Jim, Re: "In the chipmaking process, when is the last time a chip can be "clock multipliered"?"
Maybe you're missing something, Jim. As chips finish manufacturing, they go through a binning process, at which time they are marked to indicate the highest speeds capable by the processor. In some cases, demand for lower frequency chips outweighs demand for the higher frequency chips. In this case, you may find chips that have multipliers artificially set lower. In this case, however, I think that demand for high frequency chips seems pretty high, so I don't think you will see many chips that have the multipliers set lower than what they are capable of. Additionally, I am willing to bet that any chip making the high bins are automatically inventoried to allow for emergency shipments, just in case one of Intel's major OEMs runs out of inventory all of a sudden. For Dell, it may be that even the inventories have run dry.
wanna_bmw |
