Thursday, July 25th 2013
Intel Cracks Down on Motherboard Vendors Offering Overclocking on non-Z Chipset
Over the past couple of months, motherboard vendors from across the industry offered BIOS updates for their motherboards based on Intel B85 Express and H87 Express chipsets, which enable CPU overclocking for Intel's unlocked Core processors denoted by "K" brand extension (Core i7-4770K, i5-4670K). This reportedly hasn't gone down well with Intel. Intel's Bxx and Hxx chipsets are significantly cheaper than its Zxx series chipset. Sensing a clear threat to its revenue, from the prospect of motherboard vendors coming up with high-end or overclocking-ready (strong CPU VRM) motherboards based on cheaper chipsets in the near future, Intel cracked down on them.
Intel is giving final touches to a CPU microcode update that restricts Core "K" Haswell processors from overclocking on chipsets other than Z87 Express. A microcode update can be deployed both through BIOS updates, and surreptitiously through Windows Update. Intel's used the tried and tested "stability" bogey to justify the update. While it's true that motherboards based on B85 and H87 tend to feature weaker CPU VRM, there's nothing to say that ASUS wouldn't have gone on to design its next ROG Maximus on H87 Express, and save on manufacturing costs. While it's purely hypothetical, something like that wouldn't be in Intel's commercial interests. What next? Intel will push this new microcode update on to motherboard vendors, instructing them to issue BIOS updates with it; and future batches of Intel "K" CPUs may not support overclocking. If that isn't enough to contain the problem, Intel may give Microsoft a ring, and ask it to push the update through Windows Update. It tried that once in the past.
Source:
Heise.de
Intel is giving final touches to a CPU microcode update that restricts Core "K" Haswell processors from overclocking on chipsets other than Z87 Express. A microcode update can be deployed both through BIOS updates, and surreptitiously through Windows Update. Intel's used the tried and tested "stability" bogey to justify the update. While it's true that motherboards based on B85 and H87 tend to feature weaker CPU VRM, there's nothing to say that ASUS wouldn't have gone on to design its next ROG Maximus on H87 Express, and save on manufacturing costs. While it's purely hypothetical, something like that wouldn't be in Intel's commercial interests. What next? Intel will push this new microcode update on to motherboard vendors, instructing them to issue BIOS updates with it; and future batches of Intel "K" CPUs may not support overclocking. If that isn't enough to contain the problem, Intel may give Microsoft a ring, and ask it to push the update through Windows Update. It tried that once in the past.
85 Comments on Intel Cracks Down on Motherboard Vendors Offering Overclocking on non-Z Chipset
i have a 100$ z-board (even supports sli, lol) + 200$ ivy bridge overclocekd +4x to 3.5ghz and im satisfied with the price / performace ratio. i cannot find any satisfactory price / performance ratio in k-haswell + z-board. its just an arrogant price hike, nothing more. if you people love inflation, its your thing, but im seeking efficiency, not a reason to boast that i have the most expensive thing there is..
Of course locking chipsets and such happens...has for many years. This is mainly done for quality control reasons...most chipsets, no matter who they are from, are just the same, same silicon with shit disabled. AMD or Intel doesn't matter.
It is stuff like this that is ruining the industry, actually. Some marketing people simply don't get it. I gotta bloody well quit doing reviews. Stuff like this, and people's reactions, are just ludicrous.
That is all..
AMD doesn't warranty OC. Switching to AMD, who doesn't support OC in any fashion, just doesn't make sense. AMD might give you some options...but then tells you to never use them. :laugh: Intel says "go ahead, OC, buy the right parts, and if you don't feel comfortable with OC in that fashion, we'll also sell you an additional warranty to cover problems from OC".
THis is a pure attack at Intel by board makers, knowing that many would respond this way. And board makers have good reason to go on the offensive here, but that's not something I'll personally comment on.
I don't attend Intel Press briefings. IN fact, I have ZERO contact with Intel. I spoke to a reviewer who WAS at the Haswell Press briefing, and he complained about the lack of enthusiast focus in that meeting. I mentioned a few things, things that aren't really in the public domain, and that reviewer, said "Yes, yes, that talked about that. Yes, that too".
I really DO understand what Intel is doing. What is shocking to me that many do not, and some marketing reps are taking advantage of consumer's lack of knowledge about the subject to make them look like the good guy...when in fact, they couldn't be further form that.
When I saw news of this stuff, I seriously considered dropping doing all board reviews, and shipping boards back to the board OEMs. That was a bloody stupid move to do that, and they have simply cut their own necks with that. It's hard for me to support board vendors when they pull crap like this. I simply don't get paid enough to shut up about it, either.
I understand quality control. And I'm OK with guidelines, limitations and controls BEFORE the purchase. But I don't like retrospective control beyond and after the sales through kill switches and micro code etc. that changes the product capability AFTER you bought it.
The blame does not lay on intel, but, Asrock, ASUS, Giga, etc for advertising something that was already known to them to be limited. See my post earlier in the thread.
The OEM's found a loop hole, and let the cat out of the bag, Intel found out and is blocking it. The OEM's should have either kept it to themselves or not done it in the first place, so stop whining about something that was pretty obviously going to be stopped.
Both Amd and Intel are no angels, so hate one, hate the other.
I did something similar with my current build only backwards. i got a rather decent GPU, but cheap cpu but plan on upgrading this winter to a better CPU. There are reasons for such decisions, just depends on the situation.
I see were your coming from, with the good cpu, cheap board/better board later, but apart from turb, there should really be no overclocking on a H/B board, aside from the fact the regs probs won't handle it anyway.
That is that board makers should be forced to abide by what is essentially mearly a Supplier stated restriction clearly not a physical one and something that's easily possible ,,thats the different some crave.
Not at dave,Some are sounding like fecking noobs on here ocin eEverything is what I like to do and ive ocd Every pc ive sat at for more than an hour wtf are you on about you shouldn't be Allowed to oc cheap shit, its still a hundred odd dollars and ive ocd thirty quidders most of the last 20 years out.
You do realise the only way its changeing is if you stop passing them your money.
We're on the 4th generation i-series processors and boards, and everyone should know that H/B series is for cheap boards/prebuilts, P series is for mainstream chips without integrated graphics, Z series is the top-end mainstream chipset and X series is the enthusiast chipset. Why should we be angry about a publicized exploit of Intel's microcode being patched when everyone has known what chipset is used for what for the last few years? Why should this exploit make someone who had all the intentions to buy a Z series board all of a suddenly buy a terrible B series board instead?
I'm going to laugh if all the OEMs except MSI (smart move) have been churning out boxes, manuals and silkscreening boards with "no-Z OC" features only to have the exploit patched and now they are falsely advertising a feature that is no longer available.
This actually reminds me of the whole Phenom II/Advanced Clock Calibration fiasco that started with the 7xx chipsets. The 8xx chipsets had ACC removed, but then OEMs designed "UCC" chips for their boards that emulated the ACC function. I'm not entirely sure AMD could have stopped people from unlocking their processors via AGESA updates or not, but OEMs prevailed here.
Radeon HD 6950s were also exploited heavily since many of them could be unlocked to HD 6970s with a new BIOS and for over $100 less than a real HD 6970. OEMs then made some of their EEPROMs read-only or removed the backup EEPROM so people were SOL if they had a bad flash. AMD has locked down their GPU BIOSes even further with each card generation (starting with Overdrive limits back in the 4xxx series being signed in the BIOS) and here we are with the 7xxx series and the complete inability to change the clocks in the VGA BIOS period.
Anyways, this gets a big yawn from me. Any serious overclocker worth his salt won't bother with non-Z chipsets anyways, and most who buy non-Z chipsets are going to the average clueless consumer/corporate environment, so no harm is done. :)
So if you want to OC then just get the right chipset is all what is the big deal any way? 99.9% of the every day user is not even affected by this move. Shouldn't Intel be working on other things like say there ARM chips and crap for smart phones and ipads any way? The Desktop is dead. Hell the laptop is almost archaic! Every Desktop I see in a home now is in a dark corner sitting there off collecting dust! We are the last vestige of the desktop era suck it up folks not much time left till they are all gone any way.
R.I.P.
PC.