What is with them Lately seriously?

So in a day and age where core number matters (so much that even Intel decided to catch up) they now only show the max clock from ONE core and brand the whole CPU as a higher frequency, clearly misleading on purpose? Sure, this is not an issue for enthusiasts, but you can bet a lot of "casual" buyers will fall for it.

Vananovion:

I wouldn't be so sure. I think this could fall under the Unfair Commercial Practices directive, Article 7, paragraphs 1 and 2 (https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/ucp/public/index.cfm?event=public.directive.browse2&elemID=227#article_209). Looked at some of the cases and there have been fines for stuff like "disclaimer unintelligible to the average consumer" and "disclosing information on promotional medium and not the product itself" etc. Guess it all comes down to how Intel covers its ass, but even hordes of lawyers can make a mistake or an ommission and open up way for litigation. Also a court may still take an issue due to different interpretation. It's not unprecedented.

The boost clock was never a guarantee anyway. Otherwise, why would they bother with having a base and a boost clock? The only guaranteed clock is the base clock. Boost has always relied on the mainboard providing enough power, the cooling being adequate, and a range of other conditions - at least under Intel-specified conditions. Most mainboards come with default overclocking these days anyway, which increases the boost out of the box ("Multi-core Enhancement", which runs all cores on the single-core turbo, if thermals and power permit) I don't care what Intel advertises their CPUs with one bit. I care about their actual performance. And that you get from reviews, not a spec sheet. Not to mention that you can overclock Intel CPUs generally quite well if you use a better cooler then their boxed cooler, at the very least defining your own all-core multiplier quite a bit above the Intel spec anyway.

What an arse move by them! Us knowledgeable and the enthusiasts alike will learn these details through reviews and websites anyway, but what of the mainstream who also do not overclock, what about the enterprises? Those guys already have no idea about the importance of the architecture above the clock speed numbers, and they'll be just fall into this marketing BS. Here is one hoping that dishonesty and tricks in marketing crap will not be met with positive outcomes in their favours... Gosh I hate corporations like this.

Ricepudding:

I mean this is just a very odd and strange move... it isn't like their all core turbo is even bad? so i don't get why they would do this... not to mention tech sites who review these products can just find out what they all boost up to anyway...

It is quite simple. By stating all core boost to be 4.3 ghz they make a legal commitment. With Turbo 2.0 stating 4.3 every of their 8700(K) has to hit 4.3 ghz stable on all cores. Every 8700(K) that only hits 3.8~4.2ghz all core boost becomes a defective, non-sellable unit - or garbage, so to speak. Ultimately Intel likely suffers from bad yields while AMD can crank it up quite easily in contrast. Intel needs to back to the drawing board and rather quickly at that.

Is this really any different than what Nvidia/AMD do with their GPUs? Nvidia guarantees a base frequency and they give you a "typical clock" frequency, but the actual boosted numbers are dynamic depending on TDP in the given application, they don't guarantee a boosted number or even state it. Like with a 980Ti, depending on your ASIC quality, there could be swings up to 10% in performance compared to someone with the exact same chip - because a lower ASIC card would hit TDP at lower frequencies.

moeppel:

It is quite simple. By stating all core boost to be 4.3 ghz they make a legal commitment. With Turbo 2.0 stating 4.3 every of their 8700(K) has to hit 4.3 ghz stable on all cores. Every 8700(K) that only hits 3.8~4.2ghz all core boost becomes a defective, non-sellable unit - or garbage, so to speak. Ultimately Intel likely suffers from bad yields while AMD can crank it up quite easily in contrast. Intel needs to back to the drawing board and rather quickly at that.

I could be wrong but i don´t think that´s the case here. I think more than 90% of 8700K can reach the 4,3ghz on all cores and the ones that can´t, can be sold as 8600K. For me this is just a silly marketing ploy because big numbers sell!!! So for a normal person, a CPU that reaches 4,7Ghz is much better than one that reaches 4,3Ghz. Of course those speeds are under different conditions but the truth is that most people have no idea of what single core or multi core speeds mean anyway so Intel is going to take advantage of their ignorance. For me this is just a perfect example of sleazy marketing.

H83:

I could be wrong but i don´t think that´s the case here. I think more than 90% of 8700K can reach the 4,3ghz on all cores and the ones that can´t, can be sold as 8600K. For me this is just a silly marketing ploy because big numbers sell!!! So for a normal person, a CPU that reaches 4,7Ghz is much better than one that reaches 4,3Ghz. Of course those speeds are under different conditions but the truth is that most people have no idea of what single core or multi core speeds mean anyway so Intel is going to take advantage of their ignorance. For me this is just a perfect example of sleazy marketing.

Going with EU rights/laws I'd consider a 8700K being advertised as "4.7ghz CPU" to be misleading/false advertising unless it specifically stated that the frequency was single core only. Thus, in terms of marketting I personally cannot see what is to gain here for Intel, unless we're talking about the really oblivious folk 😉 I have however not seen a box, so I don't quite know what's printed on there or what the 8700K gets advertised as as a shelf product.

H83:

I could be wrong but i don´t think that´s the case here. I think more than 90% of 8700K can reach the 4,3ghz on all cores and the ones that can´t, can be sold as 8600K. For me this is just a silly marketing ploy because big numbers sell!!! So for a normal person, a CPU that reaches 4,7Ghz is much better than one that reaches 4,3Ghz. Of course those speeds are under different conditions but the truth is that most people have no idea of what single core or multi core speeds mean anyway so Intel is going to take advantage of their ignorance. For me this is just a perfect example of sleazy marketing.

Eh, i think it's more than that. We're at the point again where we are rubbing up against the frequency wall and there are going to be certain apps where Intel isn't going to be able to boost all it's cores to 4.3 or whatever arbitrary 2.0 boost number they set, given a specified TDP. So you have OEM's building machines, validating the machines at specific TDPs and then if you go and say "well all our processors hit 4.3" and then there are apps where they can't without exceeding it - isn't that just as misleading? So the alternative would be set Turbo 2.0 boost frequencies to 4Ghz or something lower - but then every app where it could go higher, you'd be losing performance. I think the solution for Intel to smooth things over is to do what Nvidia did and educate people on the issue (Tom Peterson talked about it on PC Per podcast/Anandtech) and perhaps list a "typical boost clock" or whatever Nvidia calls it. Like I remember when GPU Boost came out people were super against it, saying it's misleading, but if you think about it, it actually kind of makes sense to do it that way. There are going to be apps that hit the processors TDP instantly because they are utilizing AVX or whatever and then there are going to be apps that can boost the processor to 4.4/4.5, even if it's only for a couple seconds before dropping, because they aren't hitting TDP limit. And like how do you market that number? Outside of "this processor can boost between 4 and 4.8" or something, which is basically what they are doing anyway.

They do state it's single core frequency on their website. Cleverly hidden within the ? next to Max Turbo Frequency. 😀

There is perfectly good reason why not to let anyone know any solid number for this... Quality variance between chips is way too high. And as consequence, different chips have different leakage and require different cooling or power delivery. In other words once fully loaded, one chip may not be able to clock that high on all cores due to stability issues, other due to cooling solution and next due to VRMs on MB hitting their limit. In such situation, any hard number on paper is bad number for intel. Too high and people complain that chips are not getting there, too low and people see those chips as not so good. Not giving numbers and giving good chips to reviewers = they do not provide any false info, reviewers will. Basically this kind of marketing strategy hints that customers are there for lottery, and may end up being disappointed.

Probably to "avoid confusion" - since if they have 3 different clocks normal people will just be confused all around. And it looks worse, too.

I guess without naming the all core boost frequency they could start selling CPUs with varying boost speeds on all cores depending on how stable the cores are. As long as one core is stable at the advertised frequency, they could cap the multi core boost if all cores aren't capable of whatever speed they used to target. Thus more units could pass validation this way and potentially be sold as a higher-end model at a higher price.

moeppel:

Ultimately Intel likely suffers from bad yields while AMD can crank it up quite easily in contrast.

AMD sells CPUs with basically no OC headroom (1800X has a "boost" of 4GHz, and if you're lucky in the die lottery you can OC that to 4.1, but not further), and you think they can "crank it up"?

With even more luck in CPU overclockability, I'd expect more returns. Poor retailers.

moeppel:

It is quite simple. By stating all core boost to be 4.3 ghz they make a legal commitment. With Turbo 2.0 stating 4.3 every of their 8700(K) has to hit 4.3 ghz stable on all cores. Every 8700(K) that only hits 3.8~4.2ghz all core boost becomes a defective, non-sellable unit - or garbage, so to speak. Ultimately Intel likely suffers from bad yields while AMD can crank it up quite easily in contrast. Intel needs to back to the drawing board and rather quickly at that.

That isn't how it works though, there is a binning process these CPU's go through before they get assigned if they are the 8700k or 8600k or whatever they might be, there is a reason they already have different models because they could not achieve these high clock speeds. And even if what you said was true we have had cpus like this now for 6/7 years with all clock and single boost clock speeds and havent done this. This is just some random marketing thing that doesn't make sense... maybe it's just to have the big number at front or maybe it's to try and confuse the masses who are tech savvy... either way i think its poor practice of intel

When u consider all the following together: Fact: the node/architecture is hitting a power wall (the low quality TIM isn't helping either and 18/36 can fry your mobo if u oc (supposedly mobo partners fault)) Rumor: Intel provided binned ES to partners and reviewers (they might be an ES but with so little changes from previous iteration... I wouldn't expect diffs with final) Fact: higher core count CPUs have lower all cores boost than AMD alternatives Fact: CL availability is hyper low I think the most logical reason is they want to "increase shields" and get rid of potentially bad advertisement for their almost "vapor-ware" high core count CPUs.

More than likely that some one using watercooling are hitting the specified turbo frequencies while someone using cheap air cooling are not getting anywhere near as high. So in Intels defense better leave it off they are damn hot chips. Pretty much all reviews of the chip are using watercooling and thus providing better than expected performance. Heck all reviews i have seen have used watercooling have 2x or 3x sized Rads, pair this up with a 1x rad or aircooling i bet performance will suffer alot.

I still don't understand why Intel even mentions base clock, or rather, why the all-core turbo clocks are higher than the base clock. The all-core turbo clocks makes for a better selling point than the base clocks. If thermal throttling is the issue, how about shipping a heatsink that isn't made out of a pack of soda cans?

Denial:

Is this really any different than what Nvidia/AMD do with their GPUs? Nvidia guarantees a base frequency and they give you a "typical clock" frequency, but the actual boosted numbers are dynamic depending on TDP in the given application, they don't guarantee a boosted number or even state it. Like with a 980Ti, depending on your ASIC quality, there could be swings up to 10% in performance compared to someone with the exact same chip - because a lower ASIC card would hit TDP at lower frequencies.

Meh, GPUs are a little too different. Their operation is more complex, and as you pointed out, more variable due to silicon quality. Even power delivery for GPUs is far more variable. Some of them demand more power than the industry standard rating. Some need to draw some power from the motherboard, without accounting for any other PCIe devices. There tends to be more EMI near GPUs. Meanwhile, CPUs (and their VRMs) are relatively isolated, and get plenty of shielding from thick heatsinks. What I'm getting at is it's pretty much impossible for GPUs to guarantee their boosted frequencies. When it comes to CPUs, unless you're using the stock heatsink and/or a real crappy PSU, you are going to get the advertised turbo speeds just fine. If this was really such a problem, Intel would've made this decision from the very beginning. That, or they ought to have put more time and effort to refine their product - we all know they've got the money for it.

schmidtbag:

I still don't understand why Intel even mentions base clock, or rather, why the all-core turbo clocks are higher than the base clock. The all-core turbo clocks makes for a better selling point than the base clocks. If thermal throttling is the issue, how about shipping a heatsink that isn't made out of a pack of soda cans?

The problem is consistency, well, the lack of it. To get the base clocks higher u need each core on each cpu to be able to get that high on fixed power and cooling parameters. Even if "most" previous generations 4-core chips could get high all core turbos, they all used different amounts of power and cooling, so would need to pack the highest performing cooling solution. In other words, they just test the cores on a chip can get to a given turbo for 1ms without exploding and then throw the problem of finding the right power/cooling and clock limits to us......