Intel Canterwood, Springdale to be easier to overclock?

'Limited overclocking functions' reported

Intel's policy on overclocking is about to change, according to DigiTimes. The company, whose overclocking policy lies somewhere between 'neither support nor condone' and active opposition, is reported to be planning "limited overclocking functions" for its forthcoming Canterwood and Springdale based motherboards, due in Q2 next year.

Although we'll have to wait and see how limited these limited functions are, any kind of movement at all can be seen as a minor revolution. Taiwan's finest, notably Abit and Asus, happily make hay selling overclocking-friendly motherboards, and Intel setting its face against the practice tends to help them and arch-rival AMD.

Intel does however have a problem that other board makers, and AMD, don't have. What people do with third party boards is pretty clearly nothing to do with AMD, and if people want to go break their CPUs then it's pretty much nothing to do with the board supplier either (but shove the boldface warnings into the manual just to be on the safe side).

But if Intel adds a capability at this stage it could be seen as encouraging users to take risks with its CPUs and - more importantly - making it easier for disreputable PC suppliers to pass off overclocked systems as the real thing. So we'd guess there will be a 'change' in the design that facilitates overclocking as a side-effect, but that is not introduced with the aim of specifically encouraging overclocking.

It's a tough life in World Domination Inc's legal department... ®