Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the stuff-ti-read dept.
i0n writes "The Chicago Tribune has an interesting article
about overclocking that talks of how gamers overclock their machines not
only to save money, but out of spite towards the processor industry. "
Overclocking is not that new
by
bunyip
·
· Score: 3
What's all this hype about overclocking? Does anyone else out there remember pushing a Z80 up to 4 or even 6 Mhz? We did it because we could. It's no different than a hot rodder who squeezes an extra few horsepower from a car. We don't want bland gray boxes running generic software from a mega-corporation. The hot rodder doesn't want an anemic Chevy Nova.
Re:Overclocking is not that new
by
hawk
·
· Score: 2
6Mhz? never heard of pulling that off.
But it was different then. You didn't just move a jumper or two. You replaced crystals, or got exotic & built a variable speed oscillator. And you had to to be careful of which parts could run fast, and which needed to keep their timing so the video would display. And Zilog noted on intorduction that the rated speed was 2.5, but that hand-picked units might run at 4, and that a Z80A that *would* run at 4 would be along soon.
Re:some people just have it all wrong...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
Actually, I did just that. Bought an ABIT BH6 and a Celeron 300a, and first thing I did right out of the box was run it at 450Mhz. Works flawlessly only bumping the voltage up to 2.05V.;-) And I bought this combination exactly for the reason of overclocking. For the price of a PII-450, I could manage to buy, at the time, 3 of these motherboard/Celeron combinations. Or, buy the motherboard and 5 (or more) Celeron processors and get the same basic performance.
Basically, it was a huge win/win situation, and I took full advantage of it.
Re:Sticking it to the man?
by
sys$manager
·
· Score: 2
But if you start with a Merlin Block (ie a C300A) and bore it out to 638ci (ie 500-800MHz) you end up with over 1000hp easily.
Engine cylinder wall thicknesses are all the same through whole engine families. It's cheaper to have one casting than four. If you change the bore and stroke, you can convert from a small engine to a large one, inside that specific family. I figure processors are the same. Why would they fixture up to make so many different clock speeds? The differences must be minor. Too bad there is no ultrasonic cylinder wall thickness tester for processors!
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't 300As becoming *really* hard to track down? I know guys who have received quite a few that just wouldn't overclock no matter how much vodoo and juju or even a sprinkle of mojo.
Overclocking a server? Why would you want to do that? O'clocking has a very core audience and they don't use servers (o.k. maybe Quake servers...). It's all about getting just a few more FPS (Frames Per Second for those of you that think computers are for working..) here and there, the difference bewteen dodging that rocket and taking it up the a$$. Most overclockers (in my experience) are those adolescent males that want top-notch power without the cost of buying high-end processors. Stability and longevity (you'll have to buy a new one in 18 months anyway) are not issues, it's just about blazing speed. Serious computer gaming requires near constant upgrades as you must stay on the bleeding edge to get the full experience, overclocking allows this at 1/4 the price. The Celery 3A has been a godsend to this niche, and we're really "sticking" it to Intel (this is sarcasm, How do you hurt a company buying it's products? silly reporter)
Meandering in thought with the guidance of caffeine.....
Re:whoa, amazing... how'd they do that?! :P
by
ParadigmShift
·
· Score: 2
Check out Tom's Hardware Guide (www.tomshardware.com) or www.overclockers.com to find out all you need to know.
-- Paradigm Shift
Sticking it to the man?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5
Why the aggressive/hateful connotation on everything nowdays? This practice is closer to hot-rodders souping up their cars than anyone trying to 'get back' at Intel. Guess what, you can bore out the cylinders on your car and put in new pistons, etc. It was 'designed' this way, just like Intel designed their chips with a little more thickness in the cylinder walls than they really needed, so to speak. My first OC was a 486SX25 that I ran at 40 or 50MHz. Had NOTHING to do with some warped sense of, "Oh, Intel is gonna be sorry now!" and much to do with, "Damn, look at it go now!"
Re:Sticking it to the man?
by
Bad+Mojo
·
· Score: 2
This is a really good analogy to the overclocking situation. The reason engine manufacturers design their engines a certain way is similar to why processors are made. They aren't `slower' for no reason. Cylinder wall thinknesses and other things are designed in such a manner to make sure the optimum power is provided at the safest and most ecenomical level. Sure, you can bore out your cylinder walls, but when they get too thin and you ruin your engine, oh well.
If you don't know what you're doing, and you push too hard, you'll end up with a broken engine (or processor). Hence the saying... "You rush the miracle man, you get rotten miracles."
-- Bad Mojo "If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Overclocking is OK for all, except for developers.
by
Bram+Stolk
·
· Score: 2
Game developer that's overclocking? Pretty dumb I would say.
Next time his code crashes, he will NOT know whether it is his bugged code or his overclocked machine.
It's not too difficult to believe that people would overclock their processors in order to spite Intel. For years now Intel has produced the only decent processors on the market and until AMD came along they've had no trouble getting whatever they wanted for their chips. And nobody likes a monopoly driving up their prices. Fortunately with Linux's rising popularity and AMD's cheaper and (with the K7) more effecient processors the WinTel market may find itself shattered if it doesn't adapt to the new market. (We can only pray)
" until AMD came along they've had no trouble getting whatever they wanted for their chips."
you make it sound like AMD is a new thing... I have an AMD 386DX40 (about equal to Intel's 486sx25) sitting on the shelf. I bought it 10 years ago.
It was a good, cheap alternative then, and had less (read no) compatability problems than the newer AMDs
More information on cooling
by
CarlPatten
·
· Score: 2
http://www.firingsquad.com has been running a very thorough series of columns on PC component cooling. It's worth a look if you are interested in this kind of thing.
(And no, they didn't pay me to say that.)
-- Carl Patten
Re:whoa, amazing... how'd they do that?! :P
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
I've heard of some rare, wizard-like gurus who will even adjust the displays on their monitors to go to the bleeding edge of the screen. Stick it to AOC!
Funny, nobody noticed this in the Boston Globe...
by
j3p0
·
· Score: 2
Funny, nobody at Slashdot noticed this in the Boston Globe when it ran last week. But then again Hiawatha Bray is almost universally ignored by the Boston nerd community, as his computer-related columns tend to fall into two catagories. 1)those which demonstrate his limited grasp of technology, and B)"master of the obvious" notices something.
j3p0
-- "A Little Song, A Little Dance, A Little Seltzer
Down your Pants" -Chuckles The Clown
whoa, amazing... how'd they do that?! :P
by
teeheehee
·
· Score: 2
"That's what Gales and thousands of other hardcore computer buffs do every day. By using a risky little trick called overclocking, they can turn a low-end chip into a flamethrower."
wow, really savvy people... (fear) talk about elite! next they'll be saying that hardcore computer buffs can turn the average cd-rom into a multi-purpose cd-rom and coffee-cup holder!:P
-- "We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream." Schmendrick the Magician
Re:MODERATORS ARE CENSORS!
by
kamileon
·
· Score: 2
It may not be censorship, but it IS getting annoying... I have to set my level at -1, because a lot of the posts I want to read are getting marked down. And why did a post mentioning that the article had already been posted get marked down as flamebait? That was relevant criticism, IMHO... Moderation is rule by the masses, and while your average slashdotter is a bit brighter than your average, say, american, democracy still has the same woeful results... Unfortunately, like democracy, it's what we've got, and I can't say as I have any better ideas.
Geek-grrl in training. "Television is the religion of the 90's. I'm an atheist."--me
-- To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
I'm not sure if this would be considered off-topic, but I generally get goose bumps from these type of articles.
If it were about a queen or a king marrying, the same type of article would be in BeLieVe Stories, or whatever.
Am I the only one that has a problem with all the hype (this just being a pretty decent example) being brought on nowadays by newspapers, websites, etc. etc?
Overclocking your processor isn't 'brilliant'. It isn't 'creating a flamethrower', it's not even anything remotely new (my old Z80 machine ran at 5.5MHz while it was designed for max 4). So why all the sudden all this pooha? (Remove all wait states from a Z80, so you have pure machine cycles, and hope your RAM keeps up, can't see anyone doing that to an Intel processor..)
This kind of article brings to mind the old old saying. 'Why did so-and-so climb the Everest'
And believe me, it was not because he had a 40% chance of not surviving it.
IMNSHO, there's only two justifications for overclocking:
1: You're trying to get a bit more of a boost from an old chip.
2: You don't mind wasting your money on a slower chip if there's a chance that it can be overclocked.
Reason 2 implies that you're not going to be using the machine for any serious work, because, quite frankly, anybody who overclocks a server at work deserves to be fired. It's hard enough keeping a server going with as little downtime as possible as it is without throwing in random factors like overheating.
And as for overclocking dual CPU's, although it seems to be all the rage at the moment (with PPGA->SEPP adapters with dual jumpers and the cheaper dual MBs from Tekram, etc.), I have enough trouble handling overheating with my dual PII's as they are without overclocking them as well. (They start giving random compile errors and oopses at around 54-55 degrees Celcius.)
Slashdot Mirror
What's all this hype about overclocking? Does anyone else out there remember pushing a Z80 up to 4 or even 6 Mhz? We did it because we could. It's no different than a hot rodder who squeezes an extra few horsepower from a car. We don't want bland gray boxes running generic software from a mega-corporation. The hot rodder doesn't want an anemic Chevy Nova.
Actually, I did just that. Bought an ABIT BH6 and a Celeron 300a, and first thing I did right out of the box was run it at 450Mhz. Works flawlessly only bumping the voltage up to 2.05V. ;-) And I bought this combination exactly for the reason of overclocking. For the price of a PII-450, I could manage to buy, at the time, 3 of these motherboard/Celeron combinations. Or, buy the motherboard and 5 (or more) Celeron processors and get the same basic performance.
Basically, it was a huge win/win situation, and I took full advantage of it.
But if you start with a Merlin Block (ie a C300A) and bore it out to 638ci (ie 500-800MHz) you end up with over 1000hp easily.
Engine cylinder wall thicknesses are all the same through whole engine families. It's cheaper to have one casting than four. If you change the bore and stroke, you can convert from a small engine to a large one, inside that specific family. I figure processors are the same. Why would they fixture up to make so many different clock speeds? The differences must be minor. Too bad there is no ultrasonic cylinder wall thickness tester for processors!
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't 300As becoming *really* hard to track down? I know guys who have received quite a few that just wouldn't overclock no matter how much vodoo and juju or even a sprinkle of mojo.
Overclocking a server? Why would you want to do that? O'clocking has a very core audience and they don't use servers (o.k. maybe Quake servers...). It's all about getting just a few more FPS (Frames Per Second for those of you that think computers are for working..) here and there, the difference bewteen dodging that rocket and taking it up the a$$. Most overclockers (in my experience) are those adolescent males that want top-notch power without the cost of buying high-end processors. Stability and longevity (you'll have to buy a new one in 18 months anyway) are not issues, it's just about blazing speed. Serious computer gaming requires near constant upgrades as you must stay on the bleeding edge to get the full experience, overclocking allows this at 1/4 the price. The Celery 3A has been a godsend to this niche, and we're really "sticking" it to Intel (this is sarcasm, How do you hurt a company buying it's products? silly reporter)
Meandering in thought with the guidance of caffeine.....
+&x
Check out Tom's Hardware Guide (www.tomshardware.com) or www.overclockers.com to find out all you need to know.
Paradigm Shift
Why the aggressive/hateful connotation on everything nowdays? This practice is closer to hot-rodders souping up their cars than anyone trying to 'get back' at Intel. Guess what, you can bore out the cylinders on your car and put in new pistons, etc. It was 'designed' this way, just like Intel designed their chips with a little more thickness in the cylinder walls than they really needed, so to speak. My first OC was a 486SX25 that I ran at 40 or 50MHz. Had NOTHING to do with some warped sense of, "Oh, Intel is gonna be sorry now!" and much to do with, "Damn, look at it go now!"
Game developer that's overclocking?
Pretty dumb I would say.
Next time his code crashes, he will NOT know
whether it is his bugged code or his
overclocked machine.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
It's not too difficult to believe that people would overclock their processors in order to spite Intel. For years now Intel has produced the only decent processors on the market and until AMD came along they've had no trouble getting whatever they wanted for their chips. And nobody likes a monopoly driving up their prices. Fortunately with Linux's rising popularity and AMD's cheaper and (with the K7) more effecient processors the WinTel market may find itself shattered if it doesn't adapt to the new market. (We can only pray)
http://www.firingsquad.com has been running a very thorough series of columns on PC component cooling. It's worth a look if you are interested in this kind of thing.
(And no, they didn't pay me to say that.)
--
Carl Patten
I've heard of some rare, wizard-like gurus who will even adjust the displays on their monitors to go to the bleeding edge of the screen. Stick it to AOC!
Funny, nobody at Slashdot noticed this in the Boston Globe when it ran last week. But then again Hiawatha Bray is almost universally ignored by the Boston nerd community, as his computer-related columns tend to fall into two catagories. 1)those which demonstrate his limited grasp of technology, and B)"master of the obvious" notices something.
j3p0
"A Little Song, A Little Dance, A Little Seltzer Down your Pants" -Chuckles The Clown
"That's what Gales and thousands of other hardcore computer buffs do every day. By using a risky little trick called overclocking, they can turn a low-end chip into a flamethrower."
:P
wow, really savvy people... (fear) talk about elite! next they'll be saying that hardcore computer buffs can turn the average cd-rom into a multi-purpose cd-rom and coffee-cup holder!
"We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream."
Schmendrick the Magician
It may not be censorship, but it IS getting annoying... I have to set my level at -1, because a lot of the posts I want to read are getting marked down. And why did a post mentioning that the article had already been posted get marked down as flamebait? That was relevant criticism, IMHO... Moderation is rule by the masses, and while your average slashdotter is a bit brighter than your average, say, american, democracy still has the same woeful results... Unfortunately, like democracy, it's what we've got, and I can't say as I have any better ideas.
Geek-grrl in training.
"Television is the religion of the 90's. I'm an atheist."--me
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
I'm not sure if this would be considered off-topic, but I generally get goose bumps from these type of articles.
If it were about a queen or a king marrying, the same type of article would be in BeLieVe Stories, or whatever.
Am I the only one that has a problem with all the hype (this just being a pretty decent example) being brought on nowadays by newspapers, websites, etc. etc?
Overclocking your processor isn't 'brilliant'. It isn't 'creating a flamethrower', it's not even anything remotely new (my old Z80 machine ran at 5.5MHz while it was designed for max 4). So why all the sudden all this pooha? (Remove all wait states from a Z80, so you have pure machine cycles, and hope your RAM keeps up, can't see anyone doing that to an Intel processor..)
This kind of article brings to mind the old old saying. 'Why did so-and-so climb the Everest'
And believe me, it was not because he had a 40% chance of not surviving it.
Mad.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
IMNSHO, there's only two justifications for overclocking:
1: You're trying to get a bit more of a boost from an old chip.
2: You don't mind wasting your money on a slower chip if there's a chance that it can be overclocked.
Reason 2 implies that you're not going to be using the machine for any serious work, because, quite frankly, anybody who overclocks a server at work deserves to be fired. It's hard enough keeping a server going with as little downtime as possible as it is without throwing in random factors like overheating.
And as for overclocking dual CPU's, although it seems to be all the rage at the moment (with PPGA->SEPP adapters with dual jumpers and the cheaper dual MBs from Tekram, etc.), I have enough trouble handling overheating with my dual PII's as they are without overclocking them as well. (They start giving random compile errors and oopses at around 54-55 degrees Celcius.)