Here is a perfect example why competition is key and why we need AMD to pick up the pace and stick it to Intel.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Non-Z-OC-BIOS-Microcode-overclocking,23682.html

Intel is placing the “final touches” on a CPU microcode update that will be removing “Non-Z OC” capabilities on Intel Bxx and Hxx motherboards.

The past few months have seen a wide variety of motherboard manufacturers provide the aptly named “Non-Z OC” BIOS updates that allow users to overclock Intel’s “K” processors on Bxx and Hxx chipset motherboards.

Considering that Intel officially sanctions overclocking on the more expensive Z87 chipset motherboards, and that “Non-Z OC” functionality could potentially threaten the company’s revenue, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are currently “placing the final touches” to a CPU microcode update that aims to remove this capability from non-Z87 motherboards.

With regards to actually deploying the update, Intel can be expected to either push the “fix” to relevant motherboard vendors with instructions to release it as a BIOS update, or release it through a Windows Update under the tried and tested guise of a “stability update.”

To sum up:

Haswell reviews determined that motherboards have absolutely no impact on how well your CPU will overclock. People are getting a max of 4.6-4.8 Ghz with the "K" series Haswell cpu's, and it doesn't matter if they are using a 400 dollar ASUS ROG board or a cheap H87 Gigabyte one.

Intel wants enthusiasts to spend the extra coin and buy the Z87 boards which are 2-3X more expensive and are pushing an update that will patch overclocking on all non Z motherboards.

They no longer have competition on the high-end. What did you expect?

Intel have been doing arbitrary artificial feature removal for some time. CPU instruction support randomly on and off by model number, crippling PCIe on Atom chipsets to disable discrete graphics, turning off cache or Turbo or HT even if the functionality on the chip would work fine, and so on.

Intel just being anti-competitive intel. In no small part thanks to AMD fucking up hardcore.

This message has been sent from a Core i7 based laptop :(

Shitty move.

Luckily I was forced to upgrade to a Z motherboard though, so it won't effect me.

I agree...intel has been at this for a while. 

But to present a different perspective...while they have no competition in the ubber high end in terms of setting records and synthetic benchamrks, I would argue that AMD still offers a good "high end" platform for gamers. 

To be honest, if I had a non "Z" Intel board and Haswell, and intel pulled this shit, I'd immediatly sell it and go AMD. Overclocking the FX 8350 and making it stable at 4.8 Ghz has been one of the most enjoyable things about owining a PC in recent memory. The fact that the end result are not as good as Intels chips doesn't even matter...

Overclocking a 3570k I previously had was beyond boring and artificially limited, not to mention unnecessary.  All games and benchamrks ran fine at stock and continued to run fine at 4.5 Ghz. Where on the AMD side, overclocking was like a massive riddle that includes balancing the NB, RAM, CPU multiplier, voltages, heat... I feel that if I still worked on it, I could get it higher...and overclocking really matters when it comes to in game performance. 

How long were you expecting a company with 1/10th the R&D and size of intel to stick it to them on the high end?

Long

The gap is just much bigger than it was post Core2.

Yeah AMD really needs to get their shit together.

Indeed there is... There was hardly a gap back then when it came to gaming.

If we look up gaming benchmarks for something like Phenom X4 965 or similar Deneb based chip vs i7 920 or similar, AMD was noticably cheaper and sometimes faster for gaming.