You probably all remember the stories about how Intel would disable overclocking with the Nehalem platform, which was just a bunch of bollocks. Unlike these stories, the new rumors of Lynnfield being hard to overclock might have some substance. Lynnfield lacks an internal QPI controller and instead has other important northbridge features integrated into the die. In theory this might make it a bit harder to overclock. Not necesserily, but if we’re unlucky.
The Core i7 series is based on the Bloomfield core that was more or less tailored for the enthusiasts, while Lynnfield is more for the regular home and office user. It seems Intel will remove 4 pins from the mainstream socket, making it LGA1156, but the exact results of this is still a bit vague. While we don’t know for certain what kind of overclocking limitations there might be, it might just be that Intel reference boards are limited to 100-133MHz BCLK (Base clock, the new reference clock), while other motherboard manufacturers will allow higher. As always, on your own risk.
