Overclocking is a Counterculture

dayeight sent us an article at ZD Australia which talks about overclocking as a counter-culture. There are of course so many subsets of the generic (and overused) 'Geek' term, but this is definitely one of the cool ones. It's also an easy one for the mainstream world to understand since they are already quite familiar with the automotive gearhead culture that has existed for decades.

Comments

Counterculture?

[orpheus]

let's get this straight...

...swimmers may shave their bodies (or heads) to cut down on resistance.
...cyclists walk around town wearing clothes that could have gotten them arrested in Alabama not so long ago (helmets that look like dinosaur skulls, shorts that let you count pubic hairs, and colors that blind drivers is you whiz by them in traffic on a sunny day).
...physics-impaired yuppies frequent oxygen bars, and guzzled bermuda grass smart drinks (yeah, catch their pick-up lines if you want to see how well *that* works)
...the average american drinks more beers on a single weekend than s/he reads books in a year
...if my brain were on, I could come up with far more diverse and colorful examples...

... and *I'm* counterculture for changing a few BIOS settings and using a non-factory cooler on my PC?

doodz... in ten years, they'll look back, and we'll be pop culture. In fifty we'll be the culture, while those other freakazoids will just be considered 'fellow riders' on the subway

... and *I'm* part of a counter culture

__________

People's perception of overclockers.

[mindstrm]

I find it strange, the way people look at overclockers, and the way the media treats them.

It's not that they are 'ripping off' Intel, or AMD. it's not doing something 'wrong', and it's not doing something 'illegal'.

Let's look at something like a resistor. A plain, old resistor. You can pay one price for a pack of resistors with a specified tolerance of 15%, a slightly higher price for 5%, an even higher price for 1%. Now, it is not uncommon for a hobbyist to simply take some cheap 15% bags, find ones that are over tolerance, and file them down to increase ristance, providing a very accurate match to whatever they are building. In short, they 'hacked' the resistor. Nobody would accuse them of 'ripping off' the company that made the resistor. What you are paying for, when you buy that expensive bag of 1% devices, is the fact that they are guaranteed to work to within 1% of the specified speed.

This is very similar to what happens when Intel sells a chip. When they sell a chip rated 500Mhz, they are in no way saying you are not allowed to run it faster, they are saying that they guarantee it will work at 500Mhz. So, if you are a manufacturer, and you want a 500Mhz chip for your computer, you buy a chip that's guaranteed to work at 500Mhz, right?

To put it a different way, a 500Mhz Pentium-III is guaranteed to run at 500Mhz under specified conditions: A certain voltage, a certain shape of clock signal, a certain amount of heat dissipation (cooling), etc.
It shoudl be obvious then, that this rating of 500Mhz only applies as long as the other conditions are met. IF you change those conditions, the rating is meaningless.

So if you cool your chip with some extra fans, effectively doubling the cooling, it can probably run faster.

What about us UNDERCLOCKERS?

[grytpype]

I have an AMD K2 233 that I have to run at 200 to keep my system from crashing. Am I part of some counterculture too?

Tweaks & Geeks

[Raffy]

While the article on the whole was a tad banal and vacuous, one of the metaphors seemed very apt:

Instead of spending our weekends in the driveway or garage under the hood of our primary mode of transport, we spend time optimizing the drivers or cooling arrangements on our primary mode of communication.

Is it "Hot-rodding"? I sometimes feel like it could be. . . the Frankensteinian monster I spend 16 hours a day with may not have bolts on its neck, but it roars, moans, and has the odd edge in need of a dremel touch-up.

I think it's a simple matter of pride of ownership. "When I bought this, it was able to do X. Because I put my time and brain and some elbow grease into it, it can do X+n, and my X+n is different from everybody else's, because I did it with my own two hands."

I overclock, and I can't honestly say when or if I will stop. It's not the fastest rig on the world (though it might be king of the office extracurricular LAN), but it could be.

Rafe

V^^^^V

what is counterculture?

[cr@ckwhore]

Ever notice that media are always pushing people into little groups, referring to them as 'counter-culture'? What IS counterculture?

Is there is some kind of mysterious "mainstream culture" that I missed the boat on? What do people in the "mainstream culture" do? Nothing? It seems to me that one would have to live a bleak existence to NOT be in a so called 'counterculture'!

Its all relatively stupid... every damn person on this earth can be shoved into a 'counter-culture' based on their passionate interests...

I overclock machines... what are you trying to tell me?

I think I'm pretty damn normal!
--cr@ckwhore