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Main link: Skylake Overclocking: Regular CPU BCLK overclocking is being removed
Intel has, for many years now, disabled overclocking on all but a select few, highly-priced CPUs, by fixing the maximum clock multiplier. (A practice not limited to Intel, as AMD has also done so on some series). The base clock was technically modifiable, but since it drove not just the CPU, but also RAM and PCIe clocks, you were lucky to get even a few megahertz out of it.
With their newest generation of chips, codenamed "Skylake", the PCIe domain is on a separate clock generator. While Intel officially only supported overclocking on their designated CPUs, and only on their highest-end chipset, SuperMicro, ASRock, and several other motherboard vendors produced motherboards using low-end chipsets that allowed base clock overclocking on any processor. Since this could allow extremely cheap systems to be performance-competitive with much higher-cost systems, albeit with higher cooling requirements and greater risk of failure, Intel was obviously upset.
The story is still developing (no parties have yet been willing to talk on the record, least of all Intel), but the latest BIOS update for several ASRock motherboards includes a firmware update and disabling the BCLK overclocking (the two are believed to be connected - the latest firmware prevents BCLK modification). Additionally, all marketing surrounding this unofficial-official overclocking support has been pulled. SuperMicro and other vendors have not yet done so, but unnamed sources are indicating that they will.
While it may be tempting to put the blame solely on Intel, this was clearly not a feature they intended to support, and the motherboard vendors should have been more cautious about making a feature out of bypassing a limitation on the CPUs, regardless of whether it was an artificial limitation or not. That said, I for one hope AMD's next line of CPUs is both fully competitive with Intel, and fully overclockable across the entire range. Maybe that is what is needed to force Intel to compete on price/performance again.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday February 11 2016, @02:20AM
Had I been designing the chip, I sure would not have had this control available to the end user.
He misuses it, blows my thing up, then blames me.
I learned my lesson on those old CRT monitors, where one ( as an expensive practical joke ) could tamper with the horizontal timing registers, screw up the horizontal output circuit, and smoke the monitor.
There should be no HCF ( Halt and Catch Fire ) instruction in any machine released to the public.
I do my damndest to design my stuff so that software bugs ( or even deliberate attempts ) won't fry the hardware. For me, there was only one exception to this, which was to permanently disable write lines into an area of memory to insure that the code I put into it stayed there - unaltered. If I sold the thing under my guarantee, I needed the confidence to release it knowing that my customer wasn't gonna change the code and hold ME responsible for the end result.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]