Athlon Overclocking - The AfterBurner

NoWhere Man writes "Over at RB Computing (an AMD-only shop in Ottawa, Canada), they are distributing the AfterBurner, an Athlon Overclocking card, developped by Golden Fingers. It offers on-the-fly frequency and core voltage modifications, that is a reasonable alternative to building your own, as shown at Tom's Hardware Guide. "

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Overclocking, a Silicon Valley perspective

[Animats]

Classically, overclocking was a terrible idea, because speed was a part selection. In other words, parts were manufactured to run at the highest speed, then tested. If a part was available in 100MHz, 150MHz, and 200MHz, a part marked 100MHz had failed the acceptance test at 150 and 200. But typically, only a few gates on the chip failed at the higher speed, so the chip almost worked at the higher speeds. And if its temperature was kept well below the upper limit of the rated range, it might work consistently. But in general, overclocking meant a system with a substantially higher error rate.

As the fab for a given process became more mature, the defect level usually decreased. So at the beginning of a product cycle, you got more of the slow parts and fewer of the fast ones, and over time, more parts were produced with the higher speed ratings. Over time, then, the price of the high-speed parts declined.

Then Intel reinvented itself as a consumer products company, and started pricing ICs the way GM prices cars. In the auto world, a luxury car costs maybe 30% more to build than an economy car, but sells for perhaps 3x as much. Intel started doing this for processors, with advertising-promoted brands at different points in the speed spectrum. The interaction between this policy and the way fabs actually work resulted in some deliberately undermarked chips, and the rebirth of "overclocking" as a semi-respectable enterprise.

Then some distributors started shipping systems with overclocked CPUs. Some even printed fake part numbers on the chip package. This led to trouble. Intel may have lost some revenue, but worse, they were getting a reputation as an unreliable IC supplier. So they added holograms on chips, part ID info readable from software, and speed-checking (which is hard; CPU chips ordinarly lack an on-chip timebase.)

Today, IC fab yields are so good that the part-selection approach is rare. If parts are failing, the fab has a problem. CPU speed and model has become mostly a market positioning thing.

In the industrial computer world, underclocking is common; the temperature margins improve, and so does reliability.

At this point, Intel and AMD are competing so hard on speed and price that neither can afford to undermark. So overclocking is a marginal idea at best. Gamers are probably better off getting a new graphics board.