When you think of overclockers, you probably picture some obsessive tech nerd coming up with a fancy gizmo to speed up your CPU or graphics card. And that's absolutely true… but sometimes a tech-obsessed geek is said to work for a company like Intel. We were treated to a tour of Intel's overclocking lab and an interview with Senior Chief Engineer Dan Ragland to explain everything.
“Today's overclocking advancements will become tomorrow's core product capabilities,” Ragland says, explaining how his team can be involved in the planning stages of new chips and components up to five years before they are released as standalone devices or found in laptops and desktops. Electronics empowerment can help determine where to safely and effectively expand your capabilities in ways that are noticeable, if not entirely obvious, to the end user.
To do this, Dan's team (which includes some of the people who are obsessed with setting world overclocking records) uses specially tuned software. It's more focused on testing than breaking records, although Overclocking Lab definitely has some information on Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU), a Windows tool that allows you to overclock, monitor, and stress test Intel K and X-series processors.
Dan says some of the most interesting work they do comes from an unexpected place: overclocking integrated graphics (Arc and Xe for the latest Intel laptop and desktop chips) to make them more powerful without any additional hardware. They can also go in the opposite direction, dynamically undervolting CPUs and GPUs when you don't need the extra power to save on thermal load and battery life.
To get a deeper understanding of how Intel makes its products, be sure to check out our impressions after touring Intel's newest and most advanced chip manufacturing facility. Subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube Learn more about the latest PC hardware and check out our podcast, The Full Nerd, every week!
