Intel Removes ‘Overclocking’ From Non-K Series Haswell Parts

Intel Removes ‘Overclocking’ From Non-K Series Haswell Parts

Intel’s Haswell processors were the hot talk of the rumor mill long before it’s official launch. Many bits and pieces were thrown at the rumor mill with some turning out to be true and some false. Computex 2013 marked the launch of Haswell, while as excited as we were due to it’s impressive performance, a recent decision by Intel may very well anger some.

Intel Completely Locks Overclocking on Non-K Haswell CPUs

According to a report by Techreport, Intel or ‘Chipzilla’ has decided to completely strip non-K Haswell processors off overclocking features. Overclocking from now will only be for the K-series Haswell processors. Intel was a bit lenient with previous-gen ‘Sandy Bridge’ and ‘Ivy Bridge’ counterparts and allowed some headroom of overclocking for the non-K processors, but it too was  limited but at the very least it got the job done. Its sad to see the new ‘no overclocking’ fiasco by Intel. Intel bases their decision on the fact that they are aiming the non-K series processors at the business and consumer market, and overclocking is generally highly unlikely.

Even though Intel’s Haswell offers more flexibility in the form of additional base clock straps, but access to it has been cut off in non-K series parts. Now if this has gotten you excited to only get a ‘K’ series Haswell processor, you may wanna hold off your horses a bit. Even though these chips cost $20-$30 more than the standard non-K one’s, surprisingly enough the premium Haswell parts are not just a ‘complete package’ as we though. They are missing a few features as well, the K-series parts lack the support for transactional memory extensions and VT-d device virtualization, present in non-K series Haswell parts.

Consumers now have the option to go all premium with overclocking while missing out some features or they can go for the standard variants while missing out on overclocking. Although not a very welcoming move by Intel, let’s see how things pan out, considering Intel is gonna face even more heat from AMD this time along, which also have K-series parts but at considerably low prices, and it doesn’t remove features available on standard CPUs.