MSI Shares Fascinating Insights Into "Comet Lake" Binning
MSI in its weekly "MSI Insider" livestream shared fascinating insights into the way Intel appears to be sorting out its "Comet Lake" silicon across the various brand extensions of its 10th generation Core desktop processors. Its tech leads Eric Van Beurden and Michiel Berkhout spoke at length about MSI's own evaluation of the trays of Core i5-10600K/KF, i7-10700K/KF, and i9-10900K/KF chips it received (the only unlocked chips across the lineup), which they used as empirical evidence to suggest a model for Intel's binning.
MSI segregated the chips it received into three categories. Level A consists of chips that overclock higher than Intel's specifications (overclocking headroom higher than expected). Level B consists of those that overclock within Intel's specifications. Level C, on the other hand, have their overclocking headroom fall below Intel's specifications. It's important to note here that "Intel specification" doesn't mean "stock frequencies," it refers to the overclocking headroom Intel communicates to motherboard manufacturers, to give them an idea of the minimum board design requirements needed to guarantee overclocking within these specifications, for their Z490 motherboards. These are more of a guideline in nature, all three levels will overclock above stock frequencies.
MSI segregated the chips it received into three categories. Level A consists of chips that overclock higher than Intel's specifications (overclocking headroom higher than expected). Level B consists of those that overclock within Intel's specifications. Level C, on the other hand, have their overclocking headroom fall below Intel's specifications. It's important to note here that "Intel specification" doesn't mean "stock frequencies," it refers to the overclocking headroom Intel communicates to motherboard manufacturers, to give them an idea of the minimum board design requirements needed to guarantee overclocking within these specifications, for their Z490 motherboards. These are more of a guideline in nature, all three levels will overclock above stock frequencies.