Neat article Paul now it really has got me thinking re OC because to me and I might have it completely wrong but OC is for pure experimenting with or using because you can.
My current i5 Ivy is really quite fast in a standard setting and I have no real idea what I would see if I say took the clock speed to say 4Ghz. So is OC purely for those who game or does it really put the pedal to the metal for everything?.
Really with all the latest gen i7's and i5's OC'ing is for fun, they are usually powerful enough at stock to run anything you might need. I believe overclocking the CPU can be useful if say you have 2 or 3 GPU's as it can reduce a bottleneck.
I have my Ivybridge overclocked at 4.6ghz and I had my previous Sandybridge running at the same, they run well and never exceed 65C under normal use so I keep it as a 24/7 OC. I use speedstep so when the CPU is not being used much it will idle at 1.6ghz with low voltage and it steps up to 4.6ghz when needed.
The article backs up my point that if you are not into OC'ing then they will be fine but if you enjoy OC'ing like many of us do then it's not the chip for you.
I was surprised to read that even at stock Haswell in most cases is running 15C hotter than the pre-production engineering samples and also surprised to read that one manufacturer was unable to to reach 4.2ghz at safe temps with any of the 40-50 retail units they got.
Paul.
Edit: added i5
Thanks Paul that was very interesting and easy to understand explanation - I for one thoroughly appreciated it
Again I suppose it goes back a bit to what I was referring to with large currents through small components.
I'm some what curious why the pre sale chips (R&D) given for testing worked so well and cool and the for sale chips (retail) did not perform as good and were hotter.
What corners are Intel cutting to mass produce a chip with such gross difference between tested chips (R&D) and chips ready for retail. The fact that the R&D tested chips worked so good tells me Intel has the ability to make a chip that can do the things it says it can do.
Somebody dropped the ball between R & D chips and ready for Retail chips.
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For me a simple home PC user I don't care if the cpu is the size of a pack of cigarettes. If it does more and runs cool is really all I care about.
The motherboard, and cpu cooler companies will make things that work with the big chip and all of it will fit in my Tower with no problems.
The few dollars of extra electricity it will use in a year is nothing to worry about.
Taking your kids to Micky D's one time for Happy meals will cost more.
Everything doesn't have to be made smaller just because you can.
I find myself in this same boat as I'm looking to build a new system. I'd initially put together a x79 system but others advised me to wait and see what Haswell has to offer.
I've got a few months to figure it out as I get my finances in order. By then there should be a bit more info and benchmarks to make a more informed decision by then. In the end though I may wind up going X79 as I'm am somewhat leery about new tech, especially motherboards.
We'll see.
Well I think you make some pretty darn valid points Bear because if for example the machine is using say 200watts at 240v why on earth are we concerned about say 25 watts at 12v?? the difference is just about insignificant and as said before it all seems to be playing around semantics really.
Again I will say that small components are bound to get hotter by the very nature that they are small. Plus I am guessing the test /mock up trial processors were far more stringently build controlled than what we are likely to buy. For example I could go buy a car of the same model as Joe Blow and the quality, efficiency, and longevity be very different indeed - dare I say a Friday made processor LOL!!
Totally agree goes across the board and when you see the sites particularly in the major manufacturing countries and the conditions in them it is little wonder the quality is not as I said so stringent as testing. Plus I suspect that maybe either the product brand dictates how well the products are made and some made by the actual production people cutting corners / not following production guidelines.
Here's one explanation of the Haswell heat, the chip have the voltage regulator on the die, rather than the motherboard. Good for mobile computers bad for desktops and overclocking.
Going from a Sandy Bridge to Haswell may be a good idea but not from an Ivy Bridge.?
http://www.extremetech.com/computing...-pc-enthusiast
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