More on Athlon Overclocking

The Tech Report is running an article concerning Athlon overclocking. With the 1Ghz+ chips coming down the line apparently soon, will things need to change? Or will it be just a documentation change? The other change is the issue of moving to on-die L2 cache - how will that affect things?

Comments

Yes, several heads have exploded.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been covered up, obviously, with the connivance of the liberal media, but at least three moderate-to-severe head-explodings have been recorded in ordinary household usage of Athlons. Don't let this thing near your kids. It'll pop 'em like popcorn.

Oh boy

[whoop]

Boy lemme tell ya, if anyone is gonna spend the $1200 (or whatever) for a 1000 Mhz chip, and doesn't overclock it, they are downright fools. I mean, how can you look at yourself in your monitor's reflection every day with a measly 1000 Mhz machine? Sure you compile kernels in 5 seconds, but look at the guy down the road. He's running his at 1700 Mhz right now, pulling in about 738 fps in . Yeah, that's right, you non-overclockin weirdo, you.

Ladies and gentlemen. Do not let this scenario happen to you. The next time you remortgage your home to buy a CPU, remember, overclock that puppy to heck. Thank you.

This has been a paid advertisement from the Go Ahead and Fry that CPU Foundation.

Re:Why overclock?

[The Man]

You have missed the point. The objective of overclocking is not to obtain noticeable, or even measurable, speed increases in any task. It is to show how 31337 the 0v3rC10kk3r d00d!!!#!!@!!! is. You are correct, however, when you mention that A 1 GHz chip (or even a 800 MHz one) can, for most tasks, outpace any other componant of the system. This is why real workstations with "slow" 300-500MHz processors can easily outperform peecees with processors clocked twice as fast or faster. It's called balanced design, and has never made an appearance in the peecee world. The great irony is that peecee overclockers are trying to increase the speed of what is already the fastest component in their systems but refuse to spend one extra currency unit on improving the subsystems that are the slowest in the computing world. Instead, they should buy a chip 200-300 MHz behind the state of the "art" and spend the extra dosh on a better mainboard, i/o subsystem, and disks. It's amazing how much better performance such a system can deliver at a similar price point.

rated speed to avoid single-bit errors and the like

SBEs, eh? Well, that implies that you invested in ECC memory. Investing in higher quality components is highly unusual for an overclocker. I can assure you that most of them observe SBEs as a BSOD in their GameOS, because they spent all their cash on a higher-clocked processor and then bought Joe's Factory Thirds "PC92-1/2" Memory from the guy on the corner wearing a trench coat.

Re:ick..

[JamesKPolk]

Which is better?

Compile, test, debug
Compile, test, debug

OR

Compile, check email, test, debug
Compile, have lunch, test, debug

?

On-Die Cache

[Datafage]

The move to on-die cache is what has me most interested. High-speed cache is what affects gaming most, not the actual size of the cache, and as we all know, gaming is what counts.:) For repetitive tasks, such as searching a database, a larger L2 cache is superior. For non-repetitive tasks, like drawing triangles, the faster cache will win out. Of course, if you can get both, like the Xeon or alleged Athlons with 8 Meg full-speed cache, life is good.

Full-speed cache is the only thing letting aluminummines approach or outperform Athlons, just look at the graphs and you'll see that the P3s get closer and closer as the speed increases, and the Athlon's cache gets slower and slower by comparison. With full-speed cache, AMD will be in a very good position as far as benchmarks go. If you think the Athlon is a good performer now, just wait. :)

Am I the only one thinking we'll be seeing the BiAthlon and TriAthlon just like the P2 and P3 came along?

-----------------------

Re:On-Die Cache

[billybob jr]

I would argue just the opposite. L2 cache is less important in games than other applications. Do you remember the first Celerons with no L2 cache on die or anywhere else?

They benchmarked very poorly in the typical ZDnet benchmarks for Windows. They also performed pretty well in games such as Quake. Here are some benchmarks from Tom's Hardware:

Office Performance Windows 98
3D Gaming Performance
Notice the difference between a 300 Mhz Celeron with 128k L2 cache and one without.

in Quake2:
with L2 cache: 50 frames per second
without L2 cache: 45 frames per second
pentium 233mmx: 32 frames per second

in Business Winstone:
with L2 cache: 25
without L2 cache: 19.3
pentium 233 mmx: 19.5

Granted this is only applicable for Quake2 (and the other quake engines more than likely), it still indicates at least one game doesn't depend very heavily on L2 cache. I think the generalization to be made is that L2 cache boosts integer performance moreso than floating point performance.

Check out the Coppermine vs. Athlon benchmarks you were referring to. The ones I've seen indicate that the on die L2 cache helps the Coppermine catch up to the Athlon in integer performance, but not in floating point.

Re:Warning: Opening this case may fry your brain

[Sp@mMan]

Also, metal cases for microwave shielding will cost money. What happens when people start skimping on
the case, or putting the new 10000Ghz motherboards in their old plastic boxes

Uh, dont you think that companies would be smart enough to have shielding around the processor itself, rather than relying on the case? I think people think retards work in the R&D section of companies, they ARE aware of severe problems like THIS.

SpamMan

think people

[ArchieBunker]

Water can boil at any RF frequency. When you radiate 1kw of power into a steel box its going to cook something. This has nothing to do with your computer. The cpu clock is running at 1Ghz, but at very minimal power, probably milliwatts. What takes so much current is the 40 million transistors on the cpu. If your athlon suddenly started radiating hundreds of watts of RF I would be worried.

Why overclock?

[Captn Pepe]

The article brings up the fact that, with Socket A (as opposed to Slot A) chips coming sometime in the not-too-distant future, the whole goldfinger card issue will be more or less moot. Instead, you'll need a device that sits between the chip and mobo, or a "slotket" type device that plugs into an older, Slot A, board. There are, however, pins on the chip die designated for these sorts of things, so it shouldn't be too hard.

I agree that the on-die cache is going to be the most important advance, performance-wise. The L2 cache was running at 1/2 clock, then got bumped down to 2/5 clock at around 700 MHz (due to problems with high-speed L2 cache chip suppliers, I believe). When this goes on-die, the cache will finally be able to run at the full clock frequency, which will make the difference between 800 MHz and 1 GHz look paltry by comparison.

On the whole, though, we may be getting to the sorts of CPU speeds where overclocking no longer serves any useful purpose. A 1 GHz chip (or even a 800 MHz one) can, for most tasks, outpace any other componant of the system. So is overclocking my chip to 1.3 GHz going to make a major difference in my Q3 frame rates? Probably not. The graphics card (yes, even a modern 3D card) became the major bottleneck about 400 MHz ago. Sure, that might let me compile software faster, but in this case, I'm going to go with the rated speed to avoid single-bit errors and the like. Heck, with a chip that fast, I might even underclock a bit, just for the added stability.

Warning: Opening this case may fry your brain

[pjbrewer]

Ok, so when do we start getting machines that can excite some mode of H2O?

Most microwaves ovens operate above 2Ghz, but arent there some modes of water down around 1Ghz?

Also, metal cases for microwave shielding will cost money. What happens when people start skimping on the case, or putting the new 10000Ghz motherboards in their old plastic boxes.

Well, power and frequency are different things, I suppose. But one can still wish for a few exploding heads anyway....

Kryotech vs this release.

[Pahan]

AFAIK, you can run almost any CPU at almost any speed, assuming you can tweak the motherboard clock. However, running it at higher speeds reduces the clarity of the signal (the detectable difference between 0 and 1), and that can only be overcome by increasing the voltage. But more voltage means more heat and you will need more and more cooling to keep it from melting and otherwise becoming damaged. This is what Kryotech people do: cool the CPU, allowing them to maintain signal clarity at higher speed. However, it seems that these newer Athlons will be able to run at those speeds without needing the voltage increase or the extra cooling. On-die L2 cache is also good: placing it there will allow it to run at CPU speed (hopefully), and that would further improve the preformance. (Just look at what it did for the Intel Celeron.) Of course, Intel will try to match it, in speed, in price, and/or in PR. (Hopefully the first two, not the third.)

I love competition!