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Intel Technology

Bypassing Intel's Overclock Limit Reveals DDR2-667 204

Posted by CmdrTaco from the something-to-think-about dept.
BatonRogue writes "Slashdot posted a Tomshardware article talking about Intel's 10% overclock limit on their new chipsets not too long ago. The situation has just become even more interesting. AnandTech just posted a roundup of DDR2 memory that sheds some light as to why Intel may have implemented the lock. It seems that on the Abit board they tested, which supposedly bypasses the overclock limit, the first generation of DDR2-533 memory modules had no problems working at 667MHz. Could it be that Intel is keeping DDR2-667 support for yet another revision of their new chipsets even though the memory support is clearly here today?"
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Bypassing Intel's Overclock Limit Reveals DDR2-667 More

Bypassing Intel's Overclock Limit Reveals DDR2-667

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  • Dancing with stability... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) * <tepples.gmail@com> on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:03PM (#9646349) Homepage Journal

    Will DDR2 memory let me hit twice as many arrows [ddrei.com] at the same BPM?

    • Demon Dance (Score:5, Funny)

      by Chagatai ( 524580 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:16PM (#9646477) Homepage
      Well, it is DDR2-667, which means that you will be dancing on twice as many arrows with the Neighbor of the Beast. In short, nothing but songs by Aqua.

    • Funny experience with one of my less computer literate friends.

      Friend 1: "Yea.. so my new motherboard apparently has support for dual-channel DDR."
      Friend 2: "What about support for DDR2?"
      Friend 3: (has been listening intently with a blank look on his face) "They made a sequel to Dance Dance Revolution?! What does that have to do with your motherboard?"
      Friend 1: "...Yea.. they made a sequel...let's go with that..." (continues conversation)

  • Wasn't there an AMD related article last week? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by XMichael ( 563651 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:06PM (#9646369) Homepage Journal
    I seem to recall last week almost the exact same posting, however it was using AMD's name rather than Intel.

    Anyone got any intel on that? (-;

    Mike

  • A long-running conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by salemnic ( 244944 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:06PM (#9646376)
    You know, I think we've all heard rumours of an intel conspiracy to make us buy the same product again and again for years now...

    However, one must at least consider that they have a valid reason for this. Long-term stability maybe?

    Oooohh... is that machine stability, or cashflow stability....

    -s

    • Re:A long-running conspiracy (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      make us buy the same product again and again for years now

      I concur. Now where can a fellow get his hands on a decent 8-track player these days?

    • "You know, I think we've all heard rumours of an intel conspiracy to make us buy the same product again and again for years now..."

      You'd think they'd be able to stay on top of AMD if that were the case.

      • Re:A long-running conspiracy (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) <mikemol@gmail.com> on Thursday July 08, 2004 @05:34PM (#9647265) Homepage Journal
        There's more to the competition than just out-performing your competitor for this cycle.

        You have to have your next product ready for your anounced (or even widely rumored) release date. It's a lot easier to resell the same overperforming device at lower performance levels than to keep producing new overperforming devices at the same rate.

        Basically, you take bigger, slower steps, but you only report a frequently increasing fraction of each completed step in order to keep a comparable product out there competing with your competitors'.

        Also, having a single product for a longer period of time allows you to tune the hell of that product while R&D is working on pumping out the next generation. So by the end of your cycle, you'll have a reputation for a stable product.

        Finally, having a single design with a long lifespan gives you insurance in case there are delays in the R&D while they're trying to produce the next generation. You don't want your competitor to come out with two or three iterations of their product while you've only got a single relatively lackluster device on the market. (This has happened to Intel in the past...look at some of the old benchmarks on Ars Technica.)
    • I guess you've never heard of the 487 math co-processor deception [mic-d.com],
      quote, "In a real marketing coup, uninformed computer users did not know that they purchased and installed the much more powerful 486DX microprocessor in their computers."

      • That was hardly a deception. Intel sold chips with damaged Co-Processors as 486SXs. This allowed them to increase their chip yields, and make money on something that would have otherwise been garbage. That's not to say that some SXs didn't have working coprocessors that had been disabled. In those cases, Intel simply remarked DX chips to meet the demand for the SX line. (How many damaged chips can you manufacture?)

        • read the link - they were designed to only operate with the disabled chip in place, in essence, you paid for two chip and were only using one. Yes it was deceptive. The users beleived they had a cpu and a seperate expensive add-on doing the math. In reality they had one chip that HAD to be there disabled and doing nothing so it couldn't be used on another motherboard.

          • Re:A long-running conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)

            by ePhil_One ( 634771 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @07:56PM (#9648398) Journal
            in essence, you paid for two chip and were only using one. Yes it was deceptive. The users beleived they had a cpu and a seperate expensive add-on doing the math.

            Let me see. Users paid the price for two chip solution that would actually be slower than the single chip solution. Users actually got the faster single chip solution. Instead of forcing users to pay full price for a 486DX, they offered a mislabeled 486DX that they sold to users who already had a 486SX at a large discount.

            Yes, lets curse those bastards! Never buy anything from a vendor that gives you more than you paid for!

            Yo know, I heard a rumor that Intel is still up to these tricks! Appearantly, all P4 Northwood CPU's are identical, cut from the same slice of Silicon even, burned from the same mask! and they have the gall to sell "3.2" Ghz parts for hundreds more that "2.4" Ghz parts.

            Cripes people! It costs about 50cents to actually produce the chips, billions to design the damned things, and this causes some weirdness in the marketing of them. AMD does this as well, the test only enough parts to meet the "demand" for the high speed parts, everything else gets tested at the next lowest speed. There are hundreds of "Overclocking" sites that point this out all over the web. Are you going to accuse Intel of ripping you off because that 2.4Ghz chip could have run at 3.2Ghz? You paid for a level of performance, you got that level of performance.

        • I can manufacture any number of damaged chips, and I don't even have a fab. Now, having only the co-processor damaged, that's a little harder.

          On a more serious note, if you tend to have about 2% failure, and the co-pro accounts for about half the chip, you can use half of your damaged chips as non-co-pro chips. Or you can throw them out. Which would you choose?
        • Processor manufacturers have always been doing this.
          When a chip doesn't work at full speed (ie. 3.06GHz Northwood), they lower the speed until it works (to make a 2.4GHz, or whatever. Athlon 64 3200+ has most of it's die space in the cache, so if there is a fault in the cache, and it's in the right place, half of the cache can be disabled, and it is sold as a 3000+.

          Why throw out chips which still work?

  • Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kemapa ( 733992 ) * on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:07PM (#9646382) Journal
    Could it be that Intel is keeping DDR2-667 support for yet another revision of their new chipsets even though the memory support is clearly here today?

    I'm suprised one must even ask this question, because the answer is absolutely Intel would do something like this. Keep in mind that the benefit of locking overclocking to only 10% is twofold for Intel. Not only do you disguise the now revealed fact that DDR2 is ready for faster speeds, but you stop people from buying cheaper chips and overclocking them. At least, that's what intel intended before the mobo manufactureres bypassed the locking. Think about it in this theoretical situation, why should I buy the $1000 3.4Ghz chip when I can buy the $500 3.2Ghz chip and overclock it 200Mhz?

    • Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by strictnein ( 318940 ) *
      Keep in mind that the benefit of locking overclocking to only 10% is twofold for Intel. Not only do you disguise the now revealed fact that DDR2 is ready for faster speeds, but you stop people from buying cheaper chips and overclocking them.

      Think about it in this theoretical situation, why should I buy the $1000 3.4Ghz chip when I can buy the $500 3.2Ghz chip and overclock it 200Mhz?

      Which is within Intel's 10% overclocking lock... so... your point is?

      • Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Which is within Intel's 10% overclocking lock... so... your point is?

        The point still stands true, he just didn't think that someone would really have the spare time to nitpick the theoretical example. Just change his example to say:

        Why buy the $1000 3.4Ghz chip when I can buy the $500 3.0Ghz chip and overclock it 400Mhz? Which is over 10% overclock.

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dracolytch ( 714699 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:14PM (#9646467) Homepage
      Simple, because I want a machine that is reliable, that I don't have to dick around wi... Did you say $500?

      ~D

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by foxtrot ( 14140 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:23PM (#9646564)
      you stop people from buying cheaper chips and overclocking them

      Of course, you and I, the enthusiasts, aren't the people Intel is worried about when they turn off overclocking. (After all, we've already moved to AMD, right?)

      The problem is grey-market processors. If the processors (or RAM) are easily overclockable, then Tiawancorp Computers may buy 3 gigafoo parts, overclock them to 4 gigafoo, and sell them in computers "with 4 gigafoo parts!" to unsuspecting consumers.

      The hazard here isn't just that Intel loses money-- after all, for every three people you know who overclock processors and have rock stable systems, there's always that guy who can't get the darned thing through much past a boot before the thing locks up. Intel systems become known as "unreliable", which is definitely not a position Intel wants to be in.

      Losing money _and_ losing your reputation is a heck of a double-whammy. I can't say I blame them for wanting to stop overclocking.

      I just can't imagine why they'd do it in a mechanism that could be defeated by the motherboard manufacturers....

      -JDF
      • I agree with your points. However, my POST screen tells me that I have a Barton 2500+ regardless of how far I've overclocked it. I'm sure most people would be quick to spot that their supposed 3200+ system is indicating otherwise. Ensuring the computer clearly tells you what it really is when you start it ought to be enough to prevent people from selling one thing as another. Though I generally don't overclock, I'm not about to purchase a processor with known arbitrary limitations.

        • I'm sure most people would be quick to spot that their supposed 3200+ system is indicating otherwise.

          Most? I doubt it. I generally can't remember what speed CPU I've got in my computer -- and I built the thing myself. Although that's probably unusual for the Slashdot crowd, I don't think that it would be too hard to fool the average user. (And by average user, I'm not just talking Grandma who just plays solitaire -- even fairly computer-literate individuals don't generally read all of the information o

        • My POST screen tells me that my processor is an xxxx mhz CPU, where xxxx is whatever speed it is running at.

          Tim

      • Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hackstraw ( 262471 ) *
        Good theory. But most people don't know what a CPU is nor do they care. They buy a computer. They might upgrade a paripheral, maybe a harddrive, but rarely upgrade CPUs they come with the new computer.

        My point being, is that they will not blame Intel for the problems with a grey market overclocked machine that is unstable, they would blame the computer company. Just like when you and I do with a car. If the transmission goes, whe don't track down who manufactured the tranny, we just say that the whole

        • Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Jennifer E. Elaan ( 463827 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @06:47PM (#9647881) Homepage
          It used to matter a lot more back when you could really overclock a processor. My old dual-celeron used to run decently at 550MHz, when it was originally specced at 366. I think ion migration finally started to set in, though, it doesn't take the higher speed properly anymore. Otherwise, it's still running (at 366) to this day.

          I'm one of the original overclockers. I had a 486DX36, back when overclocking required replacing the clock module on the motherboard. I'm also an occasional chip designer.

          The trick to overclocking is to know what your limit is. Until recently, thermal load was not the limiting factor. The real limiting factor was a condition called "metastability", where a digital transition fails to finish before being latched in the next register (usually due to violations of the setup and hold time restrictions of those registers). The smallest case of metastability can flip a bit.

          A larger case can cascade through multiple stages, flipping lots of bits or even pushing the state tables into illegal states. This is where the first real danger lies: a processor that uses one-hot encoding to improve the speed of the controlling state machine can be pushed into illegal states that may cause several circuits to drive the internal busses at once. This leads to large current dissipation, and in some cases it can burn holes in the thin metal layers of the IC.

          A less common hazard appears in cases when the CPU is massively overclocked. The CPU in such a case will never exit the metastable state. This causes each clocked circuit on large areas of the chip to dissipate maximum current during those metastable states. This can also lead to high current dissipation, although it is less dangerous than the abovementioned one. It's also worth mentioning that a chip in this state will not function normally.

          Generally speaking, you have a wide margin between the onset of metastability and the onset of serious damage. Unfortunately, there is now *another* danger of overclocking processors. High thermal load can cause ion migration. In fact, most processors are now designed to only last 5 years (!) before ion migration renders them useless. (This is also why I personally don't overclock anymore).

          It's frightening to notice that mainstream CPU's are less and less overclockable and have higher and higher thermal loads with smaller and smaller featuresizes, though. The manufacturers are simply not leaving as much margin as they once did.

          • I type this on a Celeron 266 that has been running rock solid stable since my sophomore or junior year in high school. And I'm now a senior in college! You're not kiddin', those old Celerons were an overclockers dream!

          • t's frightening to notice that mainstream CPU's are less and less overclockable and have higher and higher thermal loads with smaller and smaller featuresizes, though. The manufacturers are simply not leaving as much margin as they once did.

            On the contrary, they're leaving considerably more margin, but the margins are a smaller percentage of processor speed. Overclocking a 25MHz processor to 33MHz makes a dramatically larger difference than overclocking a 1.33GHz chip to 1.4GHz, but the former is only

          • I've never done the overclocking thing, but regardless, I found your posting very informative and interesting. I now know a lot more about the issues of both overclocking and chip design in general. Thanks!!

            Ever since I first used a multiprocessor box (under RH 6.x), I have wondered why it isn't more popular - it was quite obvious to me that a dual or quad processor box with slower, cheaper processors provided much better interactive performance than a single fast (=expensive) processor. It was great ha
    • I agree with what you are saying, but, on that same note, if you buy the $1,000 dollar chip, you can overclock it much faster than you ever could a $500 dollar one. Generally, quality = quantity of $. These 2 chips were the closest to $1,000 that I could find and then only reason that they are so expensive is because of the FSB and caches. Here [newegg.com] and here [newegg.com].

    • Turn the question around (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mec ( 14700 ) <mec@shout.net> on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:27PM (#9646620) Journal
      Turn the question around. Instead of asking "why buy $1000 3.4 GHz chip instead of $500 3.2 GHz chip", ask this: how come Intel doesn't label that second chip "3.4 GHz" and sell it to you for $1000?

      That would be $500 extra revenue for Intel. How come they don't do it?

      Perhaps it's something to do with increased failure rates, warranty returns, and a negative hit on their reputation.

      Intel grades their chips. They mark each chip with the speed that they feel comfortable selling with Intel's name and warranty.

      If you want to overclock your chip, it's your chip; you bought it, you didn't license it with a stupid EULA! But the problem comes when another company (not Intel) buys a $500 chip from Intel, overclocks it, and then marks up the price and sells it in a system as if it were a $1000 chip. Intel gets nothing all the trouble, the cheater company gets the markup, and the end user gets the shaft.
      • They probably grade chips differently depending on demand.

      • Re:Turn the question around (Score:4, Insightful)

        by LqqkOut ( 767022 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:49PM (#9646840) Journal
        They sell it for $500 for the same reason that Canon is selling toned-down versions of the EOS 10-D [slashdot.org]

        There's a huge market segment that purchases equipment that's one step below bleeding edge just for the price break. Could it be that there's more money to be made by soft locking a single product than to manufacture multiple products?

        This sorta reminds me of the boon brought by the Celeron 300A [anandtech.com]

      • Intel grades their chips. They mark each chip with the speed that they feel comfortable selling with Intel's name and warranty.

        True, if we don't overclock our Intel chip -- the CPU will last 10 years. If we overclock our CPU the right way, *still* stable, our CPU might last only 3 years -- if we're lucky perhaps 9 years!

        Since the past 15 years, I've always been upgrading my computer every ~3 years.

        If my CPU blow in 2 years, by then a 3.4GHz CPU might cost me perhaps 200$ but I will probably buy the late

      • Re:Turn the question around (Score:4, Informative)

        by ottffssent ( 18387 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @06:25PM (#9647663)
        That would be $500 extra revenue for Intel. How come they don't do it?


        Because they're making and selling as many $1000 chips as the market will support. Now, they can either sell the $1000 chips for less money and sell more of them, or they can sell a slower chip for $500 and keep the $1000 top-end CPU.

        As it happens, the math works out in Intel's favor selling a 3.4GHz chip for your eldest son and a 3.2GHz chip for your right arm and a 3.0Ghz chip for a pretty penny. In the begining this is great. Then for a while the 3.4GHz chips get too easy to make and so they sell some of them as 3.2GHz chips and maybe even some as 3.0GHz chips. But until they can make enough 3.6GHz chips to satisfy current demand for 3.4GHz chips, they can't introduce a new speed grade. When the 3.6GHz parts come out, demand increases for the now-cheaper 3.4Ghz parts, and the now-cheaper 3.2GHz parts and the now-low-end 3.0GHz parts. And the cycle repeats.

        Intel and AMD don't sell CPUs to consumers. They don't respond to market pressures except at predetermined times, so when demand for high-end parts is less than supply, they sell the high-end parts for less money, and when demand exceeds supply there's a shortage. These are not spot prices as would be paid by a consumer, these are contract prices as would be paid by someone ordering 20,000 chips a month for the next 3 months: there is no other way to respond to surplus or shortage within the current system. Intel would much rather sell a potentially-high-end P4 as a mid-range P4 and make $100 than force the customer to source mid-range parts from AMD.
      • You also have to remember that Intel is competing not just against AMD, but against themselves. It's entirely plausible that they are making chips that run substantially faster than the ratings and soft-locking them down just so they have time to catch up with their own marketing without having to re-invent their CPU core every 6 months.

        Think about it. If they invent a 5GHz CPU now, and release it now, and it takes them 2 years to develop the 10GHz CPU, then they will spend 18 months (thanks to the roug

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by eggoeater ( 704775 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:46PM (#9646820) Journal
      This reminds me of a story an older IT guy told me years ago. He was in charge of several mini-computers in the 70s. The company who made the computer told him they could upgrade it when he needed more capacity. When he ordered the upgrade, the computer company sent a tech out to do it. The tech opened up a panel on the computer, cut one wire with a pair of clippers and closed the panel. I don't think they even had to reboot it.

      • Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by swb ( 14022 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @05:00PM (#9646943)
        This is still true today. Several of our photocopiers are capable of going faster with some kind of switch setting change; there's nothing different about the faster machines themselves, just the "slow down" setting on the less expensive model.

        Haven't tech companies been doing this kind of thing forever? Even when geeks find out about it and take advantage of it, they usually make out on it anyway since so many other people don't care and wouldn't know how to bypass in the first place.

        I think they're starting to do this above-board now with "utility computing" and other on-demand features; they ship you a beefier box than you need, with the idea that you can enable/disable the extra power as needed.

        • This is still a feature of IBM mainframes and higher-end servers (and some other companies too). It's called Capacity on Demand. You buy e.g. a 64-way machine but pay for a 32-way one. Then one day when your business is really busy, and you need the extra capacity, you pay them, they send someone out to flip a switch and you get to use that capacity. When you're done with it, they send the engineer back to reset the switch and you're back with a 32-way machine. It's not a secret. It's a marketing feature an
      • Sounds like a fun time I had with my car alarm. It never quite sounded *loud* enough. Then, when I got a new car and moved the alarm over, the guy installing it clipped the "muting" wire on it. Apparently the previous installer (Visions) either didn't know about the muting wire or saw fit not to off the option of unmuting it.
    • Of course, there could be other motivations. The DDR2 available now is not being made in the mass production lines; it's still mainly samples for benchmarkers and other testing. When full scale production ramps up, the controls will (at first) probably be less reliable than they are now. Also, if I made hardware, I'd send the stuff that specced best to the benchmarkers, instead of sending them a representative sample. So real production DDR2 might not be able to take the same beating this "for benchmarks" s

  • A company trying to manage its products (Score:5, Funny)

    by jj_johny ( 626460 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:08PM (#9646389)
    To imagine that a company would manage the release of products. Its as if they had a plan. How could they keep new things from us that they have already finished? My goodness what is the world coming to? The next thing you will tell me is that they have products planned that go even faster.
  • Could it be that Intel is keeping DDR2-667 support for yet another revision of their new chipsets even though the memory support is clearly here today?

    sure why not? intel could be postponing on brining out their biggest guns for later on when it would be better to shoot them off, they might also want to see what the competition will do and bring out before they bring out their best, but on the same note, who knows what else Intel might be holding back? They might have some other amazing thing that they

    • sure why not? intel could be postponing on brining out their biggest guns for later on when it would be better to shoot them off, they might also want to see what the competition will do and bring out before they bring out their best, but on the same note, who knows what else Intel might be holding back? They might have some other amazing thing that they are waiting to spring on the public at an appropriate time...

      Well, Intel has been showing off a couple of pretty neat technologies at the various trade

    • marketing.
      They don't want to keep pushing the envelope to quick. Otherwise, their future market is gone. Meaning, since technological advances are happening slower (in regards to chips) they have to milk the current tech as long as they can. Don't want to sell everything this year - there won't be anything next year.

  • Flashbacks of a failed mechanic (Score:5, Funny)

    by Havokmon ( 89874 ) <rick.havokmon@com> on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:09PM (#9646399) Homepage Journal
    The 8 DDR2 memories that we received were all rated at or near the Jedec standard for PC2-4300 of 4-4-4-12 timings. Jedec standards for PC2-5300 (DDR2 667) call for 5-5-5 timings, but our Corsair DDR2 667 was rated at the faster 4-4-4, at 667, which already shows improving timings for DDR2.

    Then I suddenly remembered the warm-buzzy feeling I got the first/last time I tried to check my timing belt in my '80 Capri.

  • Locking Chips (Score:3, Insightful)

    by My name isn't Tim ( 684860 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:12PM (#9646448) Homepage
    I think it may just be that Intel doesn't want bad word of mouth. People see Fred's Intel based system runs awfully, little do they know he has it overclocked to the max and form opinion.

  • DDR revolution (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Intel is right. The world is not ready for Dance Dance Revolution at this breakneck speed.

  • Mix (Score:1)

    by Mz6 ( 741941 ) *
    Is this the latest mix? DDR2-667

    I guess DDR2-666 was a bit too... evil. /lame_joke

    • Re:Mix (Score:2, Funny)

      by maduro55 ( 719392 )
      Micro$oft will be making the DDR-666 available soon I suspect.
    • god all those replies and no-one's got it right yet. perhaps it's too obvious: 666.666 (recurring, that must be really evil) rounds to 667. the nearest integer, easier for marketing purposes i guess. i.e. it's slightly slower than the rated speed (oh no! we'll have people complaining they're being ripped off now..)

  • Grampa said (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Easy2RememberNick ( 179395 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:16PM (#9646487)
    Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth.

  • It's all about the Benjamins (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Kenshin ( 764678 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:18PM (#9646497) Journal
    Could it be that Intel is keeping DDR2-667 support for yet another revision of their new chipsets even though the memory support is clearly here today?"

    Wow, a company may be holding back on technology for a future money making opportunity? This has never happened before!

  • Dont like Manufact. control but Love Stabilty (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Linus Sixpack ( 709619 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:18PM (#9646500) Journal
    While I really dont like companies crippling the hardware I buy. Could you imagine a shovel that would stop you from moving sand too quickly ?

    I have to say that if my systems are %10 slower but even %05 more reliable its a good trade off. I'm not saying that they are super unreliable now, given all that goes into making a computer behave and the number of suppliers involved. Its just that some of these machines are so fast that I there is no value to me personally in overclocking.

    I think that businesses generally have enough to worry about with proper operation to not want to overclock their processors. If Intel is working with memory makers to insure stability they should be up front about it -- people would understand the overclocking then.

    Overclocking adds another possible source of problems that most companies don't need.

    • Re:Dont like Manufact. control but Love Stabilty (Score:5, Funny)

      by mopslik ( 688435 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:30PM (#9646650)

      Could you imagine a shovel that would stop you from moving sand too quickly?

      It's commonly referred to as a "pitchfork".

    • Could you imagine a shovel that would stop you from moving sand too quickly ?

      I think CalTrans bought up the whole inventory in that market.

    • Could you imagine a shovel that would stop you from moving sand too quickly ?

      Can you imagine industrial excavation equipment that DOESN'T limit the speed at which the crane can move? Site injuries and fatalities would skyrocket.

      Not the same as Intel locking the clock speed of a CPU, really, except that in both cases they're doing what they perceive as best for their users, and what is incontestibly best for them in terms of liability.
      • "Not the same as Intel locking the clock speed of a CPU, really, except that in both cases they're doing what they perceive as best for their users, and what is incontestibly best for them in terms of liability."

        That's the real question though isn't it? Intel has been caught doing this before for the wrong reasons. You listed above the right reasons to do it, but far far more likely is that the chips are perfectly stable and reliable at full speed and intel is lying to customers in order to get them to buy

  • Umm... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Raven42rac ( 448205 ) * on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:18PM (#9646507)
    Just because you can overclock your memory to that speed does not mean the manufacturer is greedy. It just means it can be done. Safely? Maybe. Possible? Certainly.

  • What were they thinking ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by itsnotthenetwork ( 634970 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:19PM (#9646514) Journal
    It is surprising. Intel surely would realize that whatever controls they put on there would eventually be bypassed. Sounds like a marketing decision rather than an engineering decision.

  • It isn't that complicated... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:24PM (#9646578)
    1) A major reason to not support the higher speed is that chip production yields are increased.

    2) Why not speed-grade the parts and sell two models? Not cost effective at this time.

    3) Futhermore to release one model how and then another model later maintains a more even revenue stream than two models now and then none later.

    4) Most likely, spreading it out also increases total revenue due to the people who buy one and then upgrade to the next.

  • I've come to expect this from Intel... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ameoba ( 173803 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:37PM (#9646722)
    In Intel's long tradition of pushing a new technology before it actually surpassed the previous generation (P2, P4, P4-Prescott) DDR2 is, at best, on par with systems already in place.

    If you look at some benchmarks [legitreviews.com] of DDR2 performance, you have to wonder why anyone would even consider buying it right now.

    "Expect DDR2 memory at 533MHz to be comparable to DDR1 at 400MHz, but don't expect to see any "noticeable" memory bandwidth performance gains till DDR2 667 and above with low timings!"

  • Spikes in the electrical current. (Score:4, Informative)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:38PM (#9646728)
    My brother, who works on chipset R&D at Intel, says this "artificial" limit is there because of spikes. These are the same spikes that appear in electrical current that are the reason for debouncing all digital inputs to a computer. As it turns out, there are certain spikes that exist at a range above 533 mhz. The chipset will work at the higher speed, but these spikes in the electric current will occasionally cause a bit to go the wrong way, if the clock cycle occurs exactly when a spike is going through the line. For this reason, it is going to take Intel a little longer to clean the signals at the higher clock speed, and therefore they cannot offer 667 at this time.

    Incidentally, my brother also says that Intel would be at a great advantage over its competitors if it could offer the 667 mhz, so it is clearly not hiding an existing feature to milk the market. The spikes are the reason.

    • It sounds like you're either talking about signal reflections or metastability. I would bet on the second. I posted a lengthy comment on metastability over here [slashdot.org].

      Basically, if the clock cycle is not long enough to allow propogation of the signals, then the latch fails to lock on to the correct value and instead goes metastable. From metastable, it can come down in either position, essentially randomizing that bit.

      If that's really why they aren't releasing it then they are having problems fine-tuning t

    • The "spikes" you are referring to are probably just electrical noise?

  • Marketing Decision (Score:5, Funny)

    by NoSuchGuy ( 308510 ) <do-not-harvest-m ... dot@spa.mtrap.de> on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:42PM (#9646781) Journal
    That's a marketing decision.

    Engineer: Our new chipset is capable of running DDR2-533 memory modules at 667MHz. We can jumpstart shipping...
    Marketing: STOP! Right now there is no demand for such a thing. Let's wait till we are ready with a new promotion song from Christina Aguilera.
    Engineer: But no one buys our chips because of the promo and the songs we have. Our customers buy because of the specifications. Right now we have...
    Marketing: Who are you to tell ME what our customers want? Stick to your soldering gun and chips!
    Engineer: But the Intel guys in their funny radioprotection overalls didn't accelerated sales....
    Marketing: No buts! We start marketing this feature for christmas.
    Engineer: But...
    Marketing: SHUT UP, I'm the guy with the MBA! That's why I am here. I know what to do!
    Engineer:...
    Marketing:...

  • Clearly here today? (Score:3, Informative)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:46PM (#9646813) Journal

    How can you jump to that conclusion? There is a whole lot more to a new technology level being "here today" than a few chips being able to run at that level. Yield, reliability, availability of memory at reasonable price points and reliability, reliability of motherboard support, etc. all play a part. The famous Pentium floating point bug had rare effect except on scientific applications, but clearly that version of the Pentium wasn't even "here" when it shipped.

    I currently have an ASUS based AMD64 system at home that I made the mistake of buying in the second month of availability. I can tell you from firsthand experience that it wasn't "here" when it shipped. Almost everything of any meaning has been replaced and the system still freezes solid twice a day. Only a hard reset brings it around. Pretty soon, I'll go another round of replace the processor... does it work... replace the motherboard... does it work... replace the memory... does it work. I'm betting this time I'll finally get there because someone has figured out a problem and fixed it in the latest releases of these 'stable' products.

  • This is pathetic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:46PM (#9646819)
    Intel reliability standards call for infant mortality less than 500 units per million and a service life of 7-10 years depending on product. The goals of overclockers are very different.

    Ever heard of a schmoo? It a contour graph of what frequencies a part will work at at a given voltage and frequency (and that's only at one set temperature). Ofthen is is very blob like and can have holes of instability or islands of stability. You need to pick product offerings that not only yield well, but are far enough on any contour line from the schmoo that you can test the part at a few values of voltage and frequency with confidence. Tester time is a bottleneck, and Intel test more than anyone else.

    Yes, downbinning occurs for marketing reasons, but generally for economy products. Believe me, Intel and every company fights for yields at the top bin for every flagship product. Even when downbinning occurs, it is done to match actual yield to orders, not out of any desire to hold back.

    So you can beleive the last three paragraphs or you can believe that Intel is being forced to slow the rate of product advangement by the Carlye Group. It's up to you.

  • I think AMD... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @04:51PM (#9646868) Homepage
    ...is going to like this as well. Remember, they've usually had less of a requirement for memory bus. With them going dual-core, while retaining socket compatibility, they only have one connection to feed two processors. At DDR 400 today, they're already looking at 2xDDR333. While I'm sure the equivalent from Intel would like to have 2xDDR667...

    Overall, looks like there's going to be a lot of competition going on in the CPU biz for a while to come. And obviously a bunch of memory brands. In fact, I think there's pretty good competition all around in hardware, and things are starting to look up in the OS world as well. I predict good times for the consumers in the time ahead :)

    Kjella

  • Lamer chicken shits avoiding labeling it 666 MHz. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 08, 2004 @07:10PM (#9648079)
    There was 66, 166, 266, 366, 466, 566, but get to 666, OH NO! Now it's 667! and then they reverted back with 866.. Of course, there's goobers that try to justify the change as if there was some technical reason than admit why it was really relabled. Boo to bowing to religious superstitions. Quick, change the BSD mascot!

    • In fact, it's 667 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Jisakiel ( 589289 )
      Because I think the exact number is something like 666.66... Which as you ought to know, rounds to 667. But 333.333 rounds to 333. See? :)
  • Intel would never cripple the functionality of their products to spurn sales of other products. Nope. NO way.

    AMD Rules.
  • Just because something is stable when it's overclocked doesnt mean that it's stable. If it was a server, even a problem that caused a lockup every 6 months or year wouldnt be acceptable. That freak incident could happen next year, or tommarow.

    I'm not against overclocking or an Intel fanboy, I run an overclocked barton at home. But I dont think Intel would hold back, especially with the athlon64 out there and with the negative prescott press, Intel might be a bit more cautious than usual.
  • So you overclocked a CPU by 25%. Because it's not the only part in your computer, your system runs 10% faster. So what?

    I understand overclocking 8088 from 4.77 to 8MHz to speed up compiles. Or projects like hymn [hymn-project.org] that remove artificialy imposed limitations which really hinder users. But what is achived here that can not be better done with a dual processor, perhaps a nice G5?
  • "Could it be that Intel is keeping DDR2-667 support for yet another revision of their new chipsets even though the memory support is clearly here today?"

    Of course it could be. Why release DDR2-667 support today when you're still making reams of cash on DDR-533? The only way to make technology profitable, since margins are so low on hardware, is to squeeze every penny you can out of one technology before releasing another.

    Besides, I doubt that they had "no problems" with DDR2-667. The memory likely was not

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