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New Delhi: Chipmaker Intel has ended its Performance Tuning Protection Plan (PTPP). Though a lesser-known program, PTPP could be important for PC power users who overclock processors for better performance.
Overclocking refers to the practice of manually increasing a processor’s speed to beyond what the manufacturer originally intended or marketed. It’s a niche but important part of the PC consumer base, which includes many specialized and power users.
The PTPP program offered a one-time replacement guarantee for such users, if they fried the processor while overclocking. This is a real concern for people when testing the limits of these processors and could discourage power users from trying the same.
The company though claims that the program was being discontinued because of lower demand for the plan “as customers increasingly overclock with confidence”. “Intel will continue focusing on delivering amazing processors with tuning flexibility and overclocking tools like Intel Performance Maximizer and Intel XTU,” the company said on its website.
While Intel doesn’t provide any data to back up its claim that demand for overclocking protection is dying, there may be some truth in that. As Anand Tech mentions in its article, overclocking has been turning less fruitful for quite a few years now.
The primary reason for this is that processor makers have been tuning their chips to deliver as much power as possible right out of the box, providing less headroom for overclocking and hence fewer benefits. Turbo technologies also exist, which allow processors to run at higher-than-marketed clock speeds when needed.
Intel has offered this guarantee since 2012, when the company launched its Sandy Bridge processors. While the program officially ended from March 1, the company will still honour the guarantee on older chips. The Intel Xeon W3175X are automatically covered for overclocking with no additional plan required for them.
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