Overclocking: sense or nonsense?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark
  • Start date Start date
M

Mark

Why do people overclock their systems when a CPU hardly ever runs at
maximum clock frequency? My E6600's core speed is usually 1600 MHz
instead of the maximum of 2400 MHz. So why bother with overclcoking?
Just wondering.

Mark
 
Mark said:
Why do people overclock their systems when a CPU hardly ever runs at
maximum clock frequency? My E6600's core speed is usually 1600 MHz
instead of the maximum of 2400 MHz. So why bother with overclcoking?
Just wondering.
Click to expand...

Hello

Some people do that as a "sport". If the CPU "could" be overclocked, it have
to be overclocked - just for the reason, because it "could" be overclocked.

The next fact is the benchmark point. "My CPU is faster than Yours" -
analogue to car motors.
If somebody gets 200 horsepowers out of his engine, there is another guy
somewhere who tries to get out 205 horsepowers. If the raise of power could
be recognized or not - thats not important. Important is the result of the
test block in the test room to show a buddy the victory of 5 more
horsepowers.

In some cases there could be a little sense in overclocking - if You plan to
replace Your system soon and want to get the maximum power for a 3D-game per
example.
If the CPU or the board is damaged, You will replace it with a bigger one.
So no matter if it is broken. I for myself would sell the old system to get
a little amount of money and then buy a bigger one.

But there is not the fun of reaching higher levels of power with the old
system.


Greetings
Carsten
 
Carsten said:
Hello

Some people do that as a "sport". If the CPU "could" be
overclocked,
it have to be overclocked - just for the reason, because it
"could"
be overclocked.
The next fact is the benchmark point. "My CPU is faster than
Yours" -
analogue to car motors.
If somebody gets 200 horsepowers out of his engine, there is
another
guy somewhere who tries to get out 205 horsepowers. If the
raise of
power could be recognized or not - thats not important.
Important is
the result of the test block in the test room to show a buddy
the
victory of 5 more horsepowers.

In some cases there could be a little sense in overclocking -
if You
plan to replace Your system soon and want to get the maximum
power
for a 3D-game per example.
If the CPU or the board is damaged, You will replace it with a
bigger
one. So no matter if it is broken. I for myself would sell the
old
system to get a little amount of money and then buy a bigger
one.

But there is not the fun of reaching higher levels of power
with the
old system.
Click to expand...
I agree with that. The first time I overclocked my computer, it
was a 200 MHz Pentium. When I made it run at 266 MHz, it made a
very noticeable difference in performance for games and video
playback. But that was only part of the reason. The other part
was the satisfaction of making something perform better than the
manufacturer intended.

My last overclock was with a PIII 450 MHz o/c to 550 MHz. By that
time I already had a 1 GHz machine and would have pushed the
older machines even higher if the motherboards had provision to
do so, not really caring if the old CPUs got fried. I did
improvise an additional heatsink out of aluminium sheet for the
onboard voltage regulator of the P1 which heated up much more
than the CPU. It was fun.

Nowadays, having been on the mellower side of 50 for several
years, I no longer play demanding games. Modern CPUs give me more
computing power than I really need and I don't bother with
overclocking. OTOH, I still upgrade now and then just to keep up
with the times. I've just finished assembling an AMD Phenom II x4
920 with 4 gigs of RAM and a 1TB HDD. Go figure. :).
 
Hello Mark... I consider it totally nonsense.

I would never break my system (because sooner or later an overclocked
system will break) just because I want a couple of more frames in a
videogame.

The suggested factory clock frequency keeps your system safe and let
you use the CPU for a long time.
Click to expand...

Indeed it does - even in summer with no air conditioning.

Thus, for the rest of the year you can safely raise the clock speed and still
not overheat anything. And if you like to have your AC on in summer . . .

*Careful* overclocking can let you to boost the performance of your PC *without*
risking much.

I've had a Celeron 1.6Ghz running at 1.9GHz for over a year with stock cooling,
and the CPU temps don't go over 55C.
 
kony said:
.... snip ...

Lastly, since an overclocked system is faster, it remains
viable for longer into the future. Take a system a few
years old running an Athlon XP @ 1.6GHz for example, with an
ample amount of memory and HDD it's still fairly sluggish
running Vista. Up the CPU to 2.2GHz or so and the
improvement is noticed.
Click to expand...

However any overclocking is always giving up safety margins. When
communicating with some peripheral that originally worked, you may
now occasionally miss a bit, for example.

As you may conclude, I am opposed to overclocking.
 
CBFalconer said:
kony wrote:
... snip ...

However any overclocking is always giving up safety margins. When
communicating with some peripheral that originally worked, you may
now occasionally miss a bit, for example.

As you may conclude, I am opposed to overclocking.
Click to expand...
One thing I learned a long time ago, that each 6 degree Celcius
temperature increase halves the predicted lifetime of silicon.
So by overclocking a cpu, parts of the chip will have a shorter
live, even when the general temperature stays the same by
better cooling.
 
Somewhere said:
Hello Mark... I consider it totally nonsense.
Click to expand...

I consider my girlfriend to be the most beautiful woman in the world.
I would never break my system (because sooner or later an overclocked
system will break) just because I want a couple of more frames in a
videogame.
Click to expand...

That is just plain wrong. Why answer a question if you have no knowledge of
the subject at hand? Just to see a reply of yours?

I've been overclocking my systems since I got my Pentium 90MHz to run at
120MHz. Since then *every* system I've owned that could be overclocked has
been overclocked. Some by 50% or more. Guess what? Not *ONE* system "broke".

Then again, overclocking used to be quite complicated, you really needed
your wits about you to get it right so I can understand why you say what you
do.

These days it's simple. With my E7300 (for instance) I just went into BIOS,
changed the FSB from 266MHz to 333MHz and now the CPU runs at 3.3GHz instead
of 2.6GHz. No drama, no voltage or heat increase, it just works at the speed
of a CPU that would have cost me twice as much to buy.
The suggested factory clock frequency keeps your system safe and let
you use the CPU for a long time.
Click to expand...

I bet you never turn your stereo up above 5/10 as well.....
 
kony said:
Overclocking only "breaks" something when you do it beyond
your capability or ability to recognize a problem and reduce
the speed to an acceptible overclocked level.

Like many things in life, only those who know how should do
more than basic things. Failures result from insufficent
knowledge of what equipment is capable of long term, and how
to determine a stability level appropriate for the system.
There isn't actually a 100% guarantee a system at stock
speed is 100% stable either, any system should undergo the
stability tests an overclocked one must pass.




Most of my systems have been overclocked. The CPUs have
lasted for a long time, in perfect working order when the
systems were retired. There are a lot of myths about
overclocking that aren't really true, a CPU will tend to
fail from extremely excessive overclocking but more likely
something else happened like installation error in getting
the heatsink mounted properly, long term use with a failed
fan, or a motherboard's VRM capacitors failing due to user
error in having inadequate case cooling or manufacturer
error of selecting poor quality and/or defective capacitors.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my old AMD64 system has been running 24 X 7 for years now. Can't
remember how many years but it has been going since an AMD64 was the newest
hottest processor around. The overclock is only around 15% IIRC but it has
been running with increased core and memory voltages since new. The only
actual problem with the system has been the DVD burner and a squeaking
120mm case fan. If one is careful there is no reason a reasonably
overclocked system can't be reliable and long-lived.
 
Back
Top