But does that make them twats? Yes, to me it does because they're more interested in themselves than their customers (to me, a company's main directive is to serve its customers, and the customer's main directive is to respectfully and dutifully pay the company; it's a give and take). But the majority of companies find ways to save their asses, so why are Intel treated any differently in this situation? If what you're saying is true—and I believe it is—Intel are putting themselves above their customers, something most companies do. I know I wouldn't pump my CPU full of voltage just because it can handle the heat, but I would love for the temperatures of my modest overclock to be lowered by using solder instead of paste. So as a customer, I'm out of luck. But I'm not every customer. According to what you're saying, Intel are saving themselves from the idiots driving 1.5V or more into their CPUs just because they have water cooling and can handle the temperatures. That doesn't sound that unreasonable.
Intel have always been a soulless corporation who hate their end users. That goes back as far as I have been into hardware and it all became a big thing. In the mid to late 90s Intel started their Pentium CPUs and from that moment on people have been overclocking. It used to be as simple as setting a jumper. Your board had jumpers on it for specific CPUs, you simply set yours as the one above. Bingo, free performance.
The Celeron 300A is a legend. Simply set the bus for a P2 450 (4.5 x 100) instead of the normal base clock of 66mhz and you basically have a chip worth over twice the price. It really was that easy.
Back in those days companies used to actually advertise overclocks much as they do now. However, Intel hated it. They hated the people that did it, because they were avoiding paying higher prices. We were threatened at our shop not to do so, and if we did and they caught us they wouldn't give us the drippings off of their arse. In fact at one point they told us if we stocked AMD products we would get no more Intel products. At all. That is what that lawsuit going on now is about, crap like that.
Intel's rep (in my area like) didn't have a a clue about computers. He was a 20 year old flash boy (posh suits and shoes etc) and stunk of aftershave. All he cared about was getting laid of a weekend, had no interest in computers at all. He was sent to sell us crap, and that is what he did.
So yeah, as long as Intel have known about overclocking they have hated it and the people who do it. Back in those days jumpers could not be avoided, there was no way to stop people overclocking. But as soon as they could do it? they did. Problem is when you sell multiple products with different base speeds what do you do? you don't have much choice really. That is how overclockers managed to get around the multi locks. They simply set the bus speed higher, and bang ! overclock. But I promise you, if Intel could have stopped that they would. Then we get to Sandybridge and Intel think they can capitalise on overclocking and do so. They sell this performance warranty on a soldered CPU. Hell, they even allowed the "locked" ones to be overclocked by X4.
Then we get to Haswell and the solder is gone, the performance warranty is gone (because who in their right mind would pay for that when Intel can't prove how a dead CPU came to be dead?) and yeah, the rest is history. They also removed the "free" X4 from the locked CPUs. Probably because people were buying those and overclocking them and not buying the K versions.
AMD? pretty much not a sniff of any of the above. Even their multi locked Phenom 2 CPUs could be overclocked via the bus, the black editions just made it easier for noobs. Since then though? not a padlock in sight and plenty of lovely solder.
(minus the insults this time)
