AMD plans to improve performance of its desktop computing platforms by launching a new accelerated processing unit as well as another generation of AM3+ and FM2+ motherboards with USB 3.1 and M.2 ports. The new APU — the AMD A10-7890K — wi…
Both AMD and Intel bundle cooling solutions with their microprocessors. Such coolers are inexpensive, they are rather reliable and they do their job. They are not supposed to enable great overclocking results, or be utterly quiet, unlike premium therm…
Demand for Intel’s Skylake CPUs has been very high since the introduction of the company’s latest processors in August. Even though the manufacturer has ramped up the supply of its Skylake CPUs since its launch, not all users can get these new CPUs. In fact, demand for higher-end Core i5-6600K and Core i7-6700K is so high that retailers recently increased prices of such chips. As a result, the quad-core top-of-the-range Skylake-S microprocessor is now more expensive than even the previous-generation six-core Haswell-E series.
Officially, the recommended customer price of one boxed Intel Core i7-6700K processor (four cores with Hyper-Threading, 4.0GHz/4.20GHz, 8MB cache, Intel HD Graphics 530 core, unlocked multiplier) is $350, according to Intel’s ARK. The recommended price of the Core i5-6600K chip (four cores, 3.50GHz/3.90GHz, 6MB cache, Intel HD Graphics 530 core, unlocked multiplier) is $243. However, at the moment it is not easy to buy thse CPUs without overpaying in the U.S. In fact, not all retailers even have the chips in stock, something that rarely happens to products released over three months ago.
For their part, Amazon does not currently have any Intel Core i7-6700Ks directly in stock. Instead the only 6700Ks available via Amazon are through their third-party marketplace sellers, starting at $499.99, which is nearly $150 higher than the recommended customer price. According to CamelCamelCamel, a price-tracker that monitors Amazon and its partners, the price of the chip began to increase in early October. Meanwhile Newegg sells the Core i7-6700K for $419.99, a smaller increase than Amazon but still higher than both Intel’s original price recommendation and the price Newegg was charging at launch. Looking at Newegg’s pricing history over at PriceZombie, it looks like Newegg increased the price of the chip beginning in November.
As for Intel’s Core i5-6600K, it’s available at Amazon and Newegg for $289.99 and $279.99, respectively. The price of the chip has been fluctuating in both stores and at present the product costs slightly above its $243 MSRP.
Given these prices, it is noteworthy (and somewhat surprising) that Intel’s Core i7-5820K processor (six cores with Hyper-Threading, 3.30GHz/3.60GHz, 15MB cache, unlocked multiplier) is down to $389.99 these days, which makes it cheaper than the Skylake 6700K. The fact that the 5820K has to be paired with more expensive LGA2011-3 motherboards as well as quad-channel memory kits ultimately drives up the price of the total kit compared to a Skylake system, but that a still very performant hex-core CPU (ed: with solder!) is cheaper than Intel’s flagship quad-core is something we rarely see. If nothing else it’s a sign of just how unbounded quad-core pricing has become, though at the same time it thankfully provides a reasonable alternative to the 6700K and some counter-pressure to keep i7 prices from getting even higher.
When we asked Intel about what was going on with Skylake prices, they said in an emailed statement that they had not increased the MSRP of the 6600K/6700K – in other words, they had not increased prices on their end. Instead they suggested that select stores might have increased their prices because of strong demand for such chips, which is a pattern we’ve seen before with video cards and other components.
It goes without saying that retailers do not usually increase prices without a reason, as the intense competition among the online PC component retailers makes it difficult to hold too large of a margin under normal circumstances. All of this in turn points to an insufficient supply of microprocessors, with demand significantly exceeding supply. In fact, according to Nowinstock, which monitors availability of various products, many well-known U.S.-based stores did not have high-end Intel Skylake CPUs in their stocks at press time.
Intel has previously mentioned that the costs of producing CPUs on their 14nm manufacturing process were higher than the costs of 22nm CPUs due to initially lower 14nm yields. However, the company has never revealed whether yields are a reason why higher-end Skylake-S processors are currently in short supply, or if the problem lies elsewhere in the production chain. With any luck we may find out a bit more once Intel hosts their next earnings conference call in January.
Anyone who has kept tabs on the extreme overclocking community recently would have noticed that the overclocker Dhenzjhen recently took a Core i3-6320 up to 127 MHz on increasing the base clock on his modified SuperMicro C7H170-M motherboard. We have heard that this feature may be coming to other motherboards through a simple BIOS update in the near future.
For the last few generations Intel has locked down its processors in terms of the CPU multiplier such that only a handful of parts allow a full range of overclocking. CPU frequency is determined by its base frequency (or base clock, typically 100 MHz) and multiplier (20x, 32x, 40x and all in-between depending on the part). The base clock has always been ‘open’, however in Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell it has been linked to other parts of the system, such as the storage or the PCIe, meaning that any overclocking beyond 103-105 MHz led to other issues such as signal degradation or data loss. The Skylake platform changes this – as we noted back in our initial Skylake launch details, the chipset and PCIe now have their own clock domains, meaning that the base frequency only affects the CPU (core, uncore, cache), integrated graphics and DRAM.
Despite this, our best efforts to overclock non-K processors in-house (we have an i5-6500 for review at some point) are limited to a few MHz – the 103/104 MHz boundary has been tough to penetrate if possible at all. This makes what Dhenzjhen posted very interesting, as he was able to get a 27% performance boost (albeit under liquid nitrogen for an overclocking competition). Even with a 10-15% jump for day-to-day use, this allows the array of Pentium and Core i3 processors that are multiplier unlocked to get another 200-300 MHz boost in performance. We can postulate as to the reasons why Intel doesn’t release a Core i3 unlocked model, but if non-K overclocking can be enabled then this at least pushes some of the way there. Supermicro are in the process of shipping me the board in question and an i3 for testing. For clarification, Dhenzjhen is associated with Supermicro – many top overclockers are associated with a technology company in some way to help push the technology forward.
Dhenzjhen’s setup, although liquid nitrogen isn’t needed for 10-20%
After speaking with Supermicro, ASRock knocked on my Skype chat to tell me they can do the same thing, and I received a string of messages and emails saying that they can do it on their motherboards, such as the Z170 Extreme7+ which we reviewed a couple of weeks ago, with nothing more than a simple BIOS update.
ASRock forwarded me images saying that on their Z170 OC Formula, they can successfully adjust the base clock of the Pentium G4400 by 20+%, the Core i3-6300T by 20% and the i5-6600 by over 30%. I was told that they will be rolling out a BIOS update to a large number of their motherboards after internal validation has been carried out and this should give a slow trickle of BIOS updates over the next week or so.
I should point out specifically that ASRock states that their results (20-30% OC) were all done on air cooling.
I am not being told (yet) as to what is required on the manufacturer side to do this, and I have a small amount of conflicting information also depending on whether this adjustment requires a physical change on top of the firmware adjustment. I suspect something in the chain that shares the clock domain with the CPU is being given an extenal reference clock, which is not part of Intel specifications but some motherboard manufacturers are doing automatically which requires some firmware adjustment. When all the motherboard manufacturers are doing this, then the exact reasons why should make its way out into the open, along with lists of compatible motherboards. Though it is worth noting that any BCLK overclock on this scale will result in the integrated graphics being disabled automatically by Intel’s VGA driver if it is installed – before installation, the integrated graphics can still function I am being told.
Overall, this opens up the gates for interesting $800-like builds based on Pentium or Core i3 processors, and if we get a number of these in we will give our experiences and benchmark results in both stock and overclocked modes. I suspect that for the Pentium side of the equation we will see similar to the overclockable Pentium G3258 that Intel released last year, but the Core i3 angle proves to be interesting.
Additional: Since Dhenzjhen’s initial score, elmor has achieved a 152.8 MHz overclock (again, under extreme conditions for competition) on a Core i3-6300, giving a total frequency of 5.8 GHz using an ASUS Maximux VIII Gene. Given elmor’s ties to ASUS, I suspect that ASUS will also roll out adjustments over time for BCLK non-K overclocking.
Given Supermicro, ASRock and ASUS are doing this (presumably GIGABYTE, MSI and EVGA will follow), I wonder what Intel’s reaction will be to it. Despite most Intel processors being multiplier locked and the different clock domains and Intel’s push towards being ‘for gaming’ and ‘for overclockers’, the locked CPUs quizzically fall on the wrong side of that strategy, but for CPU manufacturers it does encourage users to buy the premium parts. If users can now buy the slightly cheaper Core i3 or Core i5 parts with hopes of a 10-15% overclock, there are many potential scenarios as to how this plays out both for consumers and Intel’s bottom line. There’s also the fact that non-K processors have several features that the overclocking processors do not, such as Trusted Execution / TXT. We have reached out for an official response to the BCLK non-K overclocking methods that the motherboard manufacturers are using. But I have no doubt that system integrators will offer pre-overclocked systems as well. There is also the angle of enterprise to consider, if this opens up the Xeon side. While Xeon and overclocking might not be a good thing for most use cases, in the financial industry and areas where DRAM performance matters, it could be interesting.
Source: HWBot, ASRock
Anyone who has kept tabs on the extreme overclocking community recently would have noticed that the overclocker Dhenzjhen recently took a Core i3-6320 up to 127 MHz on increasing the base clock on his modified SuperMicro C7H170-M motherboard. We have heard that this feature may be coming to other motherboards through a simple BIOS update in the near future.
For the last few generations Intel has locked down its processors in terms of the CPU multiplier such that only a handful of parts allow a full range of overclocking. CPU frequency is determined by its base frequency (or base clock, typically 100 MHz) and multiplier (20x, 32x, 40x and all in-between depending on the part). The base clock has always been ‘open’, however in Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell it has been linked to other parts of the system, such as the storage or the PCIe, meaning that any overclocking beyond 103-105 MHz led to other issues such as signal degradation or data loss. The Skylake platform changes this – as we noted back in our initial Skylake launch details, the chipset and PCIe now have their own clock domains, meaning that the base frequency only affects the CPU (core, uncore, cache), integrated graphics and DRAM.
Despite this, our best efforts to overclock non-K processors in-house (we have an i5-6500 for review at some point) are limited to a few MHz – the 103/104 MHz boundary has been tough to penetrate if possible at all. This makes what Dhenzjhen posted very interesting, as he was able to get a 27% performance boost (albeit under liquid nitrogen for an overclocking competition). Even with a 10-15% jump for day-to-day use, this allows the array of Pentium and Core i3 processors that are multiplier unlocked to get another 200-300 MHz boost in performance. We can postulate as to the reasons why Intel doesn’t release a Core i3 unlocked model, but if non-K overclocking can be enabled then this at least pushes some of the way there. Supermicro are in the process of shipping me the board in question and an i3 for testing. For clarification, Dhenzjhen is associated with Supermicro – many top overclockers are associated with a technology company in some way to help push the technology forward.
Dhenzjhen’s setup, although liquid nitrogen isn’t needed for 10-20%
After speaking with Supermicro, ASRock knocked on my Skype chat to tell me they can do the same thing, and I received a string of messages and emails saying that they can do it on their motherboards, such as the Z170 Extreme7+ which we reviewed a couple of weeks ago, with nothing more than a simple BIOS update.
ASRock forwarded me images saying that on their Z170 OC Formula, they can successfully adjust the base clock of the Pentium G4400 by 20+%, the Core i3-6300T by 20% and the i5-6600 by over 30%. I was told that they will be rolling out a BIOS update to a large number of their motherboards after internal validation has been carried out and this should give a slow trickle of BIOS updates over the next week or so.
I should point out specifically that ASRock states that their results (20-30% OC) were all done on air cooling.
I am not being told (yet) as to what is required on the manufacturer side to do this, and I have a small amount of conflicting information also depending on whether this adjustment requires a physical change on top of the firmware adjustment. I suspect something in the chain that shares the clock domain with the CPU is being given an extenal reference clock, which is not part of Intel specifications but some motherboard manufacturers are doing automatically which requires some firmware adjustment. When all the motherboard manufacturers are doing this, then the exact reasons why should make its way out into the open, along with lists of compatible motherboards. Though it is worth noting that any BCLK overclock on this scale will result in the integrated graphics being disabled automatically by Intel’s VGA driver if it is installed – before installation, the integrated graphics can still function I am being told.
Overall, this opens up the gates for interesting $800-like builds based on Pentium or Core i3 processors, and if we get a number of these in we will give our experiences and benchmark results in both stock and overclocked modes. I suspect that for the Pentium side of the equation we will see similar to the overclockable Pentium G3258 that Intel released last year, but the Core i3 angle proves to be interesting.
Additional: Since Dhenzjhen’s initial score, elmor has achieved a 152.8 MHz overclock (again, under extreme conditions for competition) on a Core i3-6300, giving a total frequency of 5.8 GHz using an ASUS Maximux VIII Gene. Given elmor’s ties to ASUS, I suspect that ASUS will also roll out adjustments over time for BCLK non-K overclocking.
Given Supermicro, ASRock and ASUS are doing this (presumably GIGABYTE, MSI and EVGA will follow), I wonder what Intel’s reaction will be to it. Despite most Intel processors being multiplier locked and the different clock domains and Intel’s push towards being ‘for gaming’ and ‘for overclockers’, the locked CPUs quizzically fall on the wrong side of that strategy, but for CPU manufacturers it does encourage users to buy the premium parts. If users can now buy the slightly cheaper Core i3 or Core i5 parts with hopes of a 10-15% overclock, there are many potential scenarios as to how this plays out both for consumers and Intel’s bottom line. There’s also the fact that non-K processors have several features that the overclocking processors do not, such as Trusted Execution / TXT. We have reached out for an official response to the BCLK non-K overclocking methods that the motherboard manufacturers are using. But I have no doubt that system integrators will offer pre-overclocked systems as well. There is also the angle of enterprise to consider, if this opens up the Xeon side. While Xeon and overclocking might not be a good thing for most use cases, in the financial industry and areas where DRAM performance matters, it could be interesting.
Source: HWBot, ASRock
