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Muscle Cars And Smokin' Chips
YetAnotherGeekGuy writes "IEEE Computer has an article this month, "The Zen of Overclocking" by Bob Colwell. In it the author compares overclockers to hot rodders (which, in my personal experience, are two sets with a significant intersection). More importantly he talks about the phenomenon, the culture, the attitude, and the natural tension between them and the industry in the quest for the right balance between performance and reliability. Thought-provoking, and some good one-liners. Enjoy!"
"In it the author compares overclockers to hot rodders"
Too bad the ladies don't think of it the same way...
That's all I could think of when I read this story. (It turns out it's for speeding up the internet, not cars!)
My dad and I were talking with some friends, and I realized a huge "generation" gap.
They were telling a story about the struggle to drop an engine into a classic muscle car without a lot of room.
My dad and I countered with a story about the problems with seating some RAM in a motherboard without a lot of room.
Computer Geeks - the gearheads of the future.
They both appeal to people who like to have unnecessary power, simply for the sake of having the additional power, and being able to say "My XYZ can outperform your XYZ", even though efficiency or safety drop dramatically. They're both pretty useless, but they can both be enjoyed as hobbies.
He's just jealous because his box crashes on Irrelevant Benchmark Number 6 Epsilon. Mine gets pi. If he put all his chips in a circle and insulated them with rare unguents from the East it'd work.
er, I opened all 3 links, you could have told us it was a poll dimwit
I don't understand, therefore it must be useless/senseless/etc, right ?
Glad to see that I'm not the only one who has been thinking that.
Ever since the first time I read about someone cutting a case open and putting plexi glass on the side with IDE cables in coloured tubes and neon lights that pulse to the sound of the games, the only thing I could think of at the time was the customized car scene.
I think you'll also find that the current crowd of 4 cylinder hot rodders are also the same kids who'll customize their computers.
Fascinating to see what once was the realm of geekdom now becoming quite mainstream.
has anybody realized that the parent comment is NOT offtopic? sacrificing stability/memory for FEATURES/SPEED is what the poll AND the article are BOTH about.
The parent brings up a good point, would you rather have features/speed over memory/stability?
Except that most kids today think that souping up a PC means a window and lights.
I'll stick with my stock (i.e. quiet) box anyday.
--
This is a manipulated troll copy.
For them, fast-yet-reliable buttsex is the right target for computer designers and chipmakers, and hemos is aenimic
Braking from 150mph into an increasing radius turn off the back straight on the other hand.. Women like men who are confident, and there's not much room for indecision on a racetrack.
:-)
(Often) ladies don't find too much that's macho about a XP chip running at 3000mhz (duh), and there's not much risk other than the possible damage to your bank account. So I think this article is just tripe to make those with low self esteem feel better about themselves.
"Overclockers say, "Instead of buying a new PC, just overclock the old one."
I don't know any overclockers that say that. I run a mildly overclocked system because I can with no impact on reliability. I've run extremely overclocked and watercooled systems in the past. It was not done to save money on a new PC - a combination of the very top of the line being insanely priced, and "because I can". This article feels like fluff and has a questionable feel to it. I'm suprised it's from the IEEE.
On the other hand, in my own experience fast cars are a lot more fun than fast women.
..don't panic
The similarity is quite funny: the same way pretty lights and cables don't make the computer any faster, all those stickers and spoilers don't make the cars faster either.
I ran a 286-12 at 16 Mhz years ago.
Yeah its alike. Im not a hot-rodder but I fix cars - Im the type of person who gets his parts second-hand [car or computer]. :P
:)
If its not broken dont fix it.
Pixels keep you awake!
You're stupid if you cant tell thats a poll.
To get significant performance increases from modern engines, over-clocking, or rather hacking the ECM is essential. It's the only way to tweak a stock engine.
"The parent brings up a good point, would you rather have features/speed over memory/stability?" At least on of each for play (car and computer) and one of each for work and there is no need to consider that choice.
Me too... I got more speed out of my 486 DX-2/66 by down-clocking it. The motherboard supported running at 50mhz (with no clock multiplier, this led to faster memory access).
I think he made good comparisons and was right on. I wish more people would catch on to things like he mentioned about the locking of chips. The groups that think some company is conspiring against them are as he says insignificant. Probably at best 1% of people overclock, and even then it just means better chance Intel and AMD will get to sell this person more chips since the person fried theirs. This same concept can be expanded to most any conspiracy their people come up with, especialy the ones thought up by many people here.
Then again, such groups of people never seam to catch on that they don't matter.
This isn't a troll, just a point, so many people come up with these ideas about companies doing this or that to block linux, or saying linux has so much influence, but the reality is, it is such a small share that companies just don't care. MS may worry about linux in server space, but could care less on desktops. For any move that may seam like something they or any other company does to counter linux can better be explained by non-linux theories. Really it's an over thinking of linux's place that hurts it. It you accept it being small and having no effect you have more the right mindset to change that. If you think it's everywhere and a big force you are blind to it's flaws and less likely to do things to improve it's place. This goes past linux and applies to so many things. People who think everyone overclocks their chips are blind to the fact everyone does not, and thus don't get the fact that the Chip makers don't care about what they do.
First off, since the author worked for Intel over a long period of time, I wouldn't call him the most unbiased of observers... And his claim that he's just an engineer seems rather odd as well. The computer engineers I know are probably more interested in making things run as fast as possible.
Secondly, there isn't this automatic corellation between overclocking and instability. Sure, it's less stable if one takes it too far, but the way modern processors are made, most lower-speed processors are capable of running with their higher-speed brethren. Sure, if one buys the latest and greatest, it probably isn't going to go very far. But when the P4 and 2.4 GHz is identical to the one running at 1.8 GHz but for the multiplier, it's another story.
I overclock my processor and video card to avoid having to buy a more expensive component. I don't go too far, don't overvolt the processor too much, etc. So I don't have any instability issues. Yet I still run my components about 25% faster.
Being chased down for driving fast comes with the territory when hot rodding a car, truck or motorcycle - then there's things like explaining how the throttle stuck, and needing time on the dyno and wondering if the fuel leak was fixed - the worst thing o'clockers need to worry about is letting the smoke out and being down on Jolt and blowing next weeks allowance.
Been there done that, and having a fast car/bike is much better than having a fast computer...you can't outrun the cops with a beige box that just sits under your desk. And, yes, I've mod'd the computers on all my cars/bikes.
I've got a 6 liter v8 honda civic and a duron overclocked with nitrogen to over 5ghz, so I must have a REALLY small penis. ;-)
In my youth I was a hot rodder. Then race car mechanic and crew chief(on outlaw sprint cars). Now I'm a programmer who tweeks the components to get the best performance at home. Looks are ok but performance is the deal.
Winning isn't everything, but second is the first loser.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Other then the fact that they take something they own and modify it, there are no similarities.
As somone who grew up around muscle cars,in the 70's, and then went on to overclock almost every generation of intel processor, I feel I can speak on this issue.
People who hot rod risk there lives. Doing 180 down any street can be fatal, even in the best conditions. Ever see a car lose control at 150 MPH? I have, it aint pretty.
Ever see what happens when your computer CPU stops working? not a whole lot.
Here's something you never hear:
"Mike was overclocking is 3G to 3.75 when suddenly he blew a tire. He'll be out of the hospital in a few month."
I understand pushing the computer to it's limits, and then some. But It is not as exhilarating as driving so fast the line is solid and one flase move and your going to experience serious hurting. Thats a whole different level of commiment.
On one hand, I'm glad I don't drive like that any more, OTOH somedays I miss it.
My point is, the people arn't as similiar as people on the board seem to think.
Besides, as a kid I always felt I was getting away with something nasty when I would talk about hooker headers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Modding can be a rite of passage and learning experience before old parts are finally chucked into the bin and/or recycled.
While personally I have done very little modding byeond simple putting them together in the first place to any of the machines I use every day (added a couple of fans to one, things of that nature), I remember one time the place where a friend of mine works was throwing out all of their old machines. They stripped out all of the hard drives, and told the employees that if any of them wanted any of the machines they could take them. Well after a few days when they were about to throw them away my friend grabbed everything they had left.
Most of the boxes were old 133mz pentiums, there were a couple of 486s and a few newer machines (P3s if I remember correctly). Since they were not allowed to resell the machines or give them to anyone else, and there was no way my friend was going to use all these machines, we decided to have a little fun with them.
We did some really odd things to those machines, just trying to see what the limits were of still having a bootable machine.
The thing is, although I've always been more of a software person than a hardware person (I know enough to build a machine, replace parts, troubleshoot parts, and basically do anything a common person would need done), but I learned a lot about how the hardware works just from hanging out with my friends (most of them were electronics engineers and knew a lot more about the hardware than I did) and seeing what sort of crazy things they came up with.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
I used to play in a band with a guitar player who was borderline obsessive about his equipment, particularly his guitar. He was constantly swapping out his pickups, trying new necks, bridges, nuts, and machine heads. It got to the point where he was replacing the capacitors and potentiometers in his guitar with precision components.
Don't get me wrong, he was an excellent player. None of this detracted from his practicing or performing. And this, I think, is the key: as good a player as he was, I believe that he felt that he was just a hardware upgrade away from excellence, at least in his own self-assessment.
For the most part, I think that most overclockers, hot rodders, or builders of Frankenguitars are hobbyists, for which these things are an end unto themselves. But there are a few people who do this believe that by building these things their skills, driving or gaming or shredding, will be unleashed, unencumbered by the limitations of their gear.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
That doesnt make sense!
:)
The 2 or 3x multiplier on the Overdrive chips was locked on the chip - It would run internally at 2x whatever the boards clock speed was - 25, 33, 40 or 50. You must either have run the bus at 50, for a overall speed of 100Mhz - A pretty decent achievement, or 50Mhz.. kinda dumb.
I've got an old Amd 5x86 chip, on a small PCB that was released by Kingston. It has an on-board voltage regulator and fan, rated to run at 4x on a 33Mhz bus system - 133Mhz. Common overclock was to set the bus to 40Mhz, increasing both that and running the CPU at 160Mhz
On unlocked systems (All pentiums up to MMX's/early p2's, etc) downclocking sometimes made sense, as it often meant the diffrence between a 60 or 66Mhz bus and 75 or 83Mhz (or even 100!)
When I first overclocked my Packard Bell 486sx-20 to 33Mhz, I had no idea you could do it. I was just messing around with it. I didn't have a name for it.
I used to go to the local computer shows and tell all the vendors "Hey, you can run that 25Mhz chip at 33 if you just set the jumper." Nobody believed me.
Years later, when the internet started going and all the "pc review" web sites appeared, it became all the rage and they called it overclocking. Woo.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Do yourselves a favor and read Clayton Christensen book about Disruptive Technologies. Your comment,if true, is precisely the pitfall he points out in the Innovators Dilemma.
MS might be many things but the people running it are not stupid and I will venture they are deeply concerned about Linux on Desktop.
Help fight continental drift.
I find that with OSes there generally isn't any stability vs. speed tradeoff. An OS that's faster tends to also be more stable because it's better written or simpler.
Bob Colwell's column, At Random, in the IEEE Computer Society's magazine - Computer, is always an interesting if at time odd read. Computer, for those not familiar with it, is a fairly decent yet accessible magazine for IT/EE professionals.
I am too lazy to look through the archives but I felt that I read the basic gist of this article by Bob before. I know he has mentioned over-clockers before, but maybe this is the first time he focused solely on it for the entire column.
His stories from trenches are always worth reading, and they are one of the first columns I read each month when Computer shows up in the mailbox.
It was an AMD chip. the multiplier was on the motherboard.
Except those guys working on their cars are actively looking to get laid on a Friday night.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The overclocking wars are always between AMD and Intel. If these are the muscle cars, then we should expect the rise of foreign chips from other countries in the future.
"To get significant performance increases from modern engines, over-clocking, or rather hacking the ECM is essential. It's the only way to tweak a stock engine."
Spoken like someone who's never worked under the hood.
Look, there are plenty of engines and cars out there, from import four-bangers to big-block muscle cars, that require knowing zilch about computers other than they're the black (or metal, most likely) box that runs your fuel injection. (Of course, this means we're cutting out the old-school carburetor fanatics from this conversation.)
Take Mustangs, which are my specialty. Several easy ways to add substantial power to a late-model ('94-present) include: installing a decent low-restriction catback exhaust system, putting in a low-restriction air filter, swapping out rear-axle gear ratios,
As far as tweaking the engine itself goes, without touching the ECM, you can: bolt on some performance cylinder heads (within limits), get some shorty headers (or long-tube, depending on your application), change out the intake manifold for a higher flow one, swap out the throttle body for a larger diameter edition, among other things.
Done right, you're talking about adding 100+ rear-wheel horsepower without touching the ECM, or getting into the nitty-gritties of extensively customizing your powertrain through stroking, porting, picking the right camshaft, super/turbocharging, or adding a nitrous system.
The rule of thumb is this: hacking your ECM will optimize your setup AFTER you add performance parts to your car - using it to add significant power in lieu of doing so is stupidly risking your vehicle, not to mention killing your mileage and emissions.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Just make that 4000lb monster car turn. F1 cars are only 3.5L for a reason. In most parts of the world, racing involves doing something besides driving in a straight line. A 2.2L engine can deliver 400 hp for a long time; the problem is when you get to rediculous levels of HP it isn't good for a whole lot outside of a drag strip. You can't put the power down.
upon second read of your post, you admit that a boosted 2.2 vtec cant compete with a 460. it's also going to cost a hell of a lot more to build the honda motor. 4cylinders can be plenty fast, but it takes HUGE amounts of money to do it, especially with hondas.
4 cylinders means you only need 4 forged connecting rods and pistons and half the honing time. In fact, it works out cheaper to build a very fast 4cyl engine - you don't even need as big a turbo. I am just finishing a project to get 300hp from a 1600cc honda engine. The total expenditure was around $3000cdn, and that was most ly because I wanted to get a brand new turbo not a rebuilt one. That INCLUDED buying another engine to work on. There are millions of those engines and they are cheap.
You can't work on a V8 engine in your kitchen. A dismantled little 4 banger is very easy to work with. Two guys can easily pick it up. One guy can pick it up dismantled.
Do you know what insurance is on a 1600cc engine compared to a 8000cc engine?
Very few people take it this far, but there are a lot of very fast Hondas out there. It once was more expensive, but now it's very cheap to build a 12 second Honda. Cheaper if you don't care about it blowing up.
Lots and lots of people do this.
Turbo D16 has lots of pointers on how to get started on cheap turbo setups.
..don't panic
So, tell me how this works...you sit on it and it moves along, just above the ground? Or is there a wheel attachement kit? Do you just push it down the street and make nasty faces at the police, or what?
i must reallly be screwing things up on this one. im a hot rodder, overclocker(added an old cpu fan to my vid card just last night), and im a married man that... wait... actually gets laid.
on the other hand, nobody here has any reason to believe any of that, so... whatever, hehe
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
You do not understand.
The DX2-66MHz CPU ran at 66MHz with a 33MHz front side bus and VESA local bus speed. Not all 66MHz DX2s were overdrive chips with locked multipliers.
By setting the front side bus to 50MHz and changing the CPU multiplier from 2x to 1x, he would've been greatly increasing the system's performance because the memory, hdd controller and video card bandwidth would've all increased by 50%. Memory speed made alot of difference for 486 systems, that's why those later 486 boards with 66MHz FSB really flew. A PCI Socket 6 board with 66MHz FSB and Cyrix 5x86 133MHz / 66x2, would probably be up there with a Pentium 120.
Feh, my first PC was a 386DX16 clocked to 25. Jumpers? An effette innovation of the bourgeoise...
My first motherboard had a removable quartz crystal... 32 MHZ for a 16 MHZ cpu, 80 for a 40 MHZ cpu. (Anyone remember the old AMD 40 MHZ 386 chip? As I recall, there was an era when it was considered pretty nifty.)
my first overclocking was an Ohio Scientific Superboard II. From 1 to 2 mhz.
The model T engine had a 2.8 liter engine and put out a whopping... 22hp.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There are two types of people:
Those who generalise, and those who don't.
I know people (cyclists) who would argue with you on that point. To them, they're not loud for the sake of being loud but so people on four wheels will notice them when they're in their blindspot in the next lane. Direct quote from a biker friend shortly after being run onto the shoulder in the above mentioned situation; "Man, i gotta get a louder bike so these assholes notice me."
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
First of all the car to computer analogies are always stupid.
Second, many of us buy Intel based systems because we value stability and compatibility. If the most you have to lose is a crash during a session of UT2003, then go ahead and mod till you see smoke. However, anyone who uses a system for serious purposes (business/coding/digital artist...etc) should not rely on an AMD-VIA-NForce-SiS econobox.
Seriously I got the issue right here!!!!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Anyone who wants reliable answers from their computer, repeat as needed:
I will not overclock
I will not overclock
I will not overclock
:
:
Overclocking is bad, m'Kay?
It's funny... My friends and I are into both cars and computers. I'm thinking of one friend in particular who has the fastest car in the crowd... he is also the only one among us who likes to overclock his stuff. It all started a few years ago when he had a motherboard that allowed him to set the speed with some jumper settings. He said, "Hmmm... This CPU is only supposed to go up to X mhz" (I think it was, like, 233 or something) "but let's put it on 300 and see what happens." Apparently, it worked fine, so he's been pushing his computers ever since.
Funny thing about reliability vs. performance, too: Among our group of friends, he has had the most hard drive disasters, and has also had the most transmissions break in his car (physically break--as in a loud BAM!!! from power-shifting too much). Both are mechanical systems... I wonder if there is any correlation.
On the other hand, there are programmers who don't know a screwdriver from an impact wrench, and there is the story I recently read about how new cars' computer codes frustrate mechanics. Most of these guys are purely mechanically inclined. I think there is a serious need for people in each of these two industries to familiarize themselves with the other.
Ok, that's enough rambling.You want to be fast on the street? 0 -> 60 in under 3 seconds? You can spend a shit load of money and time on a car and never get close, never be better than mediocre.
Or you can get a completely stock bike, not have to make any modifications at all and still be so much faster than the hotrodders that you find it hysterically funny when you hear them talk about fast.
The same applies to computers. You want fast? You have to know what your applications are doing and frankly, they are very rarely sitting waiting for the CPU to become available.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
In an era when pollution and fuel economy were blithely ignored, my crazy neighbor even put a nitro engine in his car so that he could leave even more rubber on the pavement than a normal overpowered V-8 allowed. If the crazy part isn't obvious yet, consider this: This beast burned fuel like a brush fire, fuel that cost three times as much as gasoline and was available from only one station in the entire city. To the extent that this assemblage was intended as a babe magnet, there is some question about the wisdom of limiting its range to a one-mile radius around a single filling station.
Where do I begine...
A nitro engine? You mean like the kind of engines they use in 1/10th scale models of cars? The remote controlled kind? The kind that weighs less than the person controlling it?
I think you might have meant "nitrous" but then again there aren't any nitrous engines, maybe a nitrous oxide system (like one from NOS.) But that's not an engine, just a delivery system (delivers nitrous oxide to the cylinders which creates a more powerfull explosion and gives more power.)
This beast burned fuel like a brush fire, fuel that cost three times as much as gasoline and was available from only one station in the entire city.
Burned fuel like a brush fire? Might have to do with racing the car daily, that generally burns a lot of fuel. Having a car that burns fuel isn't crazy especially when the car competes at drag events (if you're going to use fuel like that for a daily driver, you're either insane, or rich.)
To the extent that this assemblage was intended as a babe magnet, there is some question about the wisdom of limiting its range to a one-mile radius around a single filling station.
Believe me, this was NOT a babe magnet. A babe magnet would be a stock corvette, or a ferrari. It could of had a 4 cylinder engine from a honda civic but the girls (the ones that fall prey to the chick magnet cars) don't know the difference between a 454 chevy big block and a 1.7 liter honda engine. All they know is that "expensive looks = rich man." If the car looks expensive the person who owns it must be rich and it must be such a fast sporty exotic car. This car was the kind of thing you'd drag race with, NOT the kind of think you'd take around town and pick up girls in (I don't think they'd like sitting on the floor of a car with one seat, a roll cage, no carpets, no trim on the interior, no A/C and no radio.)
All of the arguments were basically the party line: don't overclock. It's not good for your system, it's not effective, just buy a new processor (and whatever else is needed to make the "new" computer run). yeah, right.
I think he does raise some valid if incomplete points. The first is that MOST computer users do not need overclocking. What's the use of a 3 gigahertz CPU to handle word processing, where the input is usually much less than 50 words (perhaps 250 character) per minute? But he misses the point that to overclockers, it's a hobby or challenge can no more be stopped than the use of (let's say) drugs or sexual favors for money or caffeine.
Overclocking is usually done for a purpose. Gamers, for example, want performance, better performance than the latest out of the box equipment. So, they go to the internet and find the information (and that community of overclockers mentioned) to successfully push their CPU up a notch or two without killing reliability or introducing other glitches. With all the sites for mod-ing and overclocking out there, there's also notoriety.
Older computers should not be overclocked to avoid upgrading. That would be comparable to taking an engine with 150,000 miles on it, adding a turbocharger, and dropping it into a race car. It won't last long. There are enough uses for older computers (routers, mail servers, Linux workstations, etc.) that justify not upgrading.
I really look at overclocking like I still look at souping up cars - which incidentally, is as big if not bigger than ever. If you've got the money, honey, and you've got the time, it's your car. Or computer.
I think the big difference between him and me is that he's an engineer, I'm a computer user.
Of course. AMD used to directly rip the entire processor from Intel and then make it just a little better. Notables are the 40Mhz 386 chip and the AMD DX4's. Much nicer then the Intel parts.
Of course, once Intel went on with the Pentiums, AMD no longer had the license to copy Intel, and it wouldn't be until years later when they would finally be able to catch up and even out-perform Intel once again, this time on it's own merits.
If it wasn't for the court ruling that AMD could copy the 386/486 processor, they probably would not exist today and we'd still be using 600Mhz processors.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
If you're really hip you don't overclock your CPU - you undervolt it, so that you can make your rig super silent by skipping the fan on your CPU cooler.
At first there was no engine size limit at the Indy 500. There were a lot of accidents and fatalities. The powers-that-were wanted to slow the race down to make it safer. One of the things they did was put a limit on engine size.
Much to their suprise the cars with the smaller engines ended up going faster! This sequences of events has been used as an example of how constraints on the design process can sometimes result in better (in this case faster) designs.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I'm a DIY PC guy and muscle car guy (smallblock Chevys and big block Mopars). I spend a lot of time and money tinkering with cars, and none overclocking my PCs.
The big difference is that PCs follow Moore's law; cars don't. I remember when some guy overclocked his Celeron to 600 MHz with a water cooling system and it made Slashdot; and I couldn't help but wonder what that guy would feel like 6 months later when you could buy a 600 MHz CPU on eBay.
Meanwhile cars haven't really gotten any faster. The big block muscle cars of yore ran 12 second quarter mile times off the showroom floor. Modern acceleration beasts (Corvette, Viper, etc) struggle to match that, and "tuner" import cars are lucky to break into the 14s (I'm talking stock for stock).
So why spend $1000 and 40 hours getting a CPU to go 20% faster when you can wait 3 months and buy the same thing, cheaper and without any risk? That 600 MHz machine is now SLOW, and a 4 GHz machine of today will be SLOW in another year. But a 11-second street car always has been FAST, and always will be, whether it's a big block with a lopey cam, or a DOHC with a turbo.
The article was written by the guy who was in charge of the IA-32 architecture for Intel for several chip generations. I would say he definitely knows what he is talking about. As for me, I think overclocking is becoming irrelevant apart from the technical curiosity and "because I can" factor. The chips are so friggin' fast that most people can't perceive any differences in performance. I am typing this on my old reliable PII-400 box that still seems to work just fine with Linux 2.6.4, KDE 3.2, etc. I have put in bigger hard drives and better video and sound cards, and basically have a computer that works fine, even though there are much faster processors available. I honestly think that we are nearing the end of the mandatory three year upgrade cycle. I certainly think there is virtually no reason any business should feel compelled to get all the secretaries new computers every three years.
The difference is that overclocking is a bloody waste of time!
A car that was fast in the 80s is a car that is fast in the 90s is a car that is fast in 00s -- a computer that was fast two years ago is slow and pathetic today.
This guy knows nothing, and is just making stuff up to try and sound cool.
"The symptoms included an oversized, overpowered American car," - True
" an air scoop for the engine, a new hood with a hole for the air scoop," - scoops werenot popular on the street till the mid 80's
" a wing-like deflector on the back (to keep the back end pushed against the ground while driving at supersonic speeds)," - american hotrodders? using wings? LOL this in an import thing...starting in the mid 90's! LOL
" replacement of the muffler with chrome pipes that resonated most alarmingly, a metallic green or blue paint job," - see above!
DO not confuse early era American hot rodding with the modern import scene...totally different.
When someone writes an article, and the first paragraph is nothing but complete BS, I tend to ignore the rest of the article.
Sure they may make life a little more better, but it's not worth the chance of hardware instability. :cough:
crack_vial
I really have heard some great comments comparing computer geeks with car freaks and how neither gets the chicks. What you all are missing is that girls like computer geeks and car freaks but only when they have their hobbies in perspective. I do like both, an overclocked computer and a sweet 67 RS. Both do their job nicely but I refuse to spend so much on either of them that I cant afford to go out and have other hobbies. Remember chicks want a guy who will go out with her to hang with her friends. Period! If you are behind a computer desk or under your car all the time you can just forget ever getting laid. It takes brains to be a geek and chicks like brains because they think of smart children. It takes brawn and brains to pull a turbo400 from a 69 SS big block and being able to do that makes them think of talented successfull children. You got to think as they think and get to where they are. Not in you computer room or garage! If you play it right they will give you time to play with those things once you nab them, hey they must go shopping some time right?
Overclockers are the new hotrodders in the same way that beta-testers are "the new test pilots".
Give me a break.
There may be some similarities, but you can crowbar any four elements into an analogy if you try hard enough.
The obvious defining difference is physical risk through use. How many overclockers put their bodies on the line testing out their modifications, hm?
A comparison to street racers is even worse, as that is a patently illegal activity everywhere in the nation - what's illegal or dangerous in the bold world of overclocking? Ooh, you're risking data loss, what big balls you have.
I'm going to piss on you.
...ever had this happen to you?
worst thing o'clockers need to worry about is letting the smoke out and being down on Jolt and blowing next weeks allowance
That my be. But if you stretch the analogy to include hacking, I think you'd find the parallel you were looking for.
I just can't help but comment on the HUGE generalizations he is making about anyone who overclocks their PC.
When he brings the hot-rod stereotypes in, and then goes on to draw these parallels between the two camps, it really leaves me with the impression that he thinks overclockers are stupid meatheads. As if anyone who really knew what it was like to say, work for Intel would never consider such a ludicrous plan..
There are those who are on the fringes and yell conspiracy, but most of this is because of the "speed bins" he mentions.. As if a P4 3.4 needs to cost 2 or 3x as much as a P4 2.8 or 3.0. P4 Extreme addition is almost $1k. This is what makes people angry. The fact that i can run my P4 2.6 at 3.2 and benchmark exactly the same as a P4 3.2 is what makes overclocking fun. I notice real world speed increases on media encoding, etc.. my computer doesn't crash every 10 minutes, or with a any frequency at all. FYI to people who haven't done it, it's not exactly as easy as just upping the FSB or changing the multiplier. You have to test, run, test, run etc.. often times taking notes and running benchmarks etc.. to achieve a stable overclock.
Pisses me off that he lumps anyone with a case mod or an overclock into a group to scoff at. Modders and tweakers love our computers, and we get enjoyment out of messing with them. There is community for this like other things, but it's not the same as screwing a glass pack on your civic and blasting past yer mom's house. There are legitimate car modders and there are legit overclockers and pc modders. We aren't all dumb a$$es with no concept of the greater computing world.
--the more you know, the less you understand. Tao te Ching.
Winning isn't everything, but second is the first loser.
Technically, if you are ordering losers, you would start from the very last place and sort in ascending order. That makes 2nd the last place loser, not first.
And don't give me any after-the-fact appologist interpretation about how 2nd place is the first to know they lost, either. When the first person finishes, all the contestants know they didn't.
You can stretch it all you want, it's still a joke.
From the article....
"Overclocking has been around since the early 1990s"
In 1984 I OCed my 5MHz 8088 to 7.5MHz with an aftermarket part. It was about 50$ - ouch.
Kinda cool as it had a switch you mounted on the back of the PC in one of he empty DB25 or DB9 ports. I installed it on an origional Zenith Z-100 bought the year before.
I spent many days in just those places in the early 90's. Beating certain people to the good parts at Ecology was always a challenge.
The big difference is that when you're racing a car it's usually an adrenaline rush. I have yet to have a huge adrenaline rush from squeezing an extra 100 MHz out of my 1.8 GHz athlon xp.
I absolutely LOVE to race cars. However, it's irresponsible and dangerous on the street. I can't afford the tickets/jail time and the track is too far away. Soooo... I rarely race. Every once in a while if I'm out on an open road I'll do a 0-100 just to keep the memory fresh or take the corners at speeds well above the posted speed limits. But I'm married with responsibilities and not an endless pile of cash so modding PCs is safer and much much much cheaper.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Dear troll, OS != OC
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
DashPC is [one of] the intersection(s) of the car and computer tech.
The DashPC is an open-source vehicle human-machine interface. It has OBDII vehicle interfacing, mp3s, gps, dvd, cds, xm, radio, etc. etc. etc.
DISCLAIMER: I'm the originator of the DashPC project (which has been featured here before)
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
We still do it in 2004 with bikes that run on 1970s technology... we soup our twin cylnder two strokes RD350s (which have been called giant killers) and then measure speeds accurately with 1990s technology speed guns.... and.. i own a PII from the late 90s and a laptop from the early 2ks.... time.. is an enigma
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
I was in hospital for a week when my power supply exploded while overclocking and gave me chemical burns all over my hands and arms, and a buddy of mine burnt his house down while overclocking his "AMD Athlon MP 1800+" to "4800+". Sure, your rice rocket overclocker won't ever go beyond 75 degrees C, but that never stopped us real men from killing ourselves on it.
Sorry dude, but as a Computer and auto gearhead, I've got to weigh in on this...
... perhaps if your hotrod had a really tricked out computer in it, you'd have the best of both worlds :)
Building a PC and maintaining the OS is infinitely more *USER_SPACE* activity compared to rebuilding an engine in an old car.
I see a similarity, but for most people today, building a PC means getting a mini-atx case, selecting a processor, buying ram, buying a graphics card, buying a hard drive, buying a dvd-rom drive, buying some speakers, and then installing an OS.
Once the OS is installed, you patch, check for updates, patch, tweak, delete cruft, repeat ad nauseum, until your computer is so full of cruft that you need to start all over again.
With a car, there's so many more things to check, repair, clean, polish, restore, upgrade... and it takes skill, tools, and money... most of all SKILL and PRACTICE. Anyone can build a "mame" binary or a new linux kernel by following directions... but give a 'newbie' a dented door, bondo, and sandpaper and just watch the hilarity ensue.
There's no 'warez' scene that lets 16 year olds download superchargers, nitrous kits, racing slicks, sway bars, 10" disc brakes, complete interior upgrades, and new paintjobs.
You can't just uninstall and reinstall a dented quarter panel.
Binaries don't degrade after 100,000 miles.
For *most* people's involvement with computers, it's limited to a select few components and choices -- more akin to people who 'hot rod' their cell phones with flashing lights and new plastic covers, or people who think that a giant "r-type" sticker on their car makes it a hotrod.
I mean... how many hackers ever take a soldering iron to their motherboard today?
Component-wise, building and tweaking a computer is more like taking a touring bike apart, painting the frame, upgrading components, getting new tires, truing the rims, polishing the aluminum and putting everything all back together -- time consuming and technical, but a finite number of components.
In as much as the comparison between hotrodding computers and cars does hold true, the really interesting thing is that the cost of entry is much lower for computers, and in the linux world, the new goodies (software) are all freely available (= cheap hobby compared to cars)
Alas, it's much harder to get a group to admire your cool computer than it is to get a group to admire your cherry 60's American muscle car.
Ricers. People with "Type R" stickers, big wings, windows in their cases, clear fans, and who think neon has any place apart from outside a strip-joint. I realize "Ricers" is the way some people describe Asians who drive imports on the street scene. But it's still pretty racist. Arrogant, condescending and racist. But I guess this is /.
In your published article, "The Zen of Overclocking", you stated in the first sentence of the sixth paragraph: "Overclocking has been around since the early 1990s...." Upon reading that, I was at first surprised that someone with your experience and tenure as an industry insider could be mistaken about the overclocking timeline. Then I realized that, while I and others were actually out in the field in the late Eighties getting our technical hands dirty, you were probably cooped-up in a Class 100 clean room somewhere inside Intel!
The real truth, to which I can attest from direct personal experience, is that the overclocking concept was already being applied in practical use in the mid- and late Eighties, and in fact was already commonplace before the Nineties even rolled around. I know this because I was working as a service tech and service manager at the time, and routinely "upgraded" customers' systems by overclocking them, for instance by replacing the clock crystals in IBM AT systems with faster ones and replacing Intel 8088 CPUs with NEC V-series ones and boosting the clock speed. I can't recall whether we called it "overclocking" back then, and the techniques have certainly become different and more varied over the years, but the concept has remained unchanged.
This article is simply sensational, all repplyes simply fantastic, I think about this comparations all night and no sleep yet... Resume: I love overclocking and love also old cars modified for extract more powerful! That's right.
Chill out. So he's a little off about 'when it all started'. "Colwell is WRONG...", "The real truth..." What is this? The freakin' X-Files? Seriously, you could have written everything you did with less tinfoil-hatism and said your piece just fine.
Then there's "... I realized that, while I and others were actually out in the field in the late Eighties getting our technical hands dirty, you were probably cooped-up in a Class 100 clean room somewhere inside Intel!"
I know and worked with Bob Colwell. And he worked in a cube like the rest of us and his hands were plenty dirty plenty of the time. And that's "the real truth".
I'm not here to defend Intel (and let's not forget that he no longer works there), but I'll defend Bob because he's a damned fine individual and a damned fine engineer.
- I am made of meat.
I thought the punchline was supposed to include something about going blind...?
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005