- Fast system memory to go with your CPU
has become a pretty big deal
over the last couple of generations.
So I was shocked to find out
that Intel is limiting the memory speed
on their current generation mainstream motherboard chipsets.
I mean, if we were already used to this,
it wouldn't even be newsworthy,
but going back just one generation,
even the most basic motherboard,
manufacturer BIOS permitting,
could run the system memory at any speed that you want,
resulting in a real-world performance improvement.
The craziest thing about this
is that the memory controller resides on the CPU,
not on the motherboard anyway,
making this feature differentiation entirely artificial,
and raising the question,
is Intel just trying to upset their customers at this point?
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In a nutshell, if you take your shiny new Intel CPU
and install it on a B or H-series motherboard,
a core i7 or core i9 will be locked to 2933 megahertz DDR4,
and a core i5 or less is forced down to 2666.
And I get it,
some people might feel like this is pretty minor,
but the problem is, feelings don't matter.
Performance matters.
Until my performance sucks and it hurts my feelings.
Sure enough, some applications won't care
about the loss of memory speed, but,
for an upgrade that doesn't cost any extra in many cases,
this 16-gig 3600 megahertz C18 kit
was going for just $65 at the time of writing.
Leaving up to 5% of your performance
on the table in some games
feels like just an entirely unnecessary
self-inflicted wound.
Now, of course, you can still run those CPUs
at higher memory speeds,
if you pony up for a more expensive
Z-series chipset motherboard.
But other than memory overclocking,
what exactly is the value proposition
of the Z-series chipset these days?
Intel includes a handful more PCI express lanes
and high-speed USB ports,
and they allow for PCI express lane bifurcation,
which can be useful for systems
with multiple high-performance PCI express cards,
but other than that, the main selling point of Z-series
has traditionally been overclocking support.
So the real change in Intel's position here
is that overclocking now means
not just running the CPU higher than factory default,
but also running the memory connected to it
past the officially supported speed.
Now, when we ask Asus for comment,
they explained that this restriction
was put in place at the BIOS level from Intel,
and that there's nothing that they can do to work around it.
So when we called up Intel to verify,
and were like, "Hey, yo, WTF?"
They confirmed that, yes,
non-Z chipsets will only support RAM speeds
slower than what has otherwise been supported
since Skylake first launched five years ago.
Why?
Well, because the CPU is only validated
for the memory speed on the tin,
therefore, having fast RAM is overclocking,
and overclocking is a Z feature.
(bottle rattling)
The biggest slap in the face is that,
and I actually didn't even realize this,
if you care about your warranty,
you might end up getting even less performance,
because many modules will default to speeds
as low as 2133 or 2400 megahertz.
And running an XMP profile
technically voids your CPU warranty.
Actually, not technically.
This is something that Intel
has reportedly actually enforced in the past,
when customers were honest about using the feature
and didn't buy their extra overclocking warranty.
Here's a hot take.
The overclocking warranty should be included
with the overclocking motherboard and overclocking CPU,
which you are already paying a premium for.
Because otherwise, Z-series and K
doesn't have a compelling story.
Now, back when Intel was only competing against themselves,
they could safely claw back features
from mainstream products,
while simultaneously handing them back
in enthusiast products for a price,
without fear of repercussions.
But hello, Intel!
That's not the world you live in today!
While you're slashing capabilities,
your competition is expanding them.
Look at the motherboards running AMD's value B550 chip set.
They not only include overclocking support
across their entire CPU product range,
and support for fast memory,
but they also have PCI express 4.0 and bifurcation support
so that you can run multi-GPU.
That's pretty much everything with any value to gamers
that the Z-series boards can do, and then some,
in a product that costs half as much.
This whole situation honestly smacks of an executive
coming along and realigning a feature set
to artificially create value in one product
by killing it in another.
Like, I cannot imagine an engineer at Intel
who thought that this was a good idea,
or that partners were asking Intel
if they could produce lower quality motherboards
with crappier memory traces for some reason.
And Intel, if you guys had asked
anyone in the enthusiast community,
or heck, even those of us in the tech press,
whether this was a good idea,
we would have happily turned you around 180 degrees
and steered you in the right direction.
No consulting fee, all right?
We really don't have it out for you, honest.
It's just that, even though the changing market realities
are staring you in the face,
you seem to need these kinds of wake up calls.
Hello, you're hemorrhaging market share
to a processor that, realistically,
wouldn't even be a threat to you
if you'd been tick-tocking along all this time,
and yet you're still acting like a big fish.
Like, to be clear,
I know you're not actually doomed or anything.
You've got a lot of money to throw around,
and you're more diversified than ever before, sure.
But it's actually those things
that make this kind of move feel all the more unnecessary.
Think of your image.
When people see you punching down at the consumer
rather than locking horns with the competition,
don't you think that'll incentivize them
to go see what all this rising fuss is about
on the other side of the fence?
I know that a lot of you at Intel understand this,
but send the others this clip.
Guys, the more enthusiasts that you piss off,
the more likely they're gonna recommend
a competing product to family and friends,
eroding mindshare in a way
that no marketing campaign can repair.
But maybe I'm just shouting into a void.
I mean, this kind of arrogant behavior
is nothing new for you.
Going back to the 286, 386, and 486 days,
you tried to trademark numbers
to keep former business partners
from competing with your chips.
You lost that case,
and then when faster competing chips emerged,
you named your next processor
something that was trademark-able,
and regained your footing.
Then along came Athlon, and you started losing ground again.
And, like today, it all started with the enthusiasts.
AMD beat you to 1 gigahertz,
beat you to 64-bit, and beat you to dual-core.
Had it not been for Phenom's relative failure
and Core Two's success,
you would have still been losing market share
by the time the Core i series launched.
And along the way, in the face of this strong competition,
you've gradually chipped away
at the features your fans love.
First it was making third-party CPUs
incompatible with your chipsets.
Then it was locking CPU core multipliers
so we couldn't overclock your value products.
Then you disabled multi-CPU setups with those budget chips.
You added security blackboxes that ended up being
the source of all those awesome security exploits
that are all over the news.
You created processors that deliberately
left performance on the table
to then sell it back to the consumer
at three times the price.
You limited support for your Optane SSDs
to high-end chipsets,
despite your memory division building a product
that made the most sense in a budget build.
And now we're losing
high-speed memory support on value chipsets
even if we buy your fancy K-series overclockable CPU.
Have you guys been keeping up with this?
'Cause that's a lot of stuff
Intel has artificially locked down,
and get this, that's not even the end of it.
Error checking memory, there's another one.
It goes on and on and on.
Make sure, by the way, that you guys get subscribed,
because AMD happens to allow motherboard vendors
to unofficially support ECC
across the entire Ryzen product stack,
and we're gonna take a look at that.
So back to talking to Intel here.
The question you guys need to ask yourselves is,
do you really lose that much money by allowing enthusiasts
to just do what they want with their hardware?
Come on.
Answer honestly.
The whole point of a Xeon product
is that you get validation and support,
and business clients, they're gonna pay that premium
no matter what hack-y things
your consumer platforms are capable of.
AMD already proved that with EPYC.
So, here's what you need to do, and write it down,
because I'm only gonna say this once.
First, listen to bean counters less, and customers more.
If your competition is doing something
better than what you're doing,
or offering a feature that you don't offer
because you have arbitrarily reserved it
for your higher end products, that battle?
Already lost.
Cut your losses, move on, just turn it on.
Second, failing that,
listen to your engineering and technical marketing teams.
These are the people with their ears to the ground
who can give you the feedback you need to respond in a way
that makes you look like you're on top of things,
and like you actually care.
Got a security bug?
Don't just issue a notice in PDF form on your new site,
proactively reach out to the media and provide statements,
answer questions, so that people who are talking about this
know what your side of the story is.
Get out ahead of it,
rather than trying to sweep it under the rug.
There's a reason people are ragging on you
about these security flaws,
and that's 'cause you're super unpopular.
Finally, and this is a big ask,
do something meaningful to fix that last problem.
Show that you're actually listening.
How 'bout this, roll back the arbitrary changes you've made
to the maximum memory speed in the Comet Lake chip sets.
If you do nothing else,
this is something you can easily execute on
right now, today, to show that you care.
And then follow it up with a real apology
and a commitment to do better.
Because, honestly, right now,
your behavior is starting to smell kinda desperate.
Without any kind of proper technical explanation
for why this had to be done,
you're just leaving me to come to my own conclusions.
And you know what I think?
I think you're doing this because your CPUs
are running so close to the red line out of the factory
that, pathetically, memory overclocking,
which used to be an afterthought for the K-series,
actually has a better chance
of meaningfully impacting system performance
than CPU overclocking does,
and you guys are worried that no one's gonna pay extra
for K-series overclockable CPUs
and Z-series overclockable chipsets for CPU overclocking,
because there is no overclocking.
How sad is that?
Finally, if you're not gonna do any of what I've asked,
then I've got one final thing to offer you.
Just be up front about it.
Look at Tesla.
They're complete (beep) assholes.
They literally put heated seats
in every Model 3 that they ship,
and then charge you $300 to enable them in software.
And for whatever reason, people can't get enough of it.
Oh yes, please pee on me more.
So, maybe that's the solution.
Maybe just take a page out of that book.
Just keep being brazenly anti-consumer.
Just own it, you know?
Send out some snarky tweets.
Piss off the SEC.
There, there's a winning formula for you,
from a literal rocket scientist.
(sighs)
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If you guys are looking
for another video to watch right now,
how 'bout the other side of this coin?
I made one recently called "Why I Still Love Intel",
because there are still good things there.
Actually, you can also check out our review
of the 10th-gen core i9 and core i5,
which were both pleasantly surprising
in terms of how they perform.
Too bad they just hamstrung
the mainstream motherboards that you can put them on.