Intel Nehalem To Allow Overclocking, Some Processors Will Even Encourage It

 

Taipei (Taiwan) - Hot on the heels of AMD’s overclocking secret, we can reveal that Bloomfield and Lynnfield, key processors of Intel’s upcoming Nehalem family, will indeed feature overclocking capabilities for up to 16 CPU cores.

Credible information we were able to obtain from industry sources suggest that rumors about Intel preventing users from overclocking Nehalem processors are false. From what we have learned, Intel has very healthy silicon on its hands. It appears that there are some challenges related to overclocking, especially in the memory controller area. However, it is unlikely that there will be anything that prevents overclocking of the CPU cores.

Core 3, or whatever Intel decides to call the desktop Nehalem CPU, will be available as an Extreme Edition variant again, which is ready to elevate the performance bar. At the very high-end, Intel is developing the successor of its super-expensive V8 Skulltrail platform. This time around, your Windows Task Manager will see 16 cores and not just eight.

Bloomfield is Intel’s high-end part, featuring a 192-bit DDR3-1333 and DDR2-1600 memory controller. DDR3-1600 support is still unofficial at this point, since Intel is waiting for JEDEC ratification. Lynnfield is the mainstream desktop part, which will feature a more conventional 128-bit memory controller.

Time will tell what Intel’s Bloomfield overclocking potential really is. It will be interesting to see what Fugger, Coolaler, Kinc, Shamino (apologies to the ones I forgot to mention here, but we can’t keep track of all those nicks) and the rest of OC community can do when Bloomfield gets frozen to -100 degrees Celsius. We will try to find out is final silicon immune to the infamous "cold bug" or not.

When Nehalem comes to life, you can expect that our usual suspects will have overclocking motherboards ready — and Intel will have overclockable CPUs.

  • mr roboto
    Can't wait :)
    Reply
  • Reynod
    I call Bull shit Theo.

    The last Intel person told me the board is peeved so many are getting cheap silicon and cranking it up ... and it is cutting into their profits.

    They want to lock us right out.

    Hence the 1333 / 1600 FSB ... difficult to push the fsb higher.

    I bet they lock the HTT up as much as possible.

    This forces people to pay for the better cpu ... not dial it up for free.

    Your source is a shill.
    Reply
  • Reynod
    I call Bull shit Theo.

    The last Intel person told me the board is peeved so many are getting cheap silicon and cranking it up ... and it is cutting into their profits.

    They want to lock us right out.

    Hence the 1333 / 1600 FSB ... difficult to push the fsb higher.

    I bet they lock the HTT up as much as possible.

    This forces people to pay for the better cpu ... not dial it up for free.

    Your source is a shill.
    Reply
  • Crazy-PC
    I hope this news is true coz I think the quad core CPU from Intel that overclocked to 3.6GHZ or 3.2GHZ is still slow; the time Intel develop from extreme slow CPU (386) to Slow CPU (Core 2 Quad overclocked) is more than 20 years and it is terrible. I won't upgrade to it if they lock the overclocking capability on Nehalem, I would prefer to enhance my system with General Computing by GPU with 2 to 4 GPUs; it would be time consuming to modify the software system but it is the way out for stopping slow computer.
    Reply
  • apaige
    "Bloomfield and Lynnfield will indeed feature overclocking capabilities for up to 16 CPU cores"
    Since when does the number of CPU cores have anything to do with overclocking?

    "your Windows Task Manager will see 16 cores and not just eight"
    Except those aren't 16 *cores*…
    Reply
  • JAYDEEJOHN
    Ive been told that the lower pin count Nehalems WONT be able to be Over clocked, by an engineer who works/worked on them. Guess he didnt know what he was doing, which is either really bad for Intel, or this story is wrong
    Reply
  • shadowthor
    hopefully it will allow overclocking, just might be a bit more difficult.
    Reply
  • lopopo
    I agree with reynod, about Intel forcing users to pay. The fact is that right now and probably well after Nehalem launches Intel holds all the cards. Subsequently they are in a good position to make money.. and like any other company they will press the advantage.
    We as consumers must realize that it's competition that make today ridiculously overclockable cpu's possible at low price points. So root for AMD while rooting for Intel because a 700$+ Nehalem is sweet but a 250$ Nehalem is sweeter.
    Reply