications and many server ones). Yeah if you compare a 14 core xeon to a consumer part in threaded surpass the consumer part is going to look like a joke.
Ok, agreed. I'll give you that. But We are talking a chip to replace a benchmark cup. General benchmark suites. And yes there are 3.2 and 3.4ghz chips that will operate better than the 4770k. Here are three examples: on benchmarks they didn't surpass they were right on the heals of the 4770k. In real world application the margins would minimal.
They aren't practical, but it goes to my point that clock speeds aren't the aole importance of a chip.
I agree with xrror, we need the 4790k in the charts, simply to make it easy to see architecture and IPC gains, without having a clock speed variable. Pitting a 4770K against a skylake 6700K makes the skylake look better than it really is.
"It's always infuriated me that AnandTech never uses the 4970K in it's main articles."
It was noted at the time when were doing generational analysis of Skylake that users wanted more 4790K results to be shown. When I lock down my test suite for 2016 and retest the lot of processors I have (which will take time), I'll be doing stock and OC results in future for the big launches.
Though I'm surprised you imply that we've left it out of many articles. I can only really think of one where it ultimately mattered, the Skylake 6700K review, or perhaps a second with the Skylake OC but that was just a scaling piece. What others were there?
"Though I'm surprised you imply that we've left it out of many articles. I can only really think of one where it ultimately mattered"
I mean this is the best possible way, you've earned your Ph.D with that non-committal sentence =) (Thesis committees are evil). But to be specific, my request is replacing the 4770(K) with the 4790K.
Bear with me here, I'll try and put my reasoning on this, this is some convoluted Venn diagram I'm trying to form here... My argument is that a person running a 4 core, 8 virtual thread Haswell (thus. i7) who is reading an Anandtech article, and is interested in processor performance, AND who actually has the ability to upgrade their machine (ie: not corporate customer, NOT a K-sku), is likely to already be running their 47x0K processor over 4Ghz.
I keep harping about 4790K not because it's somehow better than the 4770. It's because it's the only way to have an official, Intel released SKU of Haswell at 4.0Ghz base speed. I am not suggesting making overclocked speeds an official part of the article benches even if personally I'd love that. Mostly since it could imply that Anandtech is officially endorsing overclocking (for other readers - they don't want to open that can of worms) and it also makes more work for an older platform in your reviews. Plus then you open the door for people to complain that you didn't overclock every platform and/or you didn't overclock one enough etc.
wolfemane has a point, in that the difference between a normal 4770 at 3.4, and a 4790K at 4.0 isn't really "that much" but... Is there a way to query readers that have a 4xx0K processor what they run them at?
I guess my argument rests on the assumption that the majority of 4770K and 4790K users are running those processors at least over 4Ghz. And that is an assumption. I'm totally open for more input on this.
My full assumption is that the vast majority of people, who knowingly bought 4770K would seriously run it at the stock 3.5Ghz by choice, thus making it an unrealistic datapoint. Anyone who bought a 4770 non-K (3.4) hopefully would have realized what they were giving up by buying it instead of the K, and (another assumption) aren't interested in overclocking - and likely would just upgrade the entire platform if they need more performance. The computer is an appliance, they aren't looking at Anandtech articles to see if they need to upgrade their processor, they are just looking for a big enough leap for the entire platform to replace it all.
I'm not thinking the person with the 4770 in their Dell Optiplex 7010 really cares about these articles. Again though... I'm now building assumptions on top of more assumptions.
So people using a 4770, or somehow have a 4770K and are not overclocking it... the data you collect on those is wasted on those people? And everyone else who actually cares about processor performance specifically, has to go through the effort to extrapolate the data every time.
I'm saying that the specific audience who would be reading the chart data, trying to extract if they should upgrade or move away from a socket 1150 system, are the ones who are always most inconvenienced by the stock 4770(K) numbers. Because the stock numbers are only for the person with the Dell, and those people don't care anyway.
Well that was all hugely rambley. If I'm totally off the rocker that's fine. Also before people assume I have some vested interest as a socket1150 owner I'm not.
Everyone please feedback here though. If there are tons of you do use a 4770 or 4770K at stock, but DO read Anandtech articles for upgrade info, please chime in! I'm old school, and I fully admit i'm likely not in touch with the "modern builder" ... what scenarios are your machines in? Where would you buy a 4770 over a 4770K in a home build? And I mean that honestly! The only scenerio I can think is if you had the lowest cost B85 board but needed 8 thread - but then you're trying to replicate the Dell?
Lastly, Ian thanks for your time responding. And sorry for making a big buggeroo about a now dead socket. In the end I doubt it matters what you use for 1150 results, since... I doubt the majority of readers really cares about the performance of old sockets =(
Totally agree with this reasoning. It's a little weird because even though there's some movement in peak stock speeds, there's almost none in peak OC, so even though I largely agree that a 4GHz stock 4790k (or 4GHz OC 4770k) is probably the right data point in the reviews, I also see value in a 4GHz OC 2500k/2600k, because that's what many enthusiasts (like me) are still running.
@xrror: "My full assumption is that the vast majority of people, who knowingly bought 4770K would seriously run it at the stock 3.5Ghz by choice, thus making it an unrealistic datapoint."
I think what you wrote and what you meant to write don't line up here (or I'm having repetitive comprehension fail). I'm guessing, given your other statements, you want to say it is unrealistic to expect the majority of 4770K owners would run them at stock and thus the stock data point is of limited value.
@xrror: "... everyone else who actually cares about processor performance specifically, has to go through the effort to extrapolate the data every time."
This may make some sense. If we are looking for an off the cuff, no calculator, rudimentary extrapolation, then it is much easier to do the math at 4.0GHz than 3.5GHz (or some other non integer number). This is a common scenario in my experience. A lot of people I talk with will make basic linear extrapolations on performance, understanding that there will be inaccuracies. Thus they don't need to get exact numbers as close estimates are good enough. Rather than exact performance numbers, they treat these extrapolations as performance bounds for the theoretical chips in question.
I don't think such discussions merit all the work and retesting that would go into replacing the 4770K with a 4790K, but I can see why you might find it desirable. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing it myself, but again, the return on investment may not be good enough to merit pulling the trigger.
I see your point now and I agree. But I still feel replacing a cpu with a different cpu on the same socket now that a new standard is out doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Now replacing it with the 6700k on a new platform makes more sense to me (and is also a 4ghz chip and compares nicely to the 4970k).
well.. yea. It probably isn't the best idea to dump $300 into an old socket unless it's an upgrade from a Pentium AE or something... and even then, that's kinda a stretch.
It's too bad socket 1150 Broadwell (like i7-5775C) looks like a spastic overclocker from reviews I find.
And wow I just looked at the bench link you posted. That's rather (beyond) closer than I expected!
it's not actually confirmed it's Intel stopping it. Maybe it's also a reliability/warranty/legal issue. Maybe with these BCLK OC's you get silent data corruption or who knows what and Intel just informed AsRock about it or they figured it out themselves. In that case they would also not make big waves about it and remove the feature silently.
@beginner99: "Maybe with these BCLK OC's you get silent data corruption or who knows what and Intel just informed AsRock about it or they figured it out themselves"
Data corruption is always a risk when overclocking. There is much prior precedence and many warranty voided statements that make it clear that the consumer is responsible for said data corruption (and other negative results) when running the CPU out of spec. There is a non-zero probability that Intel didn't force this action, but I don't think this trail will lead you to the rabbit.
"Intel has been actively promoting overclocking as a big feature of their processors."
More specifically, as a big feature of their premium K processors. Plebians with non-K CPUs are not invited and not welcome at the overclocking club. I'm not surprised this feature has been removed. Wasn't there a similar occasion some generations back?
Since nobody else seems to remember the past. Yup. Random headline from bittech but gives a date: "Intel updates microcode to block H87/B85 overclocking Published on 25th July 2013 by Gareth Halfacree"
Bonus for remember that Intel implemented ways to limit chipset overclocks in the core 2 775 era starting with the P4x chipsets. P41 you only get +7 maybe. P43 was about +20 (note how all P43 boards capped at 420fsb) and P45 wasn't gimped. Nice of them wasn't it?
So no, it's not just you. And hehe SandyBridge was the most awesome Trojan Horse ever. "Hey everyone, now that the chipset is fully on the die, you truely are screwed because we control it ALL, but.... we're gonna be "nice" and not turn the screws right at first, and lucky us! SandyBridge is such a sweet overclocker (and we also didn't cheap out on the heatspeader TIM) that none of you will care with these amazing 5Ghz overclocks.
Please note, I am being snarky, but... SandyBridge really was the most brilliant way to bring bad news. It kicked so much overclock butt, that any legitimate naysayers were ignored cause 5Ghz heheh.
Ivy only sucked cause they had some motive to use stupid TIM. Haswell actually did well DESPITE Intel going mobile first. I think Broadwell on socket 1150 sucks cause it shows the truth - Broadwell truely is mobile first. Plus... well Intel really doesn't care about Broadwell on socket1150.
Skylake... remember how on skylake on launch really sucked to overclock on existing z97 boards? Skylake only really works right with z170, funny that right? Intel tuned that sucker.
Oh.. gee. Wonder if maybe that's why Broadwell sucks on 1150. They're not gonna tune that.
Sorry I'm done ranting. This all brought to you because... you're not the only one notices this stuff, over so much time - but we're all told to shut up because, well... nobody cares about that old stuff, right? We're irrelevant. We're not supposed to notice or care that as Intel integrates more and more of the system into the processor in the name of power efficiency, which we don't care about on the desktop, and as that takes away the ability for motherboard makers to do fun tricks to give up options that ...
The end game is okay, say we want to build a virtual reality rig in 4 years. When the true performance level you need, is only offered by Intel at $600 for a cpu. If you complain... oh! no you should just suck it up and pay the money. Oh! And why are you complaining because all that flexibiity you gave up lets you save 10w of power over that old, inefficient way that (by chance, you crazy person) would have let you actually tweak a processor in the range you can actually affort to not be junk.
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tipoo - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Microcode update giveth, microcode update taketh away.ImSpartacus - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Do you think it might stick around on that supermicro motherboard? If it was a long time feature, then it might be a little weirder to just up and remove it.dsumanik - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
This article reads like it is trying to persuade the reader that Overall this move is a good thing in order to save the pc market and reduce review workload. Looks like the kids running AT now are too young to remember that this is how all pc's used to work, and guess what we had reviews back then too lol. It is nothing but a 100% price fixing scheme by Intel that has led us to $500 mobos and cpu's and minor incremental upgrades since sandy bridge.Like seriously why would AT care about system integrators overclocking CPUS? It's as if this was written by an Intel market strategist.
A new low AT, it's despicable, sad....and quite frankly embarrassing.
BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
I see you're still not taking your own advice from your comment in the AfterShokz Pipeline article. ;)K_Space - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Whilst I think dsumanik was a bit harsh are you telling me this article doesn't read like an Intel apologetic piece? Call the spade a spade! NotBrokenCrayons - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link
No, it doesn't seem apologetic at all. However, I can understand why people who view overclocking as important (I don't at all care one way or another if processors can be overclocked or not given how little relevance CPU speed has these days in situations where people are most likely to overclock -- to play games -- as the GPU is far more important.) would view any article that doesn't attack Intel directly as being apologetic even though it isn't. People with strong feelings in favor of overclocking will unsurprisingly want their feelings represented by the IT news media. When a journalist takes a non-aggressive stance and merely provides what they know, pitchforks and torches come out because the article didn't condemn anyone.What really surprises me is that the people in a couple of the pictures that call themselves "Splave, L0ud_sil3nc3 and Fugger" didn't get a few giggles. Am I the only one who thinks those guys look like they're too old to use those kinds of goofy screen names?
dsumanik - Friday, February 12, 2016 - link
This article directly states that locking down bclk is good because it will stop integrators from buying cheap CPUs and having them perform like high end, as well as introducing extra review "overhead". It's blatant. What possible motive or concern does AT have regarding integrators. The only one, I repeat the only party to "lose" in that situation is Intel.Everyone else wins.
Oh and why do I keep posting here?
I didn't force AT to write this horse shit, they did it on their own free will. I'll stop blowing the whistle when they become a credible source of tech journalism again.
Stop the "review-ver-tising" and quit writing corporate shill PR pieces like this one.
Test the gear, report the facts.
The truth sells AT.
It's what got you here in the first place
BrokenCrayons - Friday, February 12, 2016 - link
What got me here in the first place was lacking a hardware review site I liked after Tom's Hardware changed significantly in the early 2000s. I miss Dr. Pabst's work, but anyway...Yeah, your complaints are pulled out of the context in which the statements were being made in order to provide false validity to the claims you're attempting to make. You know as well as I do that you're reaching pretty far for them and that they're absurdly deep in the realm of comments trolling. But I'll leave you to your work. Have fun with that.
Timur Born - Sunday, February 14, 2016 - link
While gamers might be the most enthusiastic overclockers there are still good reasons to overclock both for games and for other applications. To this date a lot of software is still bottlenecked by lack of being multi-threaded properly.Try something as simple as starting a sessions of World of Warcraft when many addons are installed. The whole of the lists of addon scripts is compiled through a single CPU core.
Try something like Adobe Lightroom (raw converter and photo library). Some operations - especially face recognition - run on a single core, other operations are capped at 2 or 4 cores or at least scale a lot worse after the fourth core.
And the list goes on: Firefox (1 - 2 cores), Faststone Image Viewer (2 cores), Splashtop or Teamviewer (1 to 2 cores at startup), Adobe Reader DC (1 core), Symantec Endpoint Protection (1 core during scan), Dropbox (1 - 2 cores), GDrive (1 core), iCloud (1 core), ElstarFormular (German taxes, 1 core), various services falling under the SVHOST moniker (1 core).
So in normal daily computing there are various (lots) of situation where users are CPU frequency bottlenecked. Of course this doesn't mean that the average buyer of non K components would try overclocking at all.
Nfarce - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
Exactly. I see a substantial boost in productivity apps like Sony Vegas Studio 12 when rendering video when I overclock my i5 4690K to 4.7GHz compared to stock 3.5GHz (on all four cores). What would take 20 minutes is shaved to a little over 17 minutes as an example.HiroshiTrinn - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
I have to agree. I've lurked around AT since near the beginning. (though not on the forums) and it definitely feels like the wind was sucked out of the site when Anand left. Sometimes I question why I keep it in my daily browsing routine.designerfx - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Exactly - this is why I don't.I check AT once a month or so, with adblock as aggressive as possible - just to see what is out there. Then I see things like this and remember why I shouldn't be reading anandtech anymore.
jasonelmore - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
so just dont update the bios? lolThis was clearly Intel squirming in their pants and threatening motherboard oem's.
tipoo - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Sure, until you need to for any number of other things.jasonelmore - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
no normal person updates their bios EVER.. Enthusiast will do it religiously for overclock performance, or to upgrade the CPU to a newer stepping/revision, but most wont..close - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
A "normal person" will want to upgrade a CPU or will straight up buy a MoBo and a CPU that don't go together because of the outdated BIOS. RAM compatibility is another issue. Also sometimes BIOS updates fix bugs like the usual ones related to sleep modes on a PC. Maybe not everybody updates the BIOS but definitely plenty of people do it.Lerianis - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Wrong. A lot of people update their BIOS every single time the manufacturer puts out a new BIOS update.kevmegforest - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
For my part, Asrock has already removed all the bios (including the the released 3.0) with SkyOC with the Z170 Pro4 motherboard.perone - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Not true, Bios 3.10 has SkyOc and you can freely download it herehttp://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z170%20Pro4/?cat=Do...
mgl888 - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Too bad... I was looking forward to this feature. God dammit Intel.ddriver - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
It sucked in a bunch of ways, and yet intel is too cheap to give it to its consumers...Samus - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
I know, it's ridiculous because most serious overclockers would still be buying the 6600K (or some sort of K chip) anyway. The BCLK just added a little extra tweaking headroom after the multiplier would hit its ceiling (ie, getting that extra 35MHz when your multiplier increments are 50MHz and the chip couldn't hit that last 50MHz multiplier)Just kind of cheap. What's next, they take away voltage adjustment so people can't underclock\undervolt?
Ammaross - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Dare we hope Zen doesn't flop badly enough to actually scare Intel into performance/more-cores?Anonymous Blowhard - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
One can hope, but remember how well the Bulldozer hype panned out.Aspiring Techie - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
We should hope. If Zen isn't anything like Bulldozer, then Intel will be forced to innovate, as well as price their processors lower with more features.Samus - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
The problem was public expectations of Bulldozer were completely unrealistic. For the most part, dollar for dollar, it was competitive with Intel. It just capped out at $150, where the Core i3 did. AMD never tried to sell anything to compete with the i5 and i7, and if they did, it'd be a 200-watt monster because they are two generations behind Intel on lithography and fab manufacturing (or should I say their "partners" are.)At one time, over a decade ago, AMD was ahead of Intel on manufacturing, but that was when AMD had their own Fab(s)
They don't have that control now, and nobody seems to care to compete against Intel's manufacturing prowess other than Samsung, which is to some extent an Intel partner (in display production)
Samus - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
And before somebody mentions it, I do realize AMD made a number of FX CPU's to compete with the i5 and i7, and in some cases exceed their performance, but these were Vishera-based; not the topic of the discussion.They were also 220-watt's, requiring around 3x the power of an i7-4770 for basically the same synthetic performance.
Macpoedel - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
You're mixing up AMD's codenames. Bulldozer was the CPU microarchitecture used in Zambezi family of FX processors (e.g. FX-8100), but the name is still used for the successive architectures that are based on Bulldozer. The first successor was Piledriver, which was used in Vishera FX processors and Trinity/Richland APU's. After that came Steamroller, only used in Kaveri APU's, and then Excavator, only used in Carrizo.So when you were referring to Bulldozer, I assume you were talking about APU's in general.
Samus - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Yes, that's specifically what I mean. I should have focused on APU's because so much of the die is used for non-APU/FPU performance. If they dedicate the entire package to "processor performance" like the FX-series then they entirely competitive with Intel on IPC, but at twice the power consumption.The real Achilles heel for AMD's older packages (AM2+/AM3) is the chipsets are ancient. The USB 2.0 performance isn't even competitive with Intel and they completely lack M.2, USB 3.0/3.1, modern onboard network/audio codecs, and so on.
Byte - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Zen has an insane up mountain battle. It would literally have to demolish the flagship i7 to really cause a buzz. Anything less, even if it was better dollar for dollar would be a loss. Just look at the Fury X, it almost made it to the podium for the crown, but Nvidia crashed the party with the 980Ti with just a little bit better performance to destroy all the Fury X thunder. If AMD could have gotten the Fury out before the 980Ti, the glowing reviews would have giving the the glimmer AMD needed. When you look everywhere for recommendations, you only get the 980Ti over the Fury just about every time. I'm thinking AMD will have an edge in VR with support very early on and lower latency architecture.Aspiring Techie - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Not necessarily. Zen merely has to have roughly the same or better performance than Intel from the $50 range to the mainstream i7 range. Although, it would be cool to see it demolish the 5960X (but it probably would have to be a 200w chip).Anato - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
But being equal to Intel means you have to have same IPC as Intel does. Or you have to clock higher, which isn't possible with manufacturing deficiency. i3 clocks to 3.9GHz so you have to match that single core performance, then its merely adding cores. But this core stuffing gets harder as you go as interconnect needs increases exponentially.I hope reviewers will give Zen fair run. Comparing Zen+motherboards in equally prised competitors. And in gaming making reasonable assumptions. No one is going to buy $50 processors and $50 modo and pair them with $1k graphics cards. There is no need to produce that top charring competitor monster as they are not alternatives. No on compares 1.6litre family sedan to semi or super car either.
Le Geek - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Well, I believe you are mistaken here. At launch, AMD so badly wanted to make it seem that the high end bulldozer models were performance competitive with the core i5/i7s and had priced it accordingly. If my memory serves me correctly, the top end bulldozer launched at $245. And it was only competitive or slightly faster than the i5s in highly multithreaded integer workloads. For everything else, the i5 whitewashed it in both performance and efficiency. It is only later that poor sales forced AMD to drive down their prices to achieve a respectable performance / dollar. The performance per watt to this day remains abysmal. Let's see what zen has on offer.vladx - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link
"The problem was public expectations of Bulldozer were completely unrealistic."That was entirely caused by AMD's shameless marketing tactics. May I remind you of one person named John Fruehe aka JFAMD?
So don't put this on the public.
nandnandnand - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
I hope Zen 8-core chips actually put up a fight, and Intel boosts mainstream core counts.Anonymous Blowhard - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
"I assume our readers want to see [overclocked performance of non-K chips] as well?"In my personal opinion, no. Those who will run such a setup are hopefully technically savvy enough to do the necessary math to extrapolate how their BCLK-tweaked Skylake will run. You could certainly do a quick check to see how far you can push a specific chip, just for reference, but I don't think there's enough value to justify the time spent.
joex4444 - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
In a CPU bound task, if you get a 30% boost from BCLK does this mean that tasks performs 30% faster? If so, it's easy to extrapolate. However, based on older chips when you overclock via FSB it's more than linear, so is it 30%, 32%, 35%, 40%? Does the RAM have to run faster as well? Roughly, sure, we'd expect 33x121 to perform like 40x100 in most tasks because both configurations are 4.0GHz.Ken_g6 - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
I just don't believe it. I've never seen a company take away a working feature like this - at least without consequences. Class-action suit, anyone?Klimax - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
No. Never official nor promised. Just sideeffect.darckhart - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
idk, but there needs to be some sort of real response. Intel cannot go around telling other businesses how to sell their product. If I make mobos and I want to offer BCLK overclocking, that's my choice. Clearly whatever Intel threatened with was strong enough to force a change and THAT is what needs to be responded to. I can't believe this is just to segment their products. They don't want them BCLK overclocked. Why?ruthan - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Intel is big sponsor of this site, so i thing that critic is very soft.kavanoz - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Agree. How about saying "threatening" instead of "flexing some muscle"?SignedUp - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Feb 9:"If you believe that Intel is worth pointing the finger at here." Well yes I kind of do.Feb 8: Intel: “The latest update provided to partners includes, among other things, code that aligns with the position that we do not recommend overclocking processors that have not been designed to do so. Additionally, Intel does not warranty the operation of the processor beyond its specifications.”
Pork@III - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Intel remove microcode! Please remove Intel from market! :Dxrror - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
You know, I was honestly rather hopeful that Intel would keep its marketing angle that overclockers were a small niche market, but that they still offered products out of the goodness of their marketing hearts. Since while overclockers are "not significant" in direct sales, they were just good PR, helping with promoting Halo products.I mean, so what if i3 might be overclockable by the "average joe" ... nobody overclocks these days, right?
It's also a pretty weak argument that "oh no, OEMs will jump all over this..." No they won't. Dell isn't going to release an overclocked i3 Optiplex, that would be a support nightmare. And whatever HP/Compaq's current $399 laptop with the 13x7 screen isn't going to have enough power section to work normally, let alone have them enable overclocking w/o burning up before the warranty.
Sorry for the rant. I guess I don't really have a point there ;p
Another angle I could see though is if Intel left "normal" Skylake overclockable, it would be a constant thorn to them as future processor generations sacrifice performance for power savings. From the messaging Intel is giving these days, don't expect even unlocked 9nm or smaller chips to ever be able to reach the same performance levels of a hypothetical 5Ghz Skylake.
This is what happens when the Halo moves from performance to portability. I'm not saying that as a negative thing (although me being old-school I hate it) it's just how it is now.
Murloc - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
"I mean, so what if i3 might be overclockable by the "average joe" ... nobody overclocks these days, right?"It's not like people were more computer-savvy back then.... so I wouldn't be sure. On the other hand, they surely were a bigger % of the buyers since average joes do not buy computer parts.
There is the possibility that overclocked i3 could still cannibalize some profit today, otherwise it doesn't make sense not to do it, unless it costs more than it's worth.
xrror - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
"I assume our readers want to see [overclocked performance of non-K chips] as well?"Um, yes? Heck how about even just using the 4790K in reviews instead of the 4770?
And no, not the lame "but it's in Bench" ... no, I want a 4Ghz Haswell in the main article charts, where the average reader can see with their own eyes w/o cross referencing.
It's always infuriated me that AnandTech never uses the 4970K in it's main articles. I don't expect overclocked results, I'd be happy with it as a data point at it's stock speed (Also props to Intel for having the non-K 4970 be only 3.6Ghz instead of 4... shrewd that). I kinda assumed this was due to some pressure from Intel, because you can't have your old chips being competitive with the new stuff... and 4790K always seemed like an oddball SKU that someone (awesome!) actually slipped past marketing somehow since it's almost too strong of a performer and has other... interesting features (everyone please note, 4790K is the ONLY K sku where features like VTx were NOT disabled - odd isn't it?).
And I'd hope even the lamest 4770K would be able to run 4.0Ghz if you're worried about be relevant to readers.
wolfemane - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
What, in your eyes, would be the point in using the 4790k over the 4770k? There is very little synthetic performance or real world performance between the two.http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/593/Intel_Core_i7...
and the 4770k comes out to a slightly better price per performance.
4770k - $309.99 Newegg
4970k - $339.99 Newegg
http://ark.intel.com/products/75123/Intel-Core-i7-...
84w
http://ark.intel.com/products/80807/Intel-Core-i7-...
88w
and the 4770k, with roughly same performance at a cheaper price, has a lower TDP.
I see no reason why Anandtech would even need to use the 4970k for anything... it would be damn near redundant to have both on a performance chart.
wolfemane - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
oh, and VTx IS Enabled on the 4770k... VTd is the only difference in options between the two (enabled for 4970k, disabled for 4770k).xrror - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
The difference? Default clock speed. I want a 4GHz Haswell on the charts. 4790K would just give Anandtech a way to show it as an "official" configuration. You and me both know that the stock 4770K speed of 3.5Ghz is a joke.I don't want both on the chart, I want the 4790K to replace the 4770 on the chart.
Thanks for the clarification on VTd. I guess the difference lessened because 4790K also had TSX enabled before Intel discovered the errata. Still though, it is interesting to me that the 4790K was the only K sku that was different in that way.
wolfemane - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
I could understand your desire to see a 4ghz Haswell chip on the charts if there was a reason other than 4ghz. There is little to no performance gains that would show relevance in the i7 class on a comparison chart. As for clock speeds, there are 3.2ghz and 3.4ghz chips that outperform the 4770k. And let me remind you there is a 5ghz chip that doesn't fair well against the 4770k.TSX was part of the Haswell architecture and Intel disabled TSX in all its chips, not just the 4970k. Regardless it would have provided no additional performance boosts in Anandtechs day to day becnhmark suite to begin with. Now whether Intel has re-enabled TSX I have no idea. Nor would VTd to throw that in as well.
Again. I see no reason why Anandtech should replace an already high end i7 with a slightly better i7 on the same socket. Just doesn't make any sense. So I ask again... WHY replace one cpu in with another chip that will offer little gains in either performance or comparison results?
xrror - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
That's the thing, I have no other reason than it being an "official" 4Ghz Haswell datapoint. But I'm making an assumption that anyone buying a 4770K (or any K sku) would at the very least run it at 4Ghz.TomWomack - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
I have a 4970K which I don't overclock - I bought the K to get the extra 400MHz stock speed on a four-core machine with hyperthreading.xrror - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Thanks for the reply. That makes sense since the stock speed difference between the 4790K and the 4790 is really large compared to earlier generations. Normally it was only 100mhz from the 2500/2600 days even up to the 4770 vs 4770K.Heh, that kinda makes 4790K ironically the first K sku that actually made sense to not overclock. ouch my head ;P
willis936 - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
"here are 3.2ghz and 3.4ghz chips that outperform the 4770k"Uhh no there isn't. Broadwell and Skylake IPC increase are not greater than 20% over Haswell. Frequency is still king in single threaded performance (what really matters for client applications and many server ones). Yeah if you compare a 14 core xeon to a consumer part in threaded surpass the consumer part is going to look like a joke.
wolfemane - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Ok, agreed. I'll give you that. But We are talking a chip to replace a benchmark cup. General benchmark suites. And yes there are 3.2 and 3.4ghz chips that will operate better than the 4770k. Here are three examples: on benchmarks they didn't surpass they were right on the heals of the 4770k. In real world application the margins would minimal.They aren't practical, but it goes to my point that clock speeds aren't the aole importance of a chip.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/836?vs=1320
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/836?vs=1316
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/836?vs=1317
jasonelmore - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
I agree with xrror, we need the 4790k in the charts, simply to make it easy to see architecture and IPC gains, without having a clock speed variable. Pitting a 4770K against a skylake 6700K makes the skylake look better than it really is.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
"It's always infuriated me that AnandTech never uses the 4970K in it's main articles."It was noted at the time when were doing generational analysis of Skylake that users wanted more 4790K results to be shown. When I lock down my test suite for 2016 and retest the lot of processors I have (which will take time), I'll be doing stock and OC results in future for the big launches.
Though I'm surprised you imply that we've left it out of many articles. I can only really think of one where it ultimately mattered, the Skylake 6700K review, or perhaps a second with the Skylake OC but that was just a scaling piece. What others were there?
xrror - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
"Though I'm surprised you imply that we've left it out of many articles. I can only really think of one where it ultimately mattered"I mean this is the best possible way, you've earned your Ph.D with that non-committal sentence =) (Thesis committees are evil). But to be specific, my request is replacing the 4770(K) with the 4790K.
Bear with me here, I'll try and put my reasoning on this, this is some convoluted Venn diagram I'm trying to form here...
My argument is that a person running a 4 core, 8 virtual thread Haswell (thus. i7) who is reading an Anandtech article, and is interested in processor performance, AND who actually has the ability to upgrade their machine (ie: not corporate customer, NOT a K-sku), is likely to already be running their 47x0K processor over 4Ghz.
I keep harping about 4790K not because it's somehow better than the 4770. It's because it's the only way to have an official, Intel released SKU of Haswell at 4.0Ghz base speed. I am not suggesting making overclocked speeds an official part of the article benches even if personally I'd love that. Mostly since it could imply that Anandtech is officially endorsing overclocking (for other readers - they don't want to open that can of worms) and it also makes more work for an older platform in your reviews. Plus then you open the door for people to complain that you didn't overclock every platform and/or you didn't overclock one enough etc.
wolfemane has a point, in that the difference between a normal 4770 at 3.4, and a 4790K at 4.0 isn't really "that much" but... Is there a way to query readers that have a 4xx0K processor what they run them at?
I guess my argument rests on the assumption that the majority of 4770K and 4790K users are running those processors at least over 4Ghz. And that is an assumption. I'm totally open for more input on this.
My full assumption is that the vast majority of people, who knowingly bought 4770K would seriously run it at the stock 3.5Ghz by choice, thus making it an unrealistic datapoint. Anyone who bought a 4770 non-K (3.4) hopefully would have realized what they were giving up by buying it instead of the K, and (another assumption) aren't interested in overclocking - and likely would just upgrade the entire platform if they need more performance. The computer is an appliance, they aren't looking at Anandtech articles to see if they need to upgrade their processor, they are just looking for a big enough leap for the entire platform to replace it all.
I'm not thinking the person with the 4770 in their Dell Optiplex 7010 really cares about these articles. Again though... I'm now building assumptions on top of more assumptions.
So people using a 4770, or somehow have a 4770K and are not overclocking it... the data you collect on those is wasted on those people? And everyone else who actually cares about processor performance specifically, has to go through the effort to extrapolate the data every time.
I'm saying that the specific audience who would be reading the chart data, trying to extract if they should upgrade or move away from a socket 1150 system, are the ones who are always most inconvenienced by the stock 4770(K) numbers. Because the stock numbers are only for the person with the Dell, and those people don't care anyway.
Well that was all hugely rambley. If I'm totally off the rocker that's fine. Also before people assume I have some vested interest as a socket1150 owner I'm not.
Everyone please feedback here though. If there are tons of you do use a 4770 or 4770K at stock, but DO read Anandtech articles for upgrade info, please chime in! I'm old school, and I fully admit i'm likely not in touch with the "modern builder" ... what scenarios are your machines in? Where would you buy a 4770 over a 4770K in a home build? And I mean that honestly! The only scenerio I can think is if you had the lowest cost B85 board but needed 8 thread - but then you're trying to replicate the Dell?
Lastly, Ian thanks for your time responding. And sorry for making a big buggeroo about a now dead socket. In the end I doubt it matters what you use for 1150 results, since... I doubt the majority of readers really cares about the performance of old sockets =(
cobalt42 - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Totally agree with this reasoning. It's a little weird because even though there's some movement in peak stock speeds, there's almost none in peak OC, so even though I largely agree that a 4GHz stock 4790k (or 4GHz OC 4770k) is probably the right data point in the reviews, I also see value in a 4GHz OC 2500k/2600k, because that's what many enthusiasts (like me) are still running.BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
@xrror: "My full assumption is that the vast majority of people, who knowingly bought 4770K would seriously run it at the stock 3.5Ghz by choice, thus making it an unrealistic datapoint."I think what you wrote and what you meant to write don't line up here (or I'm having repetitive comprehension fail). I'm guessing, given your other statements, you want to say it is unrealistic to expect the majority of 4770K owners would run them at stock and thus the stock data point is of limited value.
@xrror: "... everyone else who actually cares about processor performance specifically, has to go through the effort to extrapolate the data every time."
This may make some sense. If we are looking for an off the cuff, no calculator, rudimentary extrapolation, then it is much easier to do the math at 4.0GHz than 3.5GHz (or some other non integer number). This is a common scenario in my experience. A lot of people I talk with will make basic linear extrapolations on performance, understanding that there will be inaccuracies. Thus they don't need to get exact numbers as close estimates are good enough. Rather than exact performance numbers, they treat these extrapolations as performance bounds for the theoretical chips in question.
I don't think such discussions merit all the work and retesting that would go into replacing the 4770K with a 4790K, but I can see why you might find it desirable. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing it myself, but again, the return on investment may not be good enough to merit pulling the trigger.
xrror - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
ugh yea I totally butchered those sentences. But yea you've got it.Also I didn't mean to imply that they should go back and redo all of the old benches. Just for new ones going forward. My bad on that.
wolfemane - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
I see your point now and I agree. But I still feel replacing a cpu with a different cpu on the same socket now that a new standard is out doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Now replacing it with the 6700k on a new platform makes more sense to me (and is also a 4ghz chip and compares nicely to the 4970k).http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1260?vs=155...
xrror - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
well.. yea. It probably isn't the best idea to dump $300 into an old socket unless it's an upgrade from a Pentium AE or something... and even then, that's kinda a stretch.It's too bad socket 1150 Broadwell (like i7-5775C) looks like a spastic overclocker from reviews I find.
And wow I just looked at the bench link you posted. That's rather (beyond) closer than I expected!
kavanoz - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
"Fast forward to Skylake, and the first processors released were the two overclocked chips – the i7-6600K and i5-6500K, which we reviewed on day one."They should be i7-6700K and i5-6600K respectively.
beginner99 - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
it's not actually confirmed it's Intel stopping it. Maybe it's also a reliability/warranty/legal issue. Maybe with these BCLK OC's you get silent data corruption or who knows what and Intel just informed AsRock about it or they figured it out themselves. In that case they would also not make big waves about it and remove the feature silently.BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
@beginner99: "Maybe with these BCLK OC's you get silent data corruption or who knows what and Intel just informed AsRock about it or they figured it out themselves"Data corruption is always a risk when overclocking. There is much prior precedence and many warranty voided statements that make it clear that the consumer is responsible for said data corruption (and other negative results) when running the CPU out of spec. There is a non-zero probability that Intel didn't force this action, but I don't think this trail will lead you to the rabbit.
boozed - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
Intel, the consumer's friend...BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
@boozed: "Intel, the consumer's friend..."With friends like this, who needs ene-AWW CRAP!
zodiacfml - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
LOL. Everyone knows it is futile.Mr Perfect - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link
"Intel has been actively promoting overclocking as a big feature of their processors."More specifically, as a big feature of their premium K processors. Plebians with non-K CPUs are not invited and not welcome at the overclocking club. I'm not surprised this feature has been removed. Wasn't there a similar occasion some generations back?
xrror - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link
Since nobody else seems to remember the past. Yup. Random headline from bittech but gives a date: "Intel updates microcode to block H87/B85 overclocking Published on 25th July 2013 by Gareth Halfacree"Bonus for remember that Intel implemented ways to limit chipset overclocks in the core 2 775 era starting with the P4x chipsets. P41 you only get +7 maybe. P43 was about +20 (note how all P43 boards capped at 420fsb) and P45 wasn't gimped. Nice of them wasn't it?
So no, it's not just you. And hehe SandyBridge was the most awesome Trojan Horse ever. "Hey everyone, now that the chipset is fully on the die, you truely are screwed because we control it ALL, but.... we're gonna be "nice" and not turn the screws right at first, and lucky us! SandyBridge is such a sweet overclocker (and we also didn't cheap out on the heatspeader TIM) that none of you will care with these amazing 5Ghz overclocks.
Please note, I am being snarky, but... SandyBridge really was the most brilliant way to bring bad news. It kicked so much overclock butt, that any legitimate naysayers were ignored cause 5Ghz heheh.
Ivy only sucked cause they had some motive to use stupid TIM. Haswell actually did well DESPITE Intel going mobile first. I think Broadwell on socket 1150 sucks cause it shows the truth - Broadwell truely is mobile first. Plus... well Intel really doesn't care about Broadwell on socket1150.
Skylake... remember how on skylake on launch really sucked to overclock on existing z97 boards? Skylake only really works right with z170, funny that right? Intel tuned that sucker.
Oh.. gee. Wonder if maybe that's why Broadwell sucks on 1150. They're not gonna tune that.
Sorry I'm done ranting. This all brought to you because... you're not the only one notices this stuff, over so much time - but we're all told to shut up because, well... nobody cares about that old stuff, right? We're irrelevant. We're not supposed to notice or care that as Intel integrates more and more of the system into the processor in the name of power efficiency, which we don't care about on the desktop, and as that takes away the ability for motherboard makers to do fun tricks to give up options that ...
The end game is okay, say we want to build a virtual reality rig in 4 years. When the true performance level you need, is only offered by Intel at $600 for a cpu. If you complain... oh! no you should just suck it up and pay the money. Oh! And why are you complaining because all that flexibiity you gave up lets you save 10w of power over that old, inefficient way that (by chance, you crazy person) would have let you actually tweak a processor in the range you can actually affort to not be junk.
No, you're just crazy. Senile like me =)
Let's hope Zen is at least competitive.
Mr Perfect - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link
Ah ha, I knew there where instances like this in the past!Well, at least this means I can start telling kids to get off my lawn. Wasn't sure I was there yet.