As we told you some time ago, Intel has put in what can only be called an overclocking lock in the upcoming LGA1160 processors which are currently going under the codenames of Lynnfield and Havendale.

Until now, we didn't know how this had been implemented, but we've learned some more about it and it looks like there is no easy workaround. As these processors have the memory controller and a few more bits integrated into the CPU itself, Intel suddenly has a lot more control than it has had with past designs that utilized a separate chipset which contains the memory controller.

As Intel seems to want to push the much more expensive Bloomfield platform to overclockers, the company implemented a lock that prevents these new processors from being overclocked by adding two PLL clock generators, one inside the CPU itself and one in the PCH.

This might not sound like it's a big problem in itself, but what Intel has done is that these two will clock generators will reference each other; and this means that just changing the bus speed won't have any effect if you're trying to overclock the CPU as it will dissregard the information from the PCH if it's not a correct value.

There might still be options for overclocking these CPU's, but our understanding is that this isn't easily done and Intel doesn't want it to be, and as such Intel is unlikely to give out this information to third-party motherboard manufacturers.

The sum of all this is that Intel might lose out a few enthusiast users that don't have deep enough pockets to get a Bloomfield system to AMD, which might not be a bad thing for AMD in the end. 

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Intel to drop overclocking for mainstream Nehalems