Intel has been making the headlines recently. If you don’t recall, it wasn’t long ago that the new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, felt that AMD was in their review mirror. It’s been an arms race between the two companies regarding CPUs. For a good while, AMD had a strong following with their line of Ryzen CPUs. That line of CPUs gave consumers a great performance for the price point. Now, Intel is thrilled over their Alder Lake CPUs. Dan Ragland recently commented on the Overclocking Lab’s mission goal and what it might mean for future PC builds to further hype up the product delivered by Intel.
It can be a daunting task when it comes to building a gaming PC. This is especially true for newcomers. First, there are all these expensive parts to purchase from various retailers. Then to make matters worse, you have to ensure all the PC components are compatible with each other. When you get all of that down and your PC boots up, another topic typically comes into play. That, of course, is overclocking. You see it quite a bit online as individuals toy with their CPUs to unlock an even better performance. Essentially, you can turn your CPU into a powerhouse that would have typically cost you quite a bit more money without overclocking.
So for some, it might be a wonder why these CPUs have headroom for overclockers to get better performance. Recently, AnandTech had the chance to speak with Dan Ragland, the head of the Overclocking Lab at Intel. Dan expressed that the mission goal for the team is to give people the tools to tune performance or overclock their processors.
“I guess our mission is to provide an amazing experience to people who are interested in tuning the performance or overclocking their processor. So we want to give them controls, capabilities, everything possible to make that a good experience.”
Dan Ragland – AnandTech
Still, while this is something that consumers can dabble in themselves, it does come with the risk of voiding their warranty. In addition, Overclocking can be a challenge, and if you’re not careful, it can risk your CPU. Fortunately, Intel strives to make its CPUs a solid product out of the box. Dan Ragland noted that the team worked with products years before entering the market. This is all to figure out overclocking capabilities and leaving no stone unturned. As a result, Intel hopes that there’s not much need to overclock their CPU when you buy their product.
“All the different features that are discussed for a new processor, we’re in there, and we will have overclocking line items. We call it the Overclocking Domain – we make sure that we know about new subsystems and that we’re developing overclocking requirements to make sure we are covered. You can’t put overclocking on cruise control and just say, ‘hey, you’ve got the multiplier, you got voltage, you’re done’ – it requires continual cultivation to keep it moving forward.”
Dan Ragland – AnandTech
Regardless, a massive community still wants to push their CPUs to the limits. So you’ll have individuals scavenging for the perfect batch of CPUs that might get a better result than the rest of the production line. However, if you are wondering what the future of overclocking might hold, Dan Ragland offers his opinion. Dan suggests that two areas might be the next revolution for the overclocking community. In Dan’s eyes, those are sub-ambient cooling technology and memory overclocking.