3 ms·

It's AMD. I OC and, if you look around OC communities and benchmarks you will find that Intel chips outperform SMD chips in this area consistently.

tadfisher 14y ago
The theory being that Intel bins for price control, and AMD bins for defects.
- neutronicus 14y ago
  Can you explain what this means? I'm not understanding.
  - pudquick 14y ago
    The concept of "binning" has to do with the manufacturing process for chips. They're such complicated devices that even if they do everything correctly, in a given batch of chips, one may do it at a slightly slower rate or only stay stable at a slower clock speed. The chip manufacturer takes this into account and separates out the chips according to performance, with a low-high scale, which makes up the "family" of processors that they offer. However - there is a certain amount of business process involved in the sorting as well. Chips with higher performance rating marked for a "high end" bin will result in a larger sale / dollar amount for that chip ... but it will also, in the end, increase the availability of that "high end" chip. This availability may not be entirely used by the market - and may result in a surplus that will actually drive the value of the chip down in the end. In addition, the middle range (commodity) chips will be in higher demand anyways so you'll want to have an abundant supply of them in general. I think the parent comment was suggesting that Intel is more interested in keeping chip supplies for higher end processors low (thus scarce, thus valuable on the open market) and is willing to "underbin" a chip to help control those prices - whereas AMD is apparently strictly binning them based on pass/fail/rating/performance. The end result is that you're more likely able to overclock a commodity Intel chip and have it stay stable because in reality it's likely "overqualified" for the processor label within the family it's sold under.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I think they mean this: When you build a CPU factory, it can cost a lot of money to set up the manufacture process for a chip. You want to sell a number of different chips at different speeds/prices (if you have a cheaper chip lower in the range you can charge top dollar for the fastest one). You don't necessarily want to setup that many separate lines though, so what you do instead. You make (let's say) a 3Ghz chip. You then test each one at 3Ghz, ones that pass are sold as 3Ghz CPUs. Ones that fail are tested again at 2.8 Ghz (or whatever) and so on until they find a speed they are stable at, they are then sold as that speed. The implication is that AMD does this , but Intel will just take a chip that works (or might work) at 3Ghz and sell it as a 2.8Ghz because they don't have enough faulty (as in only run stable at slower speeds) chips. What this means is that overclocking potential will be better on Intel chips because they have a higher chance of being stable at higher than the advertised clock speed (basically you're not overclocking so much as un-underclocking).

tadfisher 14y ago

The theory being that Intel bins for price control, and AMD bins for defects.

neutronicus 14y ago
Can you explain what this means? I'm not understanding.
- pudquick 14y ago
  The concept of "binning" has to do with the manufacturing process for chips. They're such complicated devices that even if they do everything correctly, in a given batch of chips, one may do it at a slightly slower rate or only stay stable at a slower clock speed. The chip manufacturer takes this into account and separates out the chips according to performance, with a low-high scale, which makes up the "family" of processors that they offer. However - there is a certain amount of business process involved in the sorting as well. Chips with higher performance rating marked for a "high end" bin will result in a larger sale / dollar amount for that chip ... but it will also, in the end, increase the availability of that "high end" chip. This availability may not be entirely used by the market - and may result in a surplus that will actually drive the value of the chip down in the end. In addition, the middle range (commodity) chips will be in higher demand anyways so you'll want to have an abundant supply of them in general. I think the parent comment was suggesting that Intel is more interested in keeping chip supplies for higher end processors low (thus scarce, thus valuable on the open market) and is willing to "underbin" a chip to help control those prices - whereas AMD is apparently strictly binning them based on pass/fail/rating/performance. The end result is that you're more likely able to overclock a commodity Intel chip and have it stay stable because in reality it's likely "overqualified" for the processor label within the family it's sold under.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I think they mean this: When you build a CPU factory, it can cost a lot of money to set up the manufacture process for a chip. You want to sell a number of different chips at different speeds/prices (if you have a cheaper chip lower in the range you can charge top dollar for the fastest one). You don't necessarily want to setup that many separate lines though, so what you do instead. You make (let's say) a 3Ghz chip. You then test each one at 3Ghz, ones that pass are sold as 3Ghz CPUs. Ones that fail are tested again at 2.8 Ghz (or whatever) and so on until they find a speed they are stable at, they are then sold as that speed. The implication is that AMD does this , but Intel will just take a chip that works (or might work) at 3Ghz and sell it as a 2.8Ghz because they don't have enough faulty (as in only run stable at slower speeds) chips. What this means is that overclocking potential will be better on Intel chips because they have a higher chance of being stable at higher than the advertised clock speed (basically you're not overclocking so much as un-underclocking).