Author: Jeremiah Penery
Date: 15:55:41 02/20/03
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On February 20, 2003 at 11:42:49, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On February 20, 2003 at 09:53:28, Jeremiah Penery wrote: > >>Intel has demoed chips that run far above the currently shipping 3.06GHz. Why >>do you suppose they haven't released them? _That_ is "business". If Intel >>releases a 5GHz chip tomorrow, they'd sure knock everyone else out of the >>performance race, but they would lose a TON of money relative to the current >>business model. > > >That is _not_ the same idea. The idea that a vendor purposefully underclocks a >chip >is ridiculous. The idea that they don't release the next generation at a faster >clock rate >until the current supply of slower chips is exhausted is not contradictory at >all. Two >totally different business practices, one of which makes economic sense, the >other makes >zero sense. I've done some reading today, and this is what I've found out. Some of it might not be 100% correct, but I believe it to be close. In the past, when a microprocessor was designed, they found the theoretical circuit limit and removed something like 20%. That was about the limit of what would be sold, to be completely certain about stability. Nowadays, with current 50m+ transistor CPUs, the padding has been increased somewhat. Though, when a core is reaching to the end of its useful lifetime, it surely eats into that 'padding'. Overclocking a 2GHz Willamette P4 is probably not a bright idea. The core is at the end of its lifetime, and there is very little headroom for it. But there's no reason that overclocking a 2GHz Northwood shouldn't be safe, since Intel has already released 3GHz versions with an identical core. I'm not suggesting you should be able to get 3GHz out of the 2GHz part, but that doesn't mean it can't be overclocked at all.
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