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What limits OCing?

N

NeoNemesis

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 10, 2004
Messages
2,467
I'm more or less a complete newb to overclocking and such and was wondering what the limiting factors are for overclocking. For instance, hypothetically, if heat wasn't an issue, then what would prevent you from increasing the speed of your cpu?
 
Obviously, its well established that heat is a limiting factor, but that wasn't the question, the question was if heat WASN'T an issue, what would limit overclocking.
 
You can eliminate heat for the most part with something like dry ice, but at a certain point physical limitations within the gates of the chip cap the clock speed at which it can operate without error...IE the architecture.
 
Guess they are totally missing the whole point here.

Without the issue of heat, there are a few things.

And throwing out any limitation of motherboards, ram and whatever else and just talk about the cpu overclocking.

Voltage
Architecture
How well the chip was made.

Depending on the chip (architecture) voltage applied will help up to different points. Where in the transistors in the chip will simply fry or will not be able to handle the extra voltage and will have a so to speak leaking of current higher then allowed and cause extreme errors.

Every chip made has errors in how they are actually made with the litography and layering of the metals to form it completely. Errors can range from an itsy piece of dust that only microscopes can see or a part of the metal trace was etched to far, or just plain impurities in any of the materials used.

So, a chip with less errors in them will perform better then one that has more. Hence the usual speed grading of the same exact chip.

With this in mind that basically no chip is ever perfect in how it was originally designed, remember that every chip is different and will have different capabilities.
 
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