Why do you Overclock??!

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DarkNight

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Well, when I saw Switch overclocking his PC I was like "Why the hell?" His games were running well, his disp. card is good.

MODs : If this is the wrong place for this then please move it to the right place.

I see a lot of you guys overclocking your new Optis and I wonder why. What is AMD trying to pull here. They have a leg in the single processor arena in the form of the A64. Whats with the logic of the 144 etc? Is it something similar to Intels launch of the Celeron 266 etc. I am sure that some of you guys will remember that these were basically PII with half their cache gone and a castrated FSB. Intel was trying to push chips that had failed to make the cut. Is AMD trying to push the same kind of crap here?....Possibly a batch of FX's that went sour?

Getting back to the topic. Why overclock? Standard answer would be something like "because we can", "Bragging rights".... How so..??:S

Also would appreciate some input on how to overclock my 3200 Venice. :D
 
For me, its because I like playing with my comp. I spent three years with my old pc, trying out all kinds of things on the software side. But I get bored quite easily. I'm not even into gaming much. Basically I like tweaking stuff. So, overclocking is my latest hobby.
I'm sure I'll get bored of this too after some time. But hopefully, by then I'll have enough money to buy a LCD or plasma display ( or better still, a projector). Then, I'll move on to HTPC. :ohyeah:
 
Primarily for knowledge and more primarily for money or rather value for money.:ohyeah:

1) knowledge: overclocking is the first phase of getting to know ur m/c and pc architecture in general.
if it was not for o/c about 99.99% of users will never know about the components used inside their pc and their functioning.
They would be busy doing their daily routine work or fragging away to glory, and regularly paying exhorbitant amounts to that so called " Computer Engineer" to just clean the pc from inside or at the most run chkdsk/f or defragmentation program.:no:
o/cing ignites that fire within you to Learn and tinker , it satisfies that inner desire in everybody about "how can i improve this POS" (This desire is present in everybody not only w.r.t pc hardware but m/c's, toys, cars, mobikes etc... in general, and as one wag put it, tinkering with their respective spouses/lovers too......;) ).

Because only if you know the functioning of a part only then you can improve upon it.

for e.g. take the members here .... during their o/c process most of them have understood that the two most important component in a pc (often overlooked) is the psu and the quality of rams. now nobody can "con" them by selling them a cheap psu since through expirience they have understood the value of it.
also many members here have understood that for gaming it is not the speed of the cpu which is important :hap5: but the graphics card which determines the gameplay and the overall playing expirience.

They have realised that a faster and costlier pc "WILL NOT" improve / increase their internet download speeds since that is dependent upon the speed of the isp connection and not on the processing power of the cpu or graphic card. :huh:
( The Amount of m/c's sold in recent times giving "This" reason is astonishing ...)

They have realised the harmful effects of Heat and Dust on their m/c's and the effort that they take to improve the airflow inside the case is mind-blowing ...:cool2:

These and many other points had lead the o/cer's to have a better perspective of their m/c's and technology in general, which aids them in taking better judgements in future purchases.

o/c is a state of mind. just like happiness, sadness, depression, exhuberance ....etc. it is a way of living.

It brings out that very basic instinct (not that sharon stone thriller ...) in humans to constantly improve upon existing things and Change. Change for the better or worse that only time will tell.O/C'ing is NOT about increasing the "RAW SPEED" of the m/c only. although that is the ultimate goal, it is about how to achieve that by utilising the meagre resources and learning about the process during the journey.

It is very similar to Religion. All religion universally proclaim that there is God (or a superior entity) and that we should do good deeds in life so that after death, we may land up in Heaven, else or otherwise( i.e. if you are a bad boy) you may land up being a member of TE here .....:rofl:
some religion advocate the practise of Sadhna, some prayers / pooja, some meditation and yoga, some tantric dances etc.... to achieve this state of Nirvana. o/c'ing is one of such practise.

2) Money: well this is self explanatory:) . i need not elaborate on it. everybody likes to get a good deal at the lowest cost possible (there are exceptions to this rule, especially the "poor" amongst the TE members here ...:rofl: )
Also i have seen that hardcore oc'ers are very efficient people. They make maximum use of the resources at their disposal and waste precious little.
 
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As DJ said above,value for money.
I buy cheap CPU and OC it to attain performance of a much better and expensive CPU...
 
^^^ cheap CPU??? Where??? lol, Darky.... good one. But yes I kinda agree with Dj & Darky, getting better performace thru overclocking your components all within your limited Budget.
 
Ok, not every1 overclocks "Just because they can" or for "braggin rights".

People buy opti's to overclock, because of the Low Temperatures at high voltages. Performance wise it makes a great difference if you overclock by say 500 Mhz.

For me, i HAVE to overclock, rather than WANT to.

If i put everything down to Stock, i get 50-70 FPS Max. in CSS, with drops t o 30.

If i push it up to the OC, you can see in my Sig, i get 150 FPS, with drops to 50 - 60.
 
My thumbs up for all the points above but one...

I am not very sure of the VFM worthiness of OCing....Esp after Intel and AMD locked the up multipliers on all but few of their CPUs

There is only so much you can achieve by tweaking around with the HTT/FSB speeds and even to get that 15-20% increase in the CPU clock (Not necessarily a 15-20% jump in performance), you need to spend a pretty packet extra on the RAM and the PSU and a enthusiast mobo (At stock, regilar loose timing Hynix RAMs and iBall/Zebronics PSUs would have sufficed) and not to forget exotic cooling solutions

so my question is that instead of paying the extra for high-end PSU RAM, Mobo and of course extra cooling solutions, why not go ahead with the regular non OC worthy peripherals, and spend the extra money on buying a faster CPU in the 1st place?

Before getting flamed, a reminder that the above is meant more as a question rather than an attempt to refute others POV.

After all, for OCing say a I must digress on one point
 
Darknight... The fact of the matter is that Overclocking is an Art... Its a cheap thrill... Cheap i say cause you are not risking your life(Xtreme Sports) but you are risking PC parts...

I completely agree with what all Dj has said... And as for what superczar said... People dont buy high end mobo to overclock.. They buy it primarily to run thier system stable... Generic PSU's are cheap and supply poor voltages to the syetem which in long run can damage the system... A good PSU on the other helps you in getting stable temps and thus making system parts life longer...
 
eneric PSU's are cheap and supply poor voltages to the syetem which in long run can damage the system... A good PSU on the other helps you in getting stable temps and thus making system parts life longer...
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But wouldn't the typical upgrade cycle for a OCer (Or even a non OCing enthusiast) be at max not more than 2 years?
Why bother too much abt the components life then?

What I meant was the cheap Mercury 810 mobo and the cheap OEM PIII (with a self fixed fan) on my 1st self assembled PC running on a even lower quality PSU is still doing duty as my Mom's browsing PC back home in Bihar while braving poor quality and fluctuating input voltages...and it's been over 5 years :huh: :D
 
superczar said:
But wouldn't the typical upgrade cycle for a OCer (Or even a non OCing enthusiast) be at max not more than 2 years?
Why bother too much abt the components life then?

What I meant was the cheap Mercury 810 mobo and the cheap OEM PIII (with a self fixed fan) on my 1st self assembled PC running on a even lower quality PSU is still doing duty as my Mom's browsing PC back home in Bihar while braving poor quality and fluctuating input voltages...and it's been over 5 years :huh: :D
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SuperCzar... Yes you are right but then again... i am talking about gamers here... With high end cards... Look at the failure rate of cards with ppl having good PSU's vs ppl Having bad PSU's...

Also i never bought parts to overclock... I have very recently started overclocking... Abt 10 days back... But still i was always interested in good parts... Cause quality for me matters.... But then again... I am who i am :ohyeah:
 
ummm...yeah...

Anyway, all this f$%t that i just doled out was just to placate my lazy self as I have been procrastinating a PSU purchase for ~1 month now.... :ohyeah:
 
superczar said:
so my question is that instead of paying the extra for high-end PSU RAM, Mobo and of course extra cooling solutions, why not go ahead with the regular non OC worthy peripherals, and spend the extra money on buying a faster CPU in the 1st place?
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A very good point ! :D

- To be honest, most mid level to high-end rigs these days even at stock suffer from inadequate power. You yourself have experienced the 12v line dropping very low on your new upgraded PC ;) . People have blown their PSU's just by using a mid-range graphics card like the 6600GT or will find the card downclocking its speeds on account of insufficient power from the PSU.

- Lets try a comparison.

Basic no-overclocking config: Asus A8V-MX for 3.7K. An A64 3000+ for 6K. TwinMos RAM for 4.5K a gig. Generic PSU for 500 bucks. Stock Cooling.

Budget Overclocking rig : Asus A8N-E for 5.7K. A64 3000+ for 6K. TwinMos RAM for 4.5K a gig. Powersafe 400W PSU for 1.5K. Stock Cooling.

There is a difference of about 3K between the two. That would fetch you say a 3200+ , or lets be very optimistic and say even an A64 3500+. The speed of the higher-up CPU would be 400Mhz more. A difference the 3000+ can easily make up and more. Stock cooling is quite sufficient for speeds up to ~ 2.5Ghz and 2.5Ghz is a figure easily attainable by almost all Venice's which corresponds to a greater than 3800+ rating (the 3800+ i would guesstimate to cost around ~ 15K? ).

How about a slightly higher-end Overclocking rig:

DFI Lanparty UT nF4 Ultra-D for ~ 9K, Opteron 144 for ~ 8K, OCZ EL Plat 3200+'s for say 9K, Antec TruePower 2.0 550W for ~ 8K, Thermalright XP-90 ~ 3K. There's a difference of almost 22K between these two rigs. And most of the good Opterons have been hitting speeds of 2.6 ~ 2.8Ghz pretty easy which is equivalent to the FX chips that sell for 50~60K !

And lets be realistic, slapping an FX chip onto a budget rig with a generic PSU would leave it literally gasping for breath at stock !

So which side do you save money is upto you ;)

- As Deejay very rightly mentioned, the knowledge factor is something that not even the most expensive FX can get you .. o/cing is not only about extracting performance but rather getting down and dirty with your system and better understanding the intricacies of PC hardware ! And that alone is worth the whole experience :)
 
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There is simple answer to all the questions regarding overclocking.

When you can have something better with minimum expense then why not??

Modern day budget and mainstream processors can be a bottleneck in many situations. There are games that require powerful CPU. Even stock speed 3000+ and 3200+ can be brought to its knees in many games even if you have something like 7800GT or GTX.

Now clock the same processot to anything above 2.5Ghz and everything will be smooth as butter.

Then there are day to day productivity work. There is encoding and decoding over audio/video where faster is always better. no end to how fast you can get in these areas. Faster is always better for these applications. I can encode many xvids and divx from my DVDs in less than an hours with high quality encoding. Same thing will take more than 90 minutes at stock speed.

So thats remarkable and noticible difference.

Same goes to 3D rendering. More is always better.

Now lets see. We have Opterons and SD which can clock and perform like FX55 or 57. The FX-57 costs near 55-60K.

I cannot afford that. If i had that much money sure i will buy FX 57. But even then i wont keep FX-57 at stock. because it can go more, so i will always want to get max out of what i own.

The expense on quality PSU and good HSF is minimal compared to benifits you get out of those components.

superczar said:
But wouldn't the typical upgrade cycle for a OCer (Or even a non OCing enthusiast) be at max not more than 2 years?

Why bother too much abt the components life then?

What I meant was the cheap Mercury 810 mobo and the cheap OEM PIII (with a self fixed fan) on my 1st self assembled PC running on a even lower quality PSU is still doing duty as my Mom's browsing PC back home in Bihar while braving poor quality and fluctuating input voltages...and it's been over 5 years :huh: :D
Click to expand...

In those days components were nowhere as power hungry and demanding as they are now, and fluctuations in voltages can damage critical components in matter of weeks. Specially our HDDs which contain data are critical and prone to damage due to these ups and downs in voltages. And data on my HDD is more important to me than its life cycle.
 
^^ I'll agree with Funky and all the guys above..:D You get much more VFM on an overclocked PC.

And then there is that thrill of adrenaline of seeing your proccy read 3 Ghz instead of 1.8 :bleh:

As for Switch, I whole-heartedly take the blame for spoiling him into an overclocker :ohyeah:
 
^^ Lol.

Ok, few things.

We do not necessarily go for awesome parts over el-cheapo parts.

My RAM was purchased for 100 Dollars, and its down 667 Mhz, instead of 533.

I was very impressed. No to mention at Stock Volts.

Expensive RAM = More Bandwidth too, Faster speeds at tighter timings. Which cheap RAM would do.

As for a powersuppy. My VIP 350W is handling my entire system very well.

Even on full load on RTHDRIBL, it gives 12.02V on the 12V Rail. The PSU is worth from 500 Rs. :).

Although, i am about to buy a TP2 450 / 550.
 
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