
Intel Kaby Lake Potentially an Overclocker's Dream, Seen Breaking 7GHz with LN2 - richardboegli
http://hothardware.com/news/intel-kaby-lake-to-be-an-overclockers-dream-seen-breaking-7ghz-with-ln2
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faragon
On times with CPUs with so many cores, and with amazing single thread
performance even at 3 GHz, overclocking is not what is used to be. E.g. in
times when from a 33 MHz CPU you could get 21% speed-up running at 40MHz, or
from 300 to 450 MHz on some budged CPUs (+50%, Celeron 300A with 128KB L2
cache), it was way more interesting (even knowing that the overclock could
reduce the life of the components, because of electromigration, and some
components running above their design limits).

~~~
smcl
Yeh - the impact from overclocking isn't quite what it once was. It's nice
that nowadays we're not left wanting for CPU speed even for most entry level
processors. But I fondly remember feeling pretty excited by the "AXIA" AMD
Athlons and pushing them to some pretty amazing results with fairly standard
cooling (1.2/1.33GHz -> 1.66GHz and above, iirc)

~~~
rasz_pl
Its not the case of Overclocking no longer giving you expected speedup, its
INTEL directly FIGHTING with overclockers and blocking every avenue that would
enable you to gain performance for free.

Nowadays Overclocking is just another premium market segment being milked by
Intel with K/Z series chips.

Every single Intel chipset is 'in theory' capable of overclocking (multiplier
change, Turbo). Its all blocked on the Bios/OEM agreement[1]/microcode(!)[2]
level. Sometimes OEMs grow bold and ignore it (Asrock pioneering H81
overclocking), sometimes they get spanked by Intel and quickly release
'updated' bios removing OC.

OC in itself works great. You an buy $72 3.2GHz G3258 haswell, OC to 4.3GHz
(stock cooler, or ~4.5Ghz on custom) and enjoy >30% speed improvement.
Especially great for single threaded games(written in python!) like World of
Tanks where your oced $72 cpu performs like $300 4790K.

[1] [http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/asrock-killed-
overclo...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/asrock-killed-overclocking-
intel-skylake-nonk/)

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/3ji7im/nonz_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/3ji7im/nonz_overclocking_removed_from_bios_what_can_i_do/)

[2] [http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-updates-
activation/373250...](http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-updates-
activation/373250-recent-windows-update-kb3064209-causes-windows-7-not-
boot-5.html)

~~~
revelation
Not just overclockers, Intel has been gouging everyone ever since AMD stopped
producing a competitive CPU (so basically since Core 2 or 2006.. man it's been
that long?)

~~~
snuxoll
Here's hoping for Ryzen. Not only has Intel locked up the consumer segment but
the server one as well. $200 for an E5-2407v2 is ludicrous, I'm really hoping
AMD pulls a rabbit out of their hat because we need some real competition in
the x86 space again.

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userbinator
In terms of frequency records, there has been higher:

[http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-
fx-8150-overclock-9ghz-...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-
fx-8150-overclock-9ghz-bulldozer,15853.html)

But what's interesting to note is that the number of pipeline stages hasn't
increased all that much over the years, so I wonder if the upper limit on
clock speed (disregarding power dissipation) has increased mainly due to
smaller process sizes.

~~~
suprjami
My understanding is that a long pipeline is only a benefit if the CPU gets
fast enough to consume from that pipeline. CPUs around 2005-2010 had long
pipelines in anticipation of higher CPU speeds which never happened. More
recently, Intel have gone back to simpler pipeline design and focused on other
areas.

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lmm
So the single-thread, integer-only, no-branch performance (admittedly a niche,
but an interesting one) is still a fair way behind what was possible with the
Pentium 4 (which could clock up to 11GHz)? I get that these days
performance/watt is what matters and losing 100-odd cycles when you mispredict
a branch isn't great, but it's still sad to think we might never match the
best-case performance of the older line.

~~~
tedunangst
No improvement in IPC?

~~~
lmm
Not for the single-threaded integer-arithmetic case, AIUI - ADD is 1 IPC (at
least when there are data dependencies) and pretty much always will be. In
cases where branching happens, modern processes can maybe do more speculative
execution, and obviously going from non-SIMD to SIMD is a huge improvement in
the cases where a new processor lets you do that, so there are plenty of real-
world improvements, but I don't think to the core case. I'm not an expert by
any means though.

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jankotek
Kaby Lake is not great for overclocking. You literally have to cut this CPU in
half, to make it usable for OC. Better thermal paste between silicon and
heatsink, will reduce temperatures by 10°C.

But overclockable i3 Kaby Lake is interesting.

~~~
floatboth
Extreme frequency records are often made with many cores turned off e.g.
[http://hwbot.org/submission/2294034_andreyang_cpu_frequency_...](http://hwbot.org/submission/2294034_andreyang_cpu_frequency_fx_8150_8709_mhz)

But interestingly, the absolute first place winner had all 8 cores enabled
[http://hwbot.org/submission/2615355_the_stilt_cpu_frequency_...](http://hwbot.org/submission/2615355_the_stilt_cpu_frequency_fx_8370_8722.78_mhz/)

You obviously don't have to cut the cores in half for daily usable
overclocking. My quad Skylake runs 4.5GHz with all four cores enabled.

~~~
jankotek
I was not very precise. I actually meant heat-spreader instead of heat-sink.

Kaby Lake has bad thermal conductivity between silicone and heat-spreader
(metal top of CPU). If you crack-open the CPU and replace thermal paste, it
will reduce temperature under load significantly.

It is common problem for Intel CPUs since Ivy Bridge. i7 are affected. Extreme
version is soldered and does not have this issue.

~~~
floatboth
I know about delidding.

I thought this:

> You literally have to cut this CPU in half, to make it usable for OC.

referred to turning off the cores, not delidding :D

But you don't need to do either to "make it usable for OC". Just get a good
cooler.

~~~
jankotek
Good cooler wont help, the bottleneck will be in CPU.

~~~
floatboth
I'm running 4.5GHz @ 1.4V on an i5-6400, doesn't get hotter than 60 degrees
under full load with a watercooler.

~~~
jankotek
60 degrees is not much, not really reaching full potential of that chip.

I had i7 2600K at 5.0 GHzx. Water cooled, 90 degrees under full load. It
worked for 5 years 24/7, until motherboard died last year, CPU still works.

It is simple to set higher frequency, but that does not mean CPU is actually
faster. Power management is very tricky. Sometimes it will put idle
instructions, or turbo boost would not work.

You have to run benchmark for several hours to verify CPU is actually faster.

------
TenOhms
FYI: They had to disable 2 cores and HT to reach 7GHz.

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A_Crazy_Idea
I hope they decide to sell it for around $300. I'm certainly not entertaining
any prices north of that. I'm not interested in funding their mobile chip
ambitions when I buy a desktop processor. Which is why I haven't purchased a
chip from them since the first generation i7. Their prices and products have
been ridiculous for too long.

~~~
arcanus
I wouldn't count on intel to do anything on this front until AMD proves they
are competitive with zen

~~~
A_Crazy_Idea
Depends on your definition of competitive.

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PedroBatista
Isn't Kaby Lake the usual 10% "performance increase" for more X amount of
dollars Intel has been doing for a decade?

Their CPUs are good because there isn't anything better, but their commercial
practices have been worst than cancer.

~~~
seanp2k2
TL;DR everyone expected an IPC increase with Kaby Lake and Intel brought more
performance only via higher clocks. They're either having issues innovating,
betting that Ryzen will not be all AMD is talking it up to be, they're a bit
caught with their pants down, or some combination. IMO worst-case for them is
they push Coffee Lake and Skylake-X out sooner and drop prices across the
board (especially on HEDT >4 core stuff) to compete with AMD.

Then once enthusiasts have access to <$2k PCs with 8 cores and the power of
2x1080GTX we can realistically power 4K VR @120FPS. Having games to actually
make people want VR would also really help, so far not many AAA titles to use
with it.

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nl
Anytime you hear someone say AMD is going to be competitive "any day now",
remember this, and think about the headroom Intel has.

~~~
floatboth
We already know Zen matches Intel's overpriced "enthusiast" chips clock-for-
clock. If Zen clocks well, it will totally kick ass!

~~~
nl
Lets wait and see shall we?

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digitalshankar
That's why they named it as i7, so that you can overclock to 7 GHz.

