So AMD forced intel to make affordable processors with unlocked multipliers !

AMD rocks !

Consider Intel’s experimental sales run in China of a Pentium E6500K with an unlocked multi was available no where near the dollar equivalent of $600. It was basically a crippled 45nm Core 2 Duo, just enough so E8000 sales were cut into. So only frequency junkies were interested.

That would be the only way Intel could sell such CPUs and make a buck, and not cut into sales of higher priced non-unlocked CPUs, if something like their Clarkdale-based Pentium G6950 or Core i3′s were unlocked. Most defintely an i7 in s1156 will not get unlocked, as it would cut into s1366 sales since that’s where the only unlocked CPUs are showing up.

Keep in mind, it is AMD’s cheaper dual/tri-core black editions that are forcing Intel’s hand, which are all less than $300.

870 has a 22x (23x turbo) stock multiplier. This begs the question, does anyone other than an extreme overclocker, likely to be on S1366, really need greater than a 23x multiplier? Lynnfield doesn’t seem to love much over 4ghz without high volts/power consumption, and this can be obtained through a reasonable base clock overclock on a decent motherboard with an 860, which is half the price.

I guess that would be the catch.