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.
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!"
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)
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.
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!"
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)
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.)