Overclocking over rated?

[Hurin]

Anyone who thinks overclocking a chip to the same speed as a comparative faster brother (IE, same cache)... Doesn't deserve an opinion, or a chance to use the English language.

Purple monkey. Dishwasher.

 

[Susquehannock]

I don't like locked multipliers. I don't like them at all.

I have had nothing but bad luck running chipset bus past spec. Back when you could put a celeron meant for 66mhz bus on a board meant to run 100mhz bus chips... that was different as you weren't running any chipset out of spec.

These days, to get a good overclock... you have to run the chipset over 50% or more out of spec... easy... and RAM of course... on an intel system using a divider takes a serious performance hit.

I don't know... I know there are alot of people pushing their core2 systems to the max... but I know there are alot of people with unstable core2 systems out there that crash and crash without obvious reason.

Ever since the kt133... that little via bastard that you had to make peace with to run a k6... ever since then I have considered the chipset quality just as important as the CPU or ram. I don't want to run it past spec if I do not have to... but fucking unlocked chips are so expensive!

grumble grumble.

Agreement here.

In my humble opinion the apex of OCing was about 3 years ago when these AMD Athlon "low volt" T-bred B came out. The multiplier was still unlocked, and the nForce2 board which were popular at the time, made it easy to OC them to incredible speeds. >100% was not out of the ordinary. Plus the nForce2 has no divider, so could run in asyncronous mode thus allowing you to Overclock the piss out of the FSB without affecting the AGP and PCI card frequencies.

Now don't get me wrong, today's systems are much faster. But to the true Overclocker it's all about overall gain in speed. And in that regard we do not see near the numbers we saw three years or so ago.

 

[Susquehannock]

Anyone who thinks overclocking a chip to the same speed as a comparative faster brother (IE, same cache)... Doesn't deserve an opinion, or a chance to use the English language.

People that don't know anything, shouldn't say anything, and should go to hell.

Huh? That doesn't even make sense. Unless I misunderstand what you are trying to say. Which I doubt.

Mhz is Mhz. My OCed 1800+ gets almost identical benchmark scores as a 3200+ at the same multiplier and FSB settings. The advantage of the larger Barton cache over the T-breds was highly overstated.

And lets not forget the money saved by OCing a lesser chip. My 1800 cost $52 where the top Athlon was well over $200 at the time.

 

[krotch]

And in that regard we do not see near the numbers we saw three years or so ago.

Huh? So C2D's overclocked at over 100% isn't good?

 

[Aelfgeft]

I remember talking with a friend to a guy in a computer store, who was responding to our discussion of overclocking with "I don't do it because it doesn't have any effect". This was years ago, back in the days of the Coppermines and early T-Birds. It was BS then, and it is now. Hell, at that time my friend got a Duron 700 to 1.4GHz!

 

[Dan_D]

Now don't get me wrong, today's systems are much faster. But to the true Overclocker it's all about overall gain in speed. And in that regard we do not see near the numbers we saw three years or so ago.

Wait a minute. So a Core 2 Duo E6300 @ 3.51GHz isn't good? That's damn near a 90% increase. Show me a processor from 3 or 4 years ago that does that. Even the Pentium 2.4C wasn't capable (generally speaking) of reaching a 90% overclock. I can't think of any CPUs from that time that did better than the 2.4C did either.

The mighty Celeron 300A never reached a 90% overclock either. 450MHz was a 50% increase. So tell me, where do these magic figures come from?

 

[zg75]

Ahh the mighty 300a... /sigh... I built half a dozen boxes based around that for friends and they all ran at 450 for years. It was a beautiful thing Can't wait to rebuild w/c2d stuff and see what I can wring out of an e6300. Yum!

 

[Yashu]

I used to remember all the different pin masking combinations for what voltages, and I had to remember the dipswitch settings for the motherboard. haha... I used to ENVY the people that had bios overclocking. The 300A was really how I got into overclocking. Before that, "stock" was all I knew...

The core2 overclocking looks good... I don't know enough about intel busses and DDR2 though. I would want to be able to get a good overclock but with nice even numbers all around... and I would want a very solid chipset... hopefully an intel chipset.

For now, I am happy with my X2... and I get my overclocking kicks from an XPm barton system I am always fiddling with.

 

[Furystrike]

please let this thread die

 

[Yashu]

*stabs and bludgeons the thread*

 

[Susquehannock]

Hmmmm, I see a couple of my opinions were quoted out of context. Not all that unusual sadly.

Not going to say anything more.

 

[sumofatguy]

I don't see how they were quoted out of context..

 

[revenant]

Ahh the mighty 300a... /sigh... I built half a dozen boxes based around that for friends and they all ran at 450 for years. It was a beautiful thing Can't wait to rebuild w/c2d stuff and see what I can wring out of an e6300. Yum!

Don't forget the Abit BH6... that was the golden combo... celery 300a + Abit BH6 = celery 450... or 464 with "tubo mode" on.. but these c2d's do even more than the 300a.. many of them hit 90 and 100% OCs... which is amazing.. I personally feel the c2d has gotten me very exicted about OCing again.. well, that and the fairly recent but now pretty much faded opterOWN fad.. anyways.. I'm hoping for equally good turn outs from core 2 quads.. whew. bring on the quads!!!!!!

So I think OCing is very much alive and well.. probably more healthy than ever..

and the techi from the OPs post is just an uninformed jackass if he thinks it's overrated.. yeah, 900mhz extra OC on my cpu with -no- vcore adjustment is just silly to use.. yeah sure. lol. Actually my E6600 reminds me a lot of mu 300a.. I've got about the same % OC on it as my celeron.. I used the shit out of that celery also.. that was a great machine.. with the velocity 4400 agp.. whew.


edit: ok, now let the thread die.. someone invoke Godwin.. please!

 

[Ghostwind]

From my experience getting back into building my own computers after very frustrating experiences with proprietary pre-fab computers, I must say that the salesman is full of BS.

At least around here, I find the people at both small local computer stores and people at big stores like CompUsa and Fry's to be salesman that want to sell you the most expensive/product they get most commission on. Of course there are exceptions but I have found consumer forums like this place, extremesystems, hardwarecentral, laptopvideo2go, and more to be much more helpful and informative than just about any store clerk.

There are very real performance games from
a) buying smart and getting the best product for the money
b) overclocking to optimize your gear (which if you purchase smart is very safe)

I, for one, am very happy I ignored the salesman at computer stores and purchased the products that I had researched would perform well.

 

[zg75]

BH6 was what I used for the 300a celery builds. I also had a bp-6 later for dually action. Oops, I mean - DIE THREAD DIE!!!

Don't forget the Abit BH6... that was the golden combo... celery 300a + Abit BH6 = celery 450... or 464 with "tubo mode" on..