Rejoice! Base Clock Overclocking to Make a Comeback with "Skylake"

[cadaveca]

Also, when overclocking with BCLK you'll be constantly struggling with stability unless you pump higher voltage even for idle, you can't use power saving features, your idle clock will be higher and because of all this, your CPU will be eating tons more power with no realistic benefits.

How many people with unlocked CPU's also perform overclocking? Not many I'd say. They have crab motherboards that aren't designed for overclocking anyway, they don't have coolers capable for doing it anyway and thos who do already buy unlocked stuff.

overall power draw difference is minimal.

Also, motherboard being part of an OC is a fallacy in many regards. BIOS tuning is the biggest factor, since Z77 Express. With Skylake, board matters a bit more again although mostly still due to BIOS, but cooling is no problem. I can clock my i5-6600 non-K up to 4.6 GHz @ 1.4V, and never see 75c under load.

Intel made OC a thing about money long ago. You wanna play, you gotta pay. I do not see a problem in this, since software is far slower than hardware, and even skt 1366 still performs well with today's software. I dropped my X99/5930K for Skylake because it is simply that much better, and I see no problem in having enthusiasts pony up the $$$ for R&D for better stuffs.

And what about Xeon V5?

If the upcomming Mainboards from Asus and Gigabyte with C232 Chipset get also a rebuild Bios the E3-1230 v5 could be very interesting! If someone needs Hyperthreading and ECC Memory.

E3-1230 v5 + C232 Mainbaord for around 370 Bucks. A fully unlocked Skylake Quad Core with more than 4,5 Ghz would be a solid system to build on.

Ah, yes, you have seen the light! ASRock also has such boards coming. The Xeon chips have a far better price/performance ration, cost less overall, and usually Xeon CPUs are some the best CPUs silicon-wise.


Nobody has asked what the catch is? Disabled monitoring of some things (voltages, DTS, etc).

 

[Jegergrim]

Do we expect H110 to get these custom bios´ also, or are their CPU VRM/powerphases to weak to handle it?

 

[trog100]

Really? There has ALWAYS been a premium for the best binned, highly overclockable chips. Go back to QX or X days in the Core 2 era. If you want the best, you pay for it. It's pretty much like that with anything in the world you buy.

there has always been bit of a con at work as well... better speed binned chips is the public statement.. but with good yields most chips were very similar.. this dosnt fit the market structure though so some were simply clocked less popped in a different box and sold at a different price..

it even when further than this.. some chips simply to fit the market pricing structure had perfect good working parts crippled to fill in the lower price slots.. this was what the game was all about.. basically the same product being clocked different and sold to different market segments..

i had one of the first core 2 chips available in this country.. sold with a clock speed 3 gig.. i was soon benching mine at 4.5 gig.. this was what overclocking used to be about.. and maybe what its going back.

its wasnt really overclocking.. it was more running the chip closer to the speeds it was really capable of instead of the makers pretend figure..

trog

 

[rtwjunkie]

there has always been bit of a con at work as well... better speed binned chips is the public statement..

You ARE aware that one wafer will yield multiple quality chips, right? No con at all. Binning sorts them after testing into quality tiers. You really should visit a production plant if you've never had a chance to work at one or visit.

 

[cadaveca]

Do we expect H110 to get these custom bios´ also, or are their CPU VRM/powerphases to weak to handle it?

It is possible VRM may be too "light" on some boards and will affect OC, but not that much, IMHO. Most CPUs will max out @ <150W.

As to how far this reaches board-wise, I actually hope to see only Z170 boards with support, but the original SuperMicro board was H170. I do think options to adjust things need already exist within the board's BIOS. It works fine on my Z170 GAMING K6+, but multiplier adjustments are not available and the best results are from disabling turbo (obviously).

there has always been bit of a con at work as well... better speed binned chips is the public statement.. but with good yields most chip were very similar.. this dosnt fit the market structure though so some were simply clocked less popped in a different box and sold at a different price..

Things are quite varied when it comes to a SKU. I have seen 6700K, for example, with stock voltage of 1.230 V - 1.325 V, and 24/7 air-cooled clocking abilities from 4.4 GHz to 5 GHz.

The non-K chips have very similar clockspeeds as their K-chip counterparts, but the biggest difference is a drop of 30W from the TDP. You are right that results between each will be very similar, but in the grand scheme of things, the non-K CPUs might end up on top, based on what I've had in my hands (which is a very limited number (<20 still) of Skylake chips).

 

[RejZoR]

BS. 6600 with a cooler for 25 EUR (because that's how much average user might be willing to spend on a cooler) and never see 75°C at that clock, not likely. But yeah, if you slam a 80 EUR AiO on it, of course it'll never go past 75°C...

 

[Octopuss]

We're talking changing the BCLK without changing other clocks that hurt stability. BCLK overclocking has been really spotty due to this.

Yeah but I the way I understand it, Skylake has the BCLK clock independant on everything else, so what's the big talk about special BIOSes and specific manufacturers? Unless I am missing something, you can do it already on any board (I presume even the lowest end Skylake chipsets allow for frequency changes).

 

[EarthDog]

(I presume even the lowest end Skylake chipsets allow for frequency changes).

Bad presumption. Nothing on B150/H150 that I know of....

 

[Jegergrim]

Yeah but I the way I understand it, Skylake has the BCLK clock independant on everything else, so what's the big talk about special BIOSes and specific manufacturers? Unless I am missing something, you can do it already on any board (I presume even the lowest end Skylake chipsets allow for frequency changes).

I believe without the Bios, the BLCK had a "coded" wall of 102.8Mhz

 

[iO]

Pretty nice but Intel worked hard the last ~5 years to make sure the customer only gets what he paid for so they definitely have no interest in Core i3s OCed to i5 performance levels or even i5s to i7s...

So they will shut it down somehow asap.

Edit: Only Z170 boards will work as most H based boards dont come with an external Clock-Generator for BCLK afaik..

 

[cadaveca]

Yeah but I the way I understand it, Skylake has the BCLK clock independant on everything else, so what's the big talk about special BIOSes and specific manufacturers? Unless I am missing something, you can do it already on any board (I presume even the lowest end Skylake chipsets allow for frequency changes).

You missed that it doesn't work already. ASUS reps even stated that they tried to enable this function, but could not. Not sure what made the difference now, TBH.

So they will shut it down somehow asap.

Freeze your system's configuration at this point in time, and it will always be possible. Sure, with updated softwares or such, it could be blocked (and perhaps the Win10/G3258 thing heralds either such an idea).

 

[EarthDog]

It would take a heck of an overclock to overcome having 2x more cores for multi-threaded applications...

 

[Octopuss]

You missed that it doesn't work already. ASUS reps even stated that they tried to enable this function, but could not. Not sure what made the difference now, TBH.

Right. I don't follow the news too much
So is it something in the non-K CPUs that prevent the BIOS from changing the BCLK on boards that otherwise support that?

 

[Steven B]

Paying for extra OCing isn't a bad thing. After all if they make a certain SKU just for overclocking, they will make overclocking requirements for products that otherwise wouldn't have been there. The skylake BLCk is one instance where overclocking is a requirements. I like to think of it this way: When you pay for a K SKU you are also kind of investing into the future of overclocking improvements to CPUs. So far since Intel launched K SKUs, overclocking hasn't only become simpler, but also newer OC features have been added, and intel has focused on it much more than in the past.

 

[cdawall]

Someone wants a decent quite new LGA1150 setup?

EDIT: And for the love of mercy, someone try this on Celerons and Pentiums.

That is what I am thinking. Time for a resurrection of the low cache clubhouse.

This should also mean there is a good chance people could bump those 6700HQ laptop chips up via windows...hmmmm maybe I don't need a 6820HK

 

[truth teller]

great news for enthusiasts, and why i love asrock in these late years, always on top of "official bios mods" to help customers get the best bang4buck possible with lots of options
regardless of crappy softlocks and "buy this promo code to update your cpu" stuff, intel will still profit big time so its a win-win
thx dhenzjhen

 

[Frick]

Also, when overclocking with BCLK you'll be constantly struggling with stability unless you pump higher voltage even for idle, you can't use power saving features, your idle clock will be higher and because of all this, your CPU will be eating tons more power with no realistic benefits.

How many people with unlocked CPU's also perform overclocking? Not many I'd say. They have crab motherboards that aren't designed for overclocking anyway, they don't have coolers capable for doing it anyway and thos who do already buy unlocked stuff.

It would take a heck of an overclock to overcome having 2x more cores for multi-threaded applications...

All of these are reasons why it's not the same. Core count and the fact that it's not really necessary anymore, unless you have good equipment to begin with (120hz monitors for instance and pushing for that many FPS). CPU's are so fast it doesn't make much of a difference, practically.

 

[EarthDog]

I disagree. And so would a lot of benchmarks.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I wonder if this can be done with any Z170 board. I am putting together a rig for my sister and her boyfriend to play Minecraft, Sims, MOBAs and WoW. An i3 6100 will be the CPU, be nice to be able to overclock that as I do not think they will upgrade for a long long time. Only if they feel like they need al ittle bit more performance in the next few years. AsRock Pro4 Z170 looks good for this build

 

[EarthDog]

Last I read, it cannot without a BIOS flash.

 

[GoldenX]

If it's only possible on a Z170, then is almost totally pointless, if you have the money to justify a Z170 mobo, then you can get an unlocked processor.
The point of bclk overclocking is to get better value out of cheap options.
I hope Zen is just good enough to make Intel do something, anything to give better value to their expensive products.

All hail the core+cache unlocked Denebs and overclocked-on-any-board Wolfdales/Conroes, the kings of value xD

 

[samezra]

THIS IS HUGE!!!!
Wow I'm so happy, I wanted to get the ASRock H170M Pro4 the only board with display port (apart for the pricy ROG) in the m-ATX form factor.

 

[qubit]

Cache overclocking... Besides, memory bottleneck on quad channel? Not likely...

I think you might be surprised. Anyway, the reviews will tell us how much performance boost this delivers and we'll know for sure.

 

[EarthDog]

I think you might be surprised. Anyway, the reviews will tell us how much performance boost this delivers and we'll know for sure.

links plz...

I haven't seen much real world results from cache in any (intel)platform. Only in a couple of hwbot benchmarks does it matter too...

For bclk only, you won't see any increases really on z170 since it isn't associated with any other bus.

 

[Frick]

I disagree. And so would a lot of benchmarks.

I should include "unless you do the following a lot: media editing, compiling, folding/crunching/mining/any kind of constant workload, running complex simulations, compress/decompress, encryption, measuring e-dicks and/or want to get 120FPS in some games that require such speed which not all games does" in every sentence but I honestly couldn't be bothered.