OC - A scheme from computer makers to make more $ from you?

[vietchuot]

it used to be overclocking was for those few hardcore computer enthusiasts to tinker with just to see what can be done with their gear. but now, its just all the craze. and why?

if your hardware were designed to run at a certain speed, why the need to push it harder? does it give that much of a performance boost? is it worth the premium price you pay for the few extra fps you get? consider it - you go out and buy a cpu, and then a premium on a MB that can handle the extra voltage, and then cooling solutions, not to mention the PSU, RAM, etc., etc. why not just spend the money and get a faster spec'ed hardware to begin with?

its like going out to buy a honda, and then you put $100k into it so it can go faster. ok, there is aesthetic value in a really nice lowered car. but why not just go buy a $120k car to begin with? a $120k car looks better in my opinion, than a $20k honda with $100k mods (and prob faster too.)

i think manufacturers are laughing all the way to the bank. thus, they make stuff just so you can do these things, and then make more stuff so you can do some more. all the while, it really didn't make that much of a difference in you computing experience.

but then, maybe its a hobby? and i guess its fun. but it doesn't seem all that fun from discussions on some other forums, more of an electronic verbal war really. what do you guys think?

 

[TOOL1075]

okay, stop for a second.

take a look around.

realize where you are, and back away slowly.

[H] forever.


edit: sorry, maybe I was too short with you.

the thing is man... it can breathe life into an older system. (trust me, I'm at that point right now)

it's also fun.

it's also pretty cool, just from a tinkering standpoint.

 

[daemionsos]

They need a ban smiley around here.

 

[repoman0]

E8600 + $50 Non-OC board - $350 3.3GHz
E8400 + $100 good MB - $270 3.6GHz +

You don't even need an expensive PSU for either setup - and OC or not, you should buy a quality PSU from a good manufacturer like Seasonic. RAM is also dirt cheap and super OC ram isn't even necessary. I got 2x2GB OCZ Titanium at 800MHz 4-4-3-11 at 1.8v right now - $65 shipped. 800MHz will take an E8400 to 3.6GHz, and at 1.8v and very tight timings for 4GB, it has room to move up to 1000MHz at least.

This is a stupid thread. I'm doing this on a $55 shipped used motherboard and can hit 3.8-4GHz if I want. It's a used chip too - total for RAM, CPU, MB comes to $250. Less than a new E8600.

 

[Zero82z]

You clearly don't belong here .

 

[wolf2009]

Lol , what are you talking about .

Even if the OC is a craze , and they bring the cost of the hardware down , who wouldn't buy it ?

Why would you buy a Honda priced at $120k over a honda at $100k , when you can hit some buttons on the lower priced honda and make it equal to 120k one .

 

[lol_wut]

if your hardware were designed to run at a certain speed, why the need to push it harder?

Short answer: because you can, so you might as well.

does it give that much of a performance boost? is it worth the premium price you pay for the few extra fps you get?

This contradicts your whole argument. You say people should just buy faster parts to begin with if you want more performance, but at the same time you question the performance gain from overclocking. It doesn't make any sense. If a faster part costs $300 and you overclock a $200 part to the same clock speed as the $300 part, doesn't that mean you gain that much performance?

consider it - you go out and buy a cpu, and then a premium on a MB that can handle the extra voltage, and then cooling solutions, not to mention the PSU, RAM, etc., etc.

You don't spend that much premium on a motherboard. A $140 motherboard is enough for overclocking. Let's say you spend $70 on a cheap integrated motherboard and save $70. You then need to spend $100-150 more on a faster CPU in order to match the performance of an overclocked CPU. What's a better deal?

Cooling isn't that much of an extra cost. There are plenty of good CPU heatsinks in the $25-30 range. Not only do they perform better than the stock heatsinks that Intel/AMD give you, they're also quieter. These cheap heatsinks can all handle mild to high overclocks. It's only when you're pushing for extreme overclocks that you need really expensive cooling systems.

RAM is not an issue when you overclock. There are plenty of dirt cheap OCZ memory kits that work just fine, and you'd probably buy those even if you weren't overclocking. No loss here.

PSU is also not an issue. You should buy a quality power supply whether you overclock or not. I don't see why overclocking would require you to invest more in a power supply. Unless you're pushing for extreme overclocks, a power supply that can handle a stock system would also be able to handle an overclocked system no problem.

why not just spend the money and get a faster spec'ed hardware to begin with?

Because that would be more expensive and offer less flexibility.

its like going out to buy a honda, and then you put $100k into it so it can go faster. ok, there is aesthetic value in a really nice lowered car. but why not just go buy a $120k car to begin with? a $120k car looks better in my opinion, than a $20k honda with $100k mods (and prob faster too.)

The riced up Honda (with $100K worth of mods) would probably be much much better than the equally-priced $120K car, just like how a $1000 overclocked system is much much better than a $1000 stock/OEM system.

i think manufacturers are laughing all the way to the bank. thus, they make stuff just so you can do these things, and then make more stuff so you can do some more. all the while, it really didn't make that much of a difference in you computing experience.

For the "extreme" crowd, I agree. $300+ motherboards are pretty excessive and only serve to get you higher overclocks for the sake of overclocking. For the mainstream crowd, a $140 motherboard works just fine for overclocking. Aside from motherboards, no one else is really laughing their way to the bank.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Heh, I'd say a 50% overclock for 2 out of my three Q6600s isn't a bad deal. The third one was also pretty damn close to that getting to 3.51Ghz.

I didn't go nuts on the PSUs and got some pretty good deals on them as well. The Corsair XMS RAM I have did cost a bit more than your average RAM but it definitely wasn't expensive and I've had great experience in regards to overclocks and compatibility with it. I've also never spent more than $130 on a motherboard (in recent times) and that's only because the cheaper boards usually didn't have the features I wanted on a motherboard.

I'm just talking about my main systems there. One of my quads is overclocked on an old Gigabyte 965P-DS3 which originally had an E6400 on it and I just swapped out the CPU. My main system has a Gigabyte P35-DS3R and I only got that one because the regular DS3 didn't have the options I wanted. My other quad has an Abit IP35-e for a motherboard. I only paid $70 for that one brand new.

In none of these cases did I go nuts in spending for an overclock.

As for performance. The distributed computing programs I run will eat up every single cycle I can throw at them. For my encoding tasks, I can also use all the speed I can get. I remember encoding DVDs using Divx many years ago on a Celeron 300. It would take up to a day to encode that DVD. Now, it takes me about 40-50 minutes to encode that same DVD with x264 and doing two passes instead of a single pass as well as much higher quality settings.

My final point is a simple one. Intel does not sell a single core, dual core or quad core processor which runs at 3.6Ghz. Well, I think there may have been a Pentium 4 which was around that clockspeed but it doesn't hold a candle to a Core2 based processor. Therefore, my overclocked processor is faster than anything Intel sells. It is impossible for me to purchase a processor with speeds as fast or faster than the ones I have overclocked.

 

[Arcygenical]

My first real system cost me around 1100$ and, when overclocked, ran par with a stock 1800$ system.

Looks like I saved 700$.

Op, wtf you talkin about?

 

[BinarySynapse]

It's just like anything else that becomes popular. Companies catch wind of it and move in to make a buck.

 

[bigdogchris]

The thing that pisses me off about companies is how when you swap components (like cpu's), they don't credit you for what they are taking out.Lets say the system is 1100 (includes 200 cpu in that price), but you want to put a cpu in that cost 300, you pay 1400. You still pay the 300, even though they are keeping the 200 cpu that's already in it. that's stupid. I noticed that with a dell system, upgrading from one quad to another was $350 more, but the processor only cost $320 brand new. So not only are they charging more for the part (which I understand), but they are not crediting you the $200 that they quad they took out cost! That's fucking outrageous.

 

[Desdichado]

it used to be overclocking was for those few hardcore computer enthusiasts to tinker with just to see what can be done with their gear. but now, its just all the craze. and why?

if your hardware were designed to run at a certain speed, why the need to push it harder? does it give that much of a performance boost? is it worth the premium price you pay for the few extra fps you get? consider it - you go out and buy a cpu, and then a premium on a MB that can handle the extra voltage, and then cooling solutions, not to mention the PSU, RAM, etc., etc. why not just spend the money and get a faster spec'ed hardware to begin with?

In my case, its a time and money thing. I don't have the couple hundred bucks needed to go get a nicer system, but I have plenty of time and know how to overclock. So I can get a couple hundred extra mhz out of my processor by inputting time. Yes, I did have to buy a nicer hsf to oc, but that's a $30 investment which will probably also work on my next build. If you are building with the goal of overlclocking and wind up spending more to get good overclocking components than you would to just buy an equivalent system, then yes, that would be a bad choice. However many users here have a budget, build a system within that budget, and then overclock to gain performance. The goal is not overclocking, but since its there and you can do it, why not?

 

[nightwalker]

take a Q6600 for example.... its not difficult to overclock it past the speed of the top QX chips.. so you spend under 200 bux to get the performance of a chip that costs over 1000.

this is [H] though man... nobody understands you if you dont want to overclock lol

 

[beardawnwood]

it used to be overclocking was for those few hardcore computer enthusiasts to tinker with just to see what can be done with their gear. but now, its just all the craze. and why?

if your hardware were designed to run at a certain speed, why the need to push it harder? does it give that much of a performance boost? is it worth the premium price you pay for the few extra fps you get? consider it - you go out and buy a cpu, and then a premium on a MB that can handle the extra voltage, and then cooling solutions, not to mention the PSU, RAM, etc., etc. why not just spend the money and get a faster spec'ed hardware to begin with?

its like going out to buy a honda, and then you put $100k into it so it can go faster. ok, there is aesthetic value in a really nice lowered car. but why not just go buy a $120k car to begin with? a $120k car looks better in my opinion, than a $20k honda with $100k mods (and prob faster too.)

i think manufacturers are laughing all the way to the bank. thus, they make stuff just so you can do these things, and then make more stuff so you can do some more. all the while, it really didn't make that much of a difference in you computing experience.

but then, maybe its a hobby? and i guess its fun. but it doesn't seem all that fun from discussions on some other forums, more of an electronic verbal war really. what do you guys think?

You have much to learn, young padawan.

 

[3991vhtes]

OCing is for bragging rights

and extra preformance

and fun

oh i could go on!

 

[lol_wut]

take a Q6600 for example.... its not difficult to overclock it past the speed of the top QX chips.. so you spend under 200 bux to get the performance of a chip that costs over 1000.

You can't compare regular chips to extreme chips in terms of market value. There's a Q9650 and a QX9650.

Extreme chips from both Intel and AMD have always costed over $1000. That's the market segment they sit in. They don't belong with the regular chips, and their performance has nothing to do with the price tags. The top-end extreme chips are always $1000 no matter what generation you're in.

 

[Vermillion]

You can't compare regular chips to extreme chips in terms of market value. There's a Q9650 and a QX9650.

Sure you can and that's quite a good argument especially for this threads topic.

All prices from Newegg as of about 5 minutes ago and rounded up to nearest dollar.
All CPU's Intel Quad-Core 45nm with 12MB L2 Cache.

Q9450 - 2.66GHz - $325
Q9650 - 3.0GHz - $560
QX9770 - 3.2GHz - $1,460

Now I use a Q9450 on the system I built only about a month ago. I bought a $54 Zalman 9700 for it so that I could OC it and my OC is actually light compared to others and I haven't really tried to push it further. I got my CPU to 3.2GHz with all stock voltage. So my total cost for CPU and Zalman was $379.

Assuming I use the same hardware as my sig:

Zalman and Q9450 vs. Q9650 = savings of $181 and more performance thanks to the light overclock.

Zalman and Q9450 vs. QX9770 = savings of $1,081 and I get roughly the same performance maybe a little less. If I were to push my OC to 3.4 or higher I'd have better performance then a stock QX9770.

So saving myself $1,081 seems like a pretty damn good deal. Could probably save even more by getting a lower costing motherboard and staying with the light OC as well.

-V

 

[lol_wut]

Sure you can and that's quite a good argument especially for this threads topic.

All prices from Newegg as of about 5 minutes ago and rounded up to nearest dollar.
All CPU's Intel Quad-Core 45nm with 12MB L2 Cache.

Q9450 - 2.66GHz - $325
Q9650 - 3.0GHz - $560
QX9770 - 3.2GHz - $1,460

Now I use a Q9450 on the system I built only about a month ago. I bought a $54 Zalman 9700 for it so that I could OC it and my OC is actually light compared to others and I haven't really tried to push it further. I got my CPU to 3.2GHz with all stock voltage. So my total cost for CPU and Zalman was $379.

Assuming I use the same hardware as my sig:

Zalman and Q9450 vs. Q9650 = savings of $181 and more performance thanks to the light overclock.

Zalman and Q9450 vs. QX9770 = savings of $1,081 and I get roughly the same performance maybe a little less. If I were to push my OC to 3.4 or higher I'd have better performance then a stock QX9770.

So saving myself $1,081 seems like a pretty damn good deal. Could probably save even more by getting a lower costing motherboard and staying with the light OC as well.

-V

Why did you omit the QX9650?

The whole point is that the extreme chips use a different pricing scheme. If you want a stock chip at 3 GHz, you can buy either the Q9650 or QX9650. If you buy a Q9450 and overclock it to 3 GHz, how much did you "save?"

You can't put a dollar value on how much you "save" by overclocking. All you can say is that you saved some amount of money by overclocking your chip. Product pricing is not linear, and the higher end chips always cost more than they're worth. The cost increase is disproportional to the performance increase. Just because you got a 333 MHz overclock does not mean you saved $235.

You definitely saved money by overclocking a cheaper chip, but there is no dollar value on that overclock. You did not save $1000 by overclocking your chip, but you did save some amount of money by not buying a more expensive chip. The thing is, you would have never spent that extra $1000 anyway, so how much $$$ you actually "save" is a moot point when talking about the advantages of overclocking.

 

[Monkey God]

your car analogy fails completely.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Why did you omit the QX9650?

The whole point is that the extreme chips use a different pricing scheme. If you want a stock chip at 3 GHz, you can buy either the Q9650 or QX9650. If you buy a Q9450 and overclock it to 3 GHz, how much did you "save?"

That's exactly his point. When there is no difference between a QX part and a non-QX part, why should people pay extra because of the ridiculous "pricing scheme" for a part that's performance doesn't justify the price?

 

[Ocellaris]

That's exactly his point. When there is no difference between a QX part and a non-QX part, why should people pay extra because of the ridiculous "pricing scheme" for a part that's performance doesn't justify the price?

Really just depends on what you are doing with the PC too. In many production environments things are time sensitive and you really can not just toss together some enthusiasts boxes, OC them, and get the best value. We have numerous dual and quad PCs laying around where I work simply because we needed the fastest available PC at the time of purchase, and saving one development or media person 30 minutes a day pays for itself pretty quick even when the CPU cost $800 more.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Really just depends on what you are doing with the PC too. In many production environments things are time sensitive and you really can not just toss together some enthusiasts boxes, OC them, and get the best value. We have numerous dual and quad PCs laying around where I work simply because we needed the fastest available PC at the time of purchase, and saving one development or media person 30 minutes a day pays for itself pretty quick even when the CPU cost $800 more.

That's a completely different scenario. Overclocked systems should never be considered stable enough to run in a production environment. We're talking about enthusiasts though.

 

[Vermillion]

Why did you omit the QX9650?

The whole point is that the extreme chips use a different pricing scheme. If you want a stock chip at 3 GHz, you can buy either the Q9650 or QX9650. If you buy a Q9450 and overclock it to 3 GHz, how much did you "save?"

You can't put a dollar value on how much you "save" by overclocking. All you can say is that you saved some amount of money by overclocking your chip. Product pricing is not linear, and the higher end chips always cost more than they're worth. The cost increase is disproportional to the performance increase. Just because you got a 333 MHz overclock does not mean you saved $235.

You definitely saved money by overclocking a cheaper chip, but there is no dollar value on that overclock. You did not save $1000 by overclocking your chip, but you did save some amount of money by not buying a more expensive chip. The thing is, you would have never spent that extra $1000 anyway, so how much $$$ you actually "save" is a moot point when talking about the advantages of overclocking.

Omitting QX9650 was an oversight on my part as I was just grabbing a few fast numbers and comparing them to my current overclocked chip. But for reference the QX9650 is $1000 over at Newegg.

And I don't see why I can't put a dollar value on how much I saved especially in reference to this threads original topic. The OP wanted to know why people overclock instead of spending the money on that faster clocked CPU. In the end many do it because it saves them money.

I overclocked my Q9450 from 2.66GHz to 3.2GHz with doing nothing but increasing my FSB to 400. Quick, simple, and painless. So I get the performance of a $1,460 CPU for $379 and I can go beyond that performance if I choose to overclock some more. How is that not saving money?

Money wasn't an issue for me when I purchased my computer. I could have easily purchased that QX9770 and I wouldn't have batted an eye but I decided against it because I knew that I would be able to save money by overclocking a lower costing CPU.

Oh and the savings over a Q9650 was stated in my earlier post:

Zalman and Q9450 vs. Q9650 = savings of $181 and more performance thanks to the light overclock.

So even if I only overclocked it to 3.0GHz making it the same as a Q9650 I would still have an extra $181 in my pocket. Hmmm...extra money in my pocket. Sure sounds like I saved money if I have extra money versus the guy who bought the Q9650 and didn't overclock.

-V

 

[lol_wut]

I never said you don't save money. Read my post again. The whole premise of your argument is that overclocking saves you money, and I agree with you. Why do you think I overclock?

 

[Riccochet]

Comparing computers and cars is downright silly. And so is putting $100k into a *laughs* Honda. You could have at least picked a cool car, like a Geo Metro.

I don't need to buy upgrades to make my CPU go faster. There aren't any good turbo kits for my Q6600 anyways and slapping a nasty Eaton twin-roots on my northbridge won't solve a thing.

To the OP, lay off the crack and find another forum. You opened the wrong can of worms around here.

 

[lol_wut]

I don't need to buy upgrades to make my CPU go faster.

The argument was actually how you need to make a bigger initial investment in order to pave the road for overclocking, which is undeniably true. You're not buying a cheap system first, and then adding things to it. To start off, you at least need a motherboard that can handle overclocks. You're not going to be overclocking on a $60 G31 motherboard.

The thing is, the initial premium for overclocking is smaller than the premium for faster stock components, so it's very much worth it in the end of the day.

 

[vietchuot]

ok, thanks for the all the replys. some of you guys gave pretty good answers, while some wasn't too nice. i am not trying to start anything, i am genuinely interested in knowing if it is truly worth the extra money and effort to OC.

for some of you guys whom don't seem to get my car analogy -
why would you buy one of these:
[img=http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/15b355c9f1.jpg]

and spend insane amounts of $ to make it into this:

when for the same amount of $ will get you this:

because that is what i see with OCing.


For Example
fry's have a combo sale:
Q6600 + ECS MB = $180
but, you can't OC with ECS very well, so you go out to buy an asus = $120 + aftermarket cooling = $30
regular RAM = $50, but need OCing RAM = $80
and then probably an extra fan or 2 = $15

and the results of OC will get you something like this:

and this:

and this:

it hardly seems worth it to void the warranty of your expensive computer components so you can gain 1 or 2 fps out of 20, 40, and 60.

all the while, manufacturers state they will not honor their warranty if you use their products in the manner not designed to be used, i.e. OCing. yet, they make components that gives you the option, and you do it at your own risk.

no one really knows how often components fail when OCing. but if we bought the same components from the same places, i can say mine fails more than it should just from regular use.

let me repeat a couple things, i am not against OCing, nor am i for it. i am just very curious in its benefits, and whether or not it is worth my effort. and thanks for all your point of views.

p.s. hydrobudz, take it easy. go out and meet some women.

 

[lol_wut]

Those are very old benchmarks, especially Company of Heroes DX10 which is just a badly patched DX10 title.

Overclocking does get you very noticeable performance gains, and not everything is about gaming. Most games don't benefit too much from overclocking your CPU if you run them at high graphic settings. Only games that are very CPU-limited will benefit, such as Team Fortress 2 and Supreme Commander (your Supreme Commander benchmark is flawed). If you do video encoding, CAD work, compiling or any other CPU-limited task, then every little bit of CPU horsepower counts.

A faster CPU will also make the whole system that much more responsive. This isn't a big incentive to overclocking unless you start with a VERY low end CPU. This doesn't apply to people with Q6600s and Q9450s. Back when Core 2 first came out, overclocking an E6300 to over 3 GHz was a huge performance boost in all facets of computing. Then there were people overclocking the E2000-series and E4000-series, and now there are people looking to overclock the E5200 when it comes out. There's a very large crowd of people out there who spend under $100 on a CPU and overclock the crap out of it, ending up with a very fast CPU for very little money.

I was one of those E6300 overclockers. The E6300 was an amazing chip. Mine can run 3.2 GHz undervolted. Switching to an X6800 was a new experience for me since I had to actually increase the voltage instead of decreasing it.

 

[Shambler]

The Caymen S isn't that spectacular, and isn't worth 100k.

Civic + 100k vs. 911 Turbo would be a better comparo.


And I love how you chose benchmarks with a 2900xt lol!

 

[BinarySynapse]

The argument was actually how you need to make a bigger initial investment in order to pave the road for overclocking, which is undeniably true. You're not buying a cheap system first, and then adding things to it. To start off, you at least need a motherboard that can handle overclocks. You're not going to be overclocking on a $60 G31 motherboard.

The thing is, the initial premium for overclocking is smaller than the premium for faster stock components, so it's very much worth it in the end of the day.

Maybe not a $60 G31 board, but a $80 P35-DS3L will overclock nicely. Actually I've got an MSI G31 board that I need to see how well it OC's... hmm.

But overclocking the FSB isn't the only way. I've got a system that is FSB locked, the clock generator doesn't even allow you input anything other than 200 266 and 333, so I can't even use something like SetFSB. However,I fooled the motherboard into thinking my Q6600 was a 1333FSB part to get me 3.0GHz by covering up one of the CPU's pads. So I got a complete 3GHz quad-core system for $550.That includes a 500GB hard drive, 3GB of RAM and a 8500GT (most of which I've upgraded).