TheOverclocker Issue 24 | Page 35

“With the re-introduction of the data bus frequency control (Ring Bus) and BCLK gear ratios, Haswell provides us with a couple of extra knobs to play with compared to Ivy Bridge.” THE HASWELL - HWBOT CONNECTION: EXTREME TUNING UTILITY New with Haswell as well is full support for the new INTEL Extreme Tuning Utility ("XTU"), which features smooth integration with your HWBOT website. I (Pieter-Jan / Massman) have been part of this project since the absolute beginning in January 2012 and I am very happy to see it finally come to fruition. When Haswell launches, the new XTU software will allow you to: - Upload and download overclocking settings - export and import the overclocking settings into your XTU - Compare benchmark scores, overclocks and configurations onsite - Link and feed information to other benchmark scores (e.g. SuperPI) - Participate in HWBOT competitions via XTU - Analyse your system configuration and get suitable OC suggestions The INTEL XTU integration will be available to any brand and motherboard that has XTU support implemented via the BIOS. IN CLOSING Without having seen a Haswell system overclocked (in public), INTEL fully disclosed how to overclock a Haswell-based system at IDF 2013 Beijing. As usual, it's quite difficult to predict how far the new microarchitecture can be pushed exactly - there are some leaks on the internet already though - but as INTEL continues to work on the overclocking aspect of their products, we can rest assured that overclocking on Haswell seems to be working just fine. We still have to wait until June 2nd to know every detail about Haswell in terms of performance and clock frequency ranges, but at least now we know the theory. With the re-introduction of the data bus frequency control (Ring Bus) and BCLK gear ratios, Haswell provides us with a couple of extra knobs to play with compared to Ivy Bridge. As the performance should go up by 5-7% based on performance leaks - it will be interesting to see if Haswell can break all the overclocking records or not. Additionally, we are pleased by the cooperation between INTEL and HWBOT and hope it boosts the social aspect of overclocking through the sharing of overclocking profiles. In any case, we look on to Computex 2013. We would like to thank Pallas PR, Mike Moen, Joachim Algstam from INTEL and all who made our coverage possible. Also let’s not forget to congratulate Hicookie from Gigabyte for showing 7GHz in a live demo. [ Pieter-Jan Plasier | Neo Sibeko ] Issue 24 | 2013 The OverClocker 35