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Overclockers "Stick it to the man" 123

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-ti-read dept.
i0n writes "The Chicago Tribune has an interesting article about overclocking that talks of how gamers overclock their machines not only to save money, but out of spite towards the processor industry. "
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Overclockers "Stick it to the man"

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  • Real PII's also have more cache than Celerons.

    Also, the cache on Real P-II's only runs at half the CPU speed (200 Mhz on a 400 Mhz P-II), while on a Celeron, the cache is full speed.

    You'd be amazed at how much the speed offsets the size.

    You're certainly correct about the bottlenecks.

  • I went to a local mom-and-pop shop (lots of those in the Bay Area) and got two PPGA 300A's in the same day--they didn't have them in stock, but they got them for me before the close of the business day. Price was $69 each. Not too hard to track down, and not too pricey. Both overclocked fine, the only juju required was some heatsink compound.
  • >> Game developer that's overclocking?
    >> Pretty dumb I would say

    Why so, if it runs on my overclocked CPU, then a "normal" CPU should be no problem...

    As a (non-games) developer I run loads of Beta OS code etc.
    I test under a "normal" platform too, but I find it less frustrating to develop under a less tolerant environment (debugging kernels, heap libraries etc. anyone) and test under a more tolerant env. than vice versa.

    YMMV

    Tim

  • Overclocking is not that new (Score:3)

    by bunyip ( 17018 ) on Tuesday June 01, 1999 @03:38AM (#1872924)
    What's all this hype about overclocking? Does anyone else out there remember pushing a Z80 up to 4 or even 6 Mhz? We did it because we could. It's no different than a hot rodder who squeezes an extra few horsepower from a car. We don't want bland gray boxes running generic software from a mega-corporation. The hot rodder doesn't want an anemic Chevy Nova.

  • Re:some people just have it all wrong... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually, I did just that. Bought an ABIT BH6 and a Celeron 300a, and first thing I did right out of the box was run it at 450Mhz. Works flawlessly only bumping the voltage up to 2.05V. ;-) And I bought this combination exactly for the reason of overclocking. For the price of a PII-450, I could manage to buy, at the time, 3 of these motherboard/Celeron combinations. Or, buy the motherboard and 5 (or more) Celeron processors and get the same basic performance.

    Basically, it was a huge win/win situation, and I took full advantage of it.

  • Re:Sticking it to the man? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's not quite the same as hotrodding your car. Hotrodders at least have *some* support from auto makers (Toyota Racing Development, MOPAR, etc). It's not the same as going to the dealer, and you still shoulder all responsibility, but you can still get info, parts, etc.

    Chris
    mtnbkr@mindspring.com
  • Well, a third graphics card does make your graphics look better if you're running a Voodoo 2 SLI setup, the 2nd Voodoo board lets you run at 1024x768, which looks better to me, so I suppose it could be a correct statement.

  • But if you start with a Merlin Block (ie a C300A) and bore it out to 638ci (ie 500-800MHz) you end up with over 1000hp easily.

    Engine cylinder wall thicknesses are all the same through whole engine families. It's cheaper to have one casting than four. If you change the bore and stroke, you can convert from a small engine to a large one, inside that specific family. I figure processors are the same. Why would they fixture up to make so many different clock speeds? The differences must be minor. Too bad there is no ultrasonic cylinder wall thickness tester for processors!

  • 300As (Score:2)

    by Rizz ( 33500 )
    Correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't 300As becoming *really* hard to track down? I know guys who have received quite a few that just wouldn't overclock no matter how much vodoo and juju or even a sprinkle of mojo.
  • Overclocking a server? Why would you want to do that? O'clocking has a very core audience and they don't use servers (o.k. maybe Quake servers...). It's all about getting just a few more FPS (Frames Per Second for those of you that think computers are for working..) here and there, the difference bewteen dodging that rocket and taking it up the a$$. Most overclockers (in my experience) are those adolescent males that want top-notch power without the cost of buying high-end processors. Stability and longevity (you'll have to buy a new one in 18 months anyway) are not issues, it's just about blazing speed. Serious computer gaming requires near constant upgrades as you must stay on the bleeding edge to get the full experience, overclocking allows this at 1/4 the price. The Celery 3A has been a godsend to this niche, and we're really "sticking" it to Intel (this is sarcasm, How do you hurt a company buying it's products? silly reporter)

    Meandering in thought with the guidance of caffeine.....
  • Check out Tom's Hardware Guide (www.tomshardware.com) or www.overclockers.com to find out all you need to know.

  • Your analogy is a good one, if someone is overclocking a Pentium. But why would someone buy a Celeron to overclock it when they can get a Pentium at the same speed?

    $$$$ Intel charges what?, x2, x3 (depending on how old they are)as much for a Pentium because it is considered top of the line, it carries the brand-name.

    With Celerons performing so well it makes you wonder why the Pentiums are so much more expensive (I know they don't have the same feature, just overall). So not only are you saving money (short term) by overclocking, your avoiding what looks like a nice fat premium tacked on by Intel.

    Also, Intel has not been encouraging overclockering, to say the least. If you overclock, you must feel like you're doing something illicit.

    I'm just playing Devil's advocate here, sure most people that overclock are probably doing it for simple, straightforward reasons; save cash, better game play, or just plain geekiness,

    but don't act so shocked, people often feel like they are being taken advantage of by big corp.s and will do some crazy things if it makes them feel like they are getting back a little.

  • Sticking it to the man? (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 01, 1999 @03:18AM (#1872942)
    Why the aggressive/hateful connotation on everything nowdays? This practice is closer to hot-rodders souping up their cars than anyone trying to 'get back' at Intel. Guess what, you can bore out the cylinders on your car and put in new pistons, etc. It was 'designed' this way, just like Intel designed their chips with a little more thickness in the cylinder walls than they really needed, so to speak. My first OC was a 486SX25 that I ran at 40 or 50MHz. Had NOTHING to do with some warped sense of, "Oh, Intel is gonna be sorry now!" and much to do with, "Damn, look at it go now!"
  • it's a 21164A 533MHz part. and it's only clocked to 600MHz.. (remember the :)'s? ), but is very reliable at this speed.

    667MHz should be quite possible with another case fan.

    your question: 700MHz parts are currently shipping i believe from samsung. but they're probably concentrating on 21264 production.

    And to the other people who responded to this post: where is your sense of humour??? Have you ever heard of tongue in cheek? what a bunch of dry-arses... it must be tough living such a sour life, you have my pity.
  • To start off with I have a Dual Pentium II 350Mhz system that is *NOT* Overclocked which I use for my main system running Windows NT Workstation. The reason why it's not my OC'd system is a long story and does not apply here.

    Then come to this cowards defense.......

    1) I would ASSUME most of us who overclock aren't over clocking our servers at work(At lest I don't).

    2) Who cares if you void your warrenty on a $72.00 CPU. I could make that $72.00 up pretty quick working a Micky D's(I got them a few months ago they're *REALLY* cheap now).

    3) I have a dual Celeron 300A system. I got two PPGA's, got the slocket converter, solderd the wiring on it to make it work in dual. I've been running this machine since Late Feb or early March and running rc5 24/7 just for giggles. I also have 5 Cheetah's running in RAID5 with Linux's software RAID. I also use the machine for my home LAN with samba which is my file server for HOME use.

    4) *If* the CPU's fried right now at this instence It would cost me a grand total of $109.00 to replace both CPU's with Intel Celeron 300A's(which probably wont be able to be OC'd to 450Mhz). So I would have a useable dual Celeron 300MHz system for $109.00. Not bad, you include the price I paid for the other two CPU's it comes out to be a grand total of $254.00. Right now at this instance without checking around I can get PII-450's for $265.50/ea so you figure $531 total for both. I'm still at half the price by doing it the "cool" or "cheap" way and I had about 4 months use of a *DUAL* 450MHz system at *HALF* the cost. Now on the flip side I could replace those fried 300A's with Celeron 400's for 95.50/ea which comes out to be $191.00 total. Now add in the price I paid for those 300A's and I come out to be at grand total of $336.00. Still I saved myself $195.00 without buying real PII-450MHz CPU's, I got the speed of 450MHz CPU's for about 4 months. Ok, so I have two fried CPU's and they're replaced with 400's that can't be OC'd(AFAIK). Intel Celeron 400MHz CPU's are slighly slower than what I got, but hey I paid $195.00 less than you did(assuming you have Dual 450's), so nah! nah! :-). *PLUS* That's using prices of 450's *TODAY* not 3 or 4 months ago when I'm sure they cost more than $265.50(~$450.00/ea then?).

    So the point I'm trying making here is, Who *REALLY* gives a flying flip if you fry your Celeron CPU's? So what?! You still spent less than you did if you bought the real deal. Second, who cares if they're unreliable? If it's unreliable don't overclock your CPUs then! It's THAT simple. If your friend needs to run his CPU with the window open and a fan on it, Then so what! It doesn't bother him, he still paid less than the real deal and if he really cared he could just not OC it or go out and buy a real PII-450 provided he has the money.

    Another point I would like to make is that this artical makes one belive that I could go out and buy an Intel Celeron 300A machine at Best Buy do a quick "thingie" and I thus have a 450Mhz machine. I'm willing to bet those machines aren't even OCable or the MB's on them don't OC very well anyway.

    Second this artical makes one belive that I could just go call up my local CPU dealer and get a Celeron 300A do a quick "thingie" and now I have a 450MHz CPU. AFAIK OCable 300A CPU's are hard to find. This artical seems as if though it should have been written 6 or 8 months ago and not now.

    Also I use the term "thingie" because this artical is out of the Chicago Tribune and they make it sound so easy. I say they make it sound so "easy" because the people it seems to be targeting is people who probably have no clue what it looks like inside their computer in the first place. All of us who know how to OC a machine know it's easy, but we knew about OCing since we all had a computer in our home. Plus they make it sound like everyone is doing it out of spite which isn't true.

    Just to make this really long message short, the whole piece sucked and should have never been written in the first place. Its not like anyone with half a clue didn't know how to do this in the first place and anyone who doesn't, shouldn't be OCing in the first place.


    - lakdjfalkdj - Cus all the good nicks were taken!


  • actually
    my 386-16 ran for years in a 25 mhz m-board
    no fan
    no heatsink
    which is pretty equivelent to the 300-450 overclock.

    of course when I posted it to usenet back then a lot less people heard about it then would now which is what I think the main difference is.
  • i agree with an earlier posting, people dont overclock because they dislike their manufacturer. people overclock because they have an old chip, lets say a pentium 166 and they want more processing power so they pump it up a hundred mHz. i dont know many people who would go out and buy a processor then go directly home and overclock it. it just seems like whomever wrote the article made a broad generalization about a few people. the article also mentioned that the life of a processor will be affected by overclocking, which is true, but then again the life of a computer is only a few years now anyway.
  • Precisely, the CD-ROM Drive tray is used as a cup-holder, the CD-ROM itself has many more applications than the drive...

    In addition to a coffee mat (we call them coasters for some reason.) and mirror, in an emergency they can be used as "Deadly Ninja Throwing Discs".


    PS-I overclocked my CD-ROM too, it was a 12x, now benchmarked at 28x
  • Stuff like that makes me proud to be a geek.
  • What the hell is wrong with overclocking?

    I paid for that piece of silicon and if I want to overclock it I will! What's all this rubbish about morals? THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OVERCLOCKING PROVIDED YOU ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONSEQUENCES!!!

  • Re:P60 P100 P150 Go! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you've overclocked the chips you pass on, you may be doing them a disfavor. It's long-term reliablity that is most affected by overclocking, and you could be passing the gear along right before the smoke starts pouring out. This would be most distressing to a newbie, who might then think that all computers crash regularly (and not just Slashdot because it runs Linux).

  • It's my personal act of rebellion! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I overclock just out of spite for the money I spent on my computer. I resent the fact that I part of the money I paid for my processor chip went into testing it's performance at temperature extremes, and that they had the audacity to say that my chip might not be reliable at all conditions. That's just plain disrespect of my CPU chip. And it's my act of rebellion to run it at those speeds. That will show them!

  • Re:Hmm (Score:1)

    by thimo ( 36102 )
    You're talking about Kryotech, aren't you? Well, that's not about overclocking your cheap processor, that's about running next year's processor speeds today. Wouldn't you like to run an Alpha at something like 800 MHz today? :) If you look at it this way, it is worth it to spend the extra $500.
  • Game developer that's overclocking?
    Pretty dumb I would say.

    Next time his code crashes, he will NOT know
    whether it is his bugged code or his
    overclocked machine.
  • hey now...

    some people out here aren't as expierenced as you...yeah, the tone of the article was rather simplistic, but imho that doesn't warrent your remark...I'd love to learn how to overclock a chip...unfortunately, right now I don't have the money or time to...

    Of course, if someone wants to post a howto, I'd be very grateful :-)
  • Actually I remember a program I used on my '286 and '386 that would increase the memory refresh time and boosted the processor speed by 5-10%.

    Mmmm...that brings back memories of rumors of a 486 that would actually run at 100Mhz. Boy were those the days.
  • Most overclockers I know (myself included) spend maybe $20-$30 on cooling: a larger fan/heatsink combo & some heatsink compound... then we just leave the side of our case off to improve ventilation.

    It's only those extreme cases of people with Kryotech [kryotech.com] systems or people who submerge their mobos in mineral oil [slashdot.org] that you ever hear about.

  • If you want to do it on your home system, fine by me. Just don't ask me for help with any problems that crop up. Often it works OK. Sometimes you get obvious problems (Like signal 11 errors when compiling in Linux.) Sometimes you get less obvious problems. The third category is the one that's the pain in the ass, and if your hello world program doesn't print hello world every third time or something like that and you ask someone for help, chances are you're going to waste several hours of his time until it finally comes out that you're overclocking.

  • Overclocking in Spite (Score:3)

    by Talmanes ( 27366 ) on Tuesday June 01, 1999 @03:15AM (#1872967) Homepage
    It's not too difficult to believe that people would overclock their processors in order to spite Intel. For years now Intel has produced the only decent processors on the market and until AMD came along they've had no trouble getting whatever they wanted for their chips. And nobody likes a monopoly driving up their prices. Fortunately with Linux's rising popularity and AMD's cheaper and (with the K7) more effecient processors the WinTel market may find itself shattered if it doesn't adapt to the new market. (We can only pray)
  • I know that Motorola/IBM PowerPCs are pretty limited...and are not IA-32 chips.

    But G3s are nice chips and overclock well.
  • Intel chips. Bah. I lost all respect for Intel when they placed an arbitrary restriction on the clock multiplier for their CPUs.

    When I buy a CPU, it's like any other physical object that I purchase -- I own it.

    When I own something, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, so long as I'm willing to void the warranty. It is irritating that Intel tries to control how its products are used.

    All those 300As that can't run at 450 can likely do 400 or so, but you can't set them to that speed because of some silly restriction on multipliers.

    The official excuse for this was the fact that people were re-marking CPUs to a higher clock speed which people then ran it at. However, if they can imbed a readable serial number into the CPU, they can certainly imbed a string describing what the chip was sold as.

    I'll just stick to AMD chips. They have no such policy. I'm sure the slowest of the .18 micron K7s will overclock nicely because of the reduction in heat output from the smaller die.

    Hopefully Intel is less silly with the Merced. I rather like the concept of being able to upgrade my computer by running two of last year's chips instead of needing to purchase new stuff.

    What do we need all this CPU power for anyhow? Games. Rendering 3D images. Big servers running lots of scripts. What else? It would appear that Intel is running out of reasons to give people that would convince them to purchase a faster chip. I suppose that means that all commercial software will have to find a way to be even less efficient?

    Grr.

    Silly industry.
  • fans and heatsinks are cheap, especially if you have an old junkbox full of them sitting in a closet somewhere... or you could go to a computer show and buy a used one for 25 cents...
  • When Intel decided to change over to the PPGA Celerons I believe the 300a's were the first to be offered in that formfactor, so for awhile Intel was cranking out the PPGA 300a's while the supply of Slot1 300a's was starting to dry up. If not for the first Slotket adaptors back then before BX based Socket370 boards came out, the OC craze would have died right there. BTW, I love my Abit BH6 + slotket and PPGA Celeron 300a based setup, it purrs at 450.

    -mudge

  • http://www.firingsquad.com has been running a very thorough series of columns on PC component cooling. It's worth a look if you are interested in this kind of thing.

    (And no, they didn't pay me to say that.)

    --
    Carl Patten
  • I'm also found that http://www.firingsquad.com/ has a really nice Overclocking guide at their site. A cooling guide, too.
  • This is a really good analogy to the overclocking situation. The reason engine manufacturers design their engines a certain way is similar to why processors are made. They aren't `slower' for no reason. Cylinder wall thinknesses and other things are designed in such a manner to make sure the optimum power is provided at the safest and most ecenomical level. Sure, you can bore out your cylinder walls, but when they get too thin and you ruin your engine, oh well.

    If you don't know what you're doing, and you push too hard, you'll end up with a broken engine (or processor). Hence the saying ... "You rush the miracle man, you get rotten miracles."
  • I've heard of some rare, wizard-like gurus who will even adjust the displays on their monitors to go to the bleeding edge of the screen. Stick it to AOC!
  • Just think of what a Dual-Celeron 400 will cost, and compare that to a dual P2-450. The performance may be slightly less, but you can spend more of the budget on faster harddisks and better Ethernet adapters, which will do you more good. If i'm budget-limited (most are), i go for the Celeron.

    A Dual-Celeron is not what Intel wants you to build, but is also is not overclocking. The two just run at their rated speed.
  • I just got a pair of 300A PPGAs, slot 1 adapters + heatsink/fan - tested and guaranteed @ 450Mhz

    They went into my SuperMicro dual mobo, and just worked...definately worth the $110 a pop

    http://www.pcxchange.com/

  • Funny, nobody at Slashdot noticed this in the Boston Globe when it ran last week. But then again Hiawatha Bray is almost universally ignored by the Boston nerd community, as his computer-related columns tend to fall into two catagories. 1)those which demonstrate his limited grasp of technology, and B)"master of the obvious" notices something.

    j3p0
  • Hmm... I'm not sure if this is done already, but perhaps a system where a message's status cannot be changed by just one person as default, (say it requires 4 or 5 votes, then averages that out) but if they have a HISTORY of posting inappropriate messages, THEN it takes one vote, or possibly even does it automatically. If they start to post messages that aren't getting moderated down, then their status rises. (You'd have to do it over a period of time, not by the number of messages. Otherwise, people could just post inane but still relevant chatter and get back up. Granted, you'd probably have to drop Anonymous Coward down significantly, and you'd get a lot of complainers, but in the long run, it might work considerably better than the current system... assuming that ISN'T the current system.
    :-)
  • Probably, they initially misinterpreted that the overclocker had 3 "D" accelerators and the editor came back with a "shouln't that "D" be "3D", so now the guy has 3 "3D" accelerators.
  • "That's what Gales and thousands of other hardcore computer buffs do every day. By using a risky little trick called overclocking, they can turn a low-end chip into a flamethrower."

    wow, really savvy people... (fear) talk about elite! next they'll be saying that hardcore computer buffs can turn the average cd-rom into a multi-purpose cd-rom and coffee-cup holder! :P
  • It may not be censorship, but it IS getting annoying... I have to set my level at -1, because a lot of the posts I want to read are getting marked down. And why did a post mentioning that the article had already been posted get marked down as flamebait? That was relevant criticism, IMHO... Moderation is rule by the masses, and while your average slashdotter is a bit brighter than your average, say, american, democracy still has the same woeful results... Unfortunately, like democracy, it's what we've got, and I can't say as I have any better ideas.

    Geek-grrl in training.
    "Television is the religion of the 90's. I'm an atheist."--me
  • "...pretty limited...and are not IA-32 chips."
    IA-32 is Intel Architecture 32 bit; saying a Motorola PowerPC chip isn't Intel compatible is like telling someone 'wow, the sky is blue!'. The G3 chips themselves are quite powerful, and the g4 architecture combined with the Altivec extension should be something great. If only somehow I could run Linux on an affordable, cheap PC with a G3 chip at it's heart... Oh well.
  • As a favor to others, I put my old chips, cards and bits into new cases to create new boxes, and then pass them on to the 'information poor'. At the weekend I found a P100 chip for $4, and am now running it at 150Mhz, without any defects I can track down. Should I have bought a P2/3 instead, or am I wrong in trying to recycle my old crap?
  • He could be using 2 Voodoo2s in SLI mode, and a third graphics card for 2D stuff...
  • Posted by Fleeno:

    Who doesn't want extra speed, no matter how good of a chip they have? If it works for you, great! If it's not reliable for you, don't do it!

  • I definitely overclock my computer because I hate the manufacturer. I hate my chips manufacturer and everything they stand for.


    Then why do you support them? If you truly hate them, switch. You don't have to use Intel. You can use AMD. Excellent chips, I ran one for quite awhile until I upgraded, and when the K7 comes out I may go back over.
    What I find amusing is your stupidity. You buy the company's chip (thus supporting the company) even though you don't like them. But dammit, you're gonna overclock to show THEM who's boss!
  • yeah yeah yeah

    I've got a PIC16C77 emulator on my desk. I also have a 80C196MC emulator. I'm pretty sure you know we're not talking about ICEs (and yes, I consider EPROM emulators ICEs)

    Andrew
  • While AMD is not by far a new company it has just recently started truly eating into Intel's market share and indeed has begun (as I mentioned before with the K7) go up and above Intel's best processor (PIII) in speed, quality, and price. AMD may have been making chips for years, but finally it seems they now have the chance to completely overthrow the virtual Wintel monopoly.
  • I used to be absolutely against overclocking, but with the introduction of the Celeron 300A, I had to try it. I've been extremely pleased with the performance of this chip at 450 MHz. So pleased, in fact, that I plan to build a dual Celeron system.

    You'd almost have to be nuts *not* to overclock a Celeron.

    --
    Get your fresh, hot kernels right here [kernel.org]!

  • My point exactly. There's no guarantee that a Celeron can be overclocked, so you're only likely to buy one for overclocking if you're short of money and can't afford a PII or PIII, or you've got enough money to not care that it may not work when overclocked but want to try it out cause you're '1337.

    The reason I mentioned servers was because in a /. discussion about overclocking a few months ago, several people were talking about overclocking their servers and bitching that sometimes they weren't able to get the full potential out of their CPUs. What I was trying to say is that anyone who thinks like that is more than a little dim.

    And regarding dual CPUs: it's become very common lately to buy a cheap dual CPU MB, a couple of PPGA Celerons and a pair of dual-jumper SEPP adapters, and then overclock the whole thing - which is pretty pointless when you're just using it for games, because virtually all the 3D games out there take no advantage of twin CPUs. (QIII might - and I emphasize "might" - be capable of using dual CPUs to the full in a later upgrade.) This is mainly because almost all 3D games run in a very tight loop that consists mostly of checking for user input, setting up the polygons, and blasting the data at a 3D card. Making games multithreaded just causes headaches for programmers in synchronizing things on screen, although Carmack apparently has a few new ideas that look promising.

  • Posted by OGL:

    I hate to bust the overclocker's bubble here, but who really cares? So you're too cheap to buy a good chip, and you decide to pump up a crappy chip so you can get almost as high a clock speed and still have a tiny cache. Does this make you some kind of rebel? I know a guy who keeps a celeron next to his open window with the case off, with several fans blowing on it at all times...is that really worth it, considering that cpu mhz is often not the best indicator of performace, especially in an application like a 3D game (by the way, I really liked that part where the guy has *3* 3D accelerators for "razor sharp graphics," now that was a scream).

    -W.W.
  • I don't even think that has anything to do with it. I'm sure the crew here does appreciate being told when something gets posted twice. But do we really need to see a dozen or so posts about it?

    I'm happy to lump that in with "FIRST POST" and the "gay ass chips can't perform", personally. And if you're not, like you said, set your threshold to -1 - the posts are still there.

    filtering != censorship.
  • ...then there's the "underengineering" factor as well.

    Honda coming out with a 9000RPM redline engine in the S2000? Can you get that out of a US-made 4cyl engine, say, a Quad-4? Or out of a pushrod V-8?

    engineering for performance reduces reliability and costs more money in R&D, better manufacturing techniques (building to higher tolerances), etc., that could be hard to recoup in a commodity market on their sheer talents alone.

    Look at Corvettes. They come out with cool stuff. Just as soon as they do, the same thing, albeit maybe made out of steel instead of aluminum, shows up in Z28s, because GM can recoup the development costs on the higher sales of the F-bodies, and they sell 10 times more of the cheaper part that justifies making it in the first place.

    Or Chrysler with the Viper engine. In the Viper, it's an aluminum block, aluminum head engine. But they're selling more of the V-10s as truck engines, cast iron through-and-through. The development of the engine for the Viper was subsidized by being able to use it in trucks...

    PC chips are no different. It's been well known (and reasonable, I guess) that Intel labels chip speeds primarily based on how lots of chips perform. Take 10 chips out of a 1000 chip manufacturing lot. Run them at 100% speed, see how many fail. If enough fail, then run a larger batch at a lower speed, and see how may fail. If enough pass the highest speed test, they get the premium speed and price, otherwise they're rated and tagged as needed.

    No mystery there.

    Except now Intel is getting wise to the situation, and making it harder to do this. No different than cars. If it's not lack of knowledge for your particular car you want to hotrod (and thus, finding hotrod parts for it), it's things like living in California where any part modifications have to be CARB-approved if you don't want to be working on your car every year swapping out the hotrod parts for the stock ones, just to pass emissions...

  • Article? (Score:3)

    by splutty ( 43475 ) on Tuesday June 01, 1999 @05:23AM (#1873007)
    I'm not sure if this would be considered off-topic, but I generally get goose bumps from these type of articles.

    If it were about a queen or a king marrying, the same type of article would be in BeLieVe Stories, or whatever.

    Am I the only one that has a problem with all the hype (this just being a pretty decent example) being brought on nowadays by newspapers, websites, etc. etc?

    Overclocking your processor isn't 'brilliant'. It isn't 'creating a flamethrower', it's not even anything remotely new (my old Z80 machine ran at 5.5MHz while it was designed for max 4). So why all the sudden all this pooha? (Remove all wait states from a Z80, so you have pure machine cycles, and hope your RAM keeps up, can't see anyone doing that to an Intel processor..)

    This kind of article brings to mind the old old saying. 'Why did so-and-so climb the Everest'

    And believe me, it was not because he had a 40% chance of not surviving it.

    Mad.

  • Overclocking Celerons works just fine! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Intel makes a "low end" CPU named Celeron and a "mid range" named PII. The core in these are identical. What makes a core a PII is some stress testing adequate cooling and a slapped on L2 cache. Only a few of the Celeron chips (if any) are "rejected" PII canditates.
    Why pay hundreds of dollars for this test, the extra cache and cooling?

    Do what I and so many others do - Buy a Celeron 400, a ABIT board and some decent cooling like the Glacier. Push up the front side bus to 83Mhz.

    This will give you a Celeron 500 and a nice boost on the PCI bus as well (41,5Mhz). And hey, it works just fine! I've been running a K6 233 at 250 and 83 on FSB for 1,5 years now. I use standard stuff and a Voodoo card. No problemo at all. Recently I bought the Celeron combo above. This works just fine too.

    Happy OC'ing (Why pay more for the exact same stuff!?)

  • Hmm (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I find it interesting that most overclockers probably end up spending more money on fans and extra cooling solutions when they could simply spend that money on a faster CPU. Intel should get into the super cooling business.
  • " until AMD came along they've had no trouble getting whatever they wanted for their chips."

    you make it sound like AMD is a new thing... I have an AMD 386DX40 (about equal to Intel's 486sx25) sitting on the shelf. I bought it 10 years ago.

    It was a good, cheap alternative then, and had less (read no) compatability problems than the newer AMDs
  • Intel is far from the only manufacturer of good chips. DEC, Sun and HP all have better chips in most senses... Sun needs to release their UIII at 1GHz and that will go a long way towards impressing the worlds.
  • Months ago intel decided to try to get the low cost PC market back and try to add something good to the Celeron name. Hence, the Celeron A was born. The Celeron A series of processors are the most overclockable chips intel chips to date. Pushing a 300 rated chip to 450 or even 464: that kind of performance improvement hadn't been done before. And, the thing about the Celeron, a lot of them worked w/o any tweaks at all. Like plug and play overclocking. No extra fans (retail ones worked fine) and no voltage bumps (didn't work everyone, but a lot of them did). That's why it seems to become really popular in the last few months. Then people decide, "Hey, maybe I can make it go faster!!" So, up surges the cooling industry. That's pretty new too: an industry that caters specifically to overclockers.

    An analogy of this situation would be w/ emulators: those seem to have gotten really popular lately. Yet emulation has be existing for a long time. Why is it popular now? Two reasons: Connectix Virtual Game Station and UltraHLE. Emulators which emulate fairly new consoles, unlike the NES or arcade machine emulators. And the big thing about Virtual Game Station: it's a shrinkwrapped product. So emulation all of sudden is popular because of two specific programs, even though it has existed for a long time.
  • HELLO! Can none of you tell when some one is being sarcastic.... Quite of few of the posts on this article are MUCH more logical whan reading as sarcasm!!!
    "There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
    "SPOOOOOOOOON!" - The Tick, The Tick

  • Overclocking... (Score:5)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Tuesday June 01, 1999 @03:43AM (#1873027)

    IMNSHO, there's only two justifications for overclocking:

    1: You're trying to get a bit more of a boost from an old chip.

    2: You don't mind wasting your money on a slower chip if there's a chance that it can be overclocked.

    Reason 2 implies that you're not going to be using the machine for any serious work, because, quite frankly, anybody who overclocks a server at work deserves to be fired. It's hard enough keeping a server going with as little downtime as possible as it is without throwing in random factors like overheating.

    And as for overclocking dual CPU's, although it seems to be all the rage at the moment (with PPGA->SEPP adapters with dual jumpers and the cheaper dual MBs from Tekram, etc.), I have enough trouble handling overheating with my dual PII's as they are without overclocking them as well. (They start giving random compile errors and oopses at around 54-55 degrees Celcius.)



  • Yep, sure... Who gives a sh*it anyways? I mean, there's quite a difference between the guy who's short and buys a C300 to push it to 450 (like me), and the guy who buys an Alpha... The price ain't the same, neither are the applications...

    I find your comment out of context and rather stupid, even with lots of :)...

    For info, my C300A@450 runs fine, blasts a P3-500 and crashes almost never...
  • 700MHz!!!! suck that.. (motherboard goes to 800MHz.. might try it - but i'll need a second fan i think) :)
    I was not aware of an Alpha which is currently assigned 700 MHz at the factory. I assume this is some 21164 chip, not the 21264? A 21164-A run?
  • There is absolutly no reason to buy pentium ][
    's or ]I['s ... think about it. Celeron 300a costs
    $100 Canadian.. even if it shortens a 10 year product life to 4 years... are you really going
    to be worried about it 4 years from now? Look at
    that pile of 386's on the floor. I don't think so.

    I'm running an dual celeron 300a box, overclocked
    to 450. (ppga type), and sure, I had to put beefy
    heat sinks on, but total cost including motheboard 2 chips and converters was less than the cost of a single P2/450 CPU. :) ... Even if you had all kinds of money to spend... why would you?
  • There are several dualboards that do 100+Mhz.
    The best one seems to be Asus P2B-D
    http://www.asus.com/products/Specs/MB/p2b-d-Spec .asp
    LeadTek,Tyan,Spacewalker also got boards that go up to 100Mhz.
  • I completely agree. Overclocking isn't some sort of rebellion against Intel (or any other chip manufacturer, for that matter). It's a geek thing. It's all about tweaking your machine until you have every last bit of power avaliable.

    A colleague of mine has a brother that works at one of the big hardware manufacturers (not allowed to say which, but they are behind Linux) and he was saying that a lot of the chips that are manufactured are deliberately rated lower than their maximum clock speed if they are even marginal during QA.

    Say Intel makes a hundred 450MHz processors and of those only ten pass thier QA. The remaining ninety may be tested at 400MHz. If they pass there, they may be re-marked as 400s and sold that way. When you consider that for someone like Intel, with their QA standards being so high, this is a huge cost savings. And that means that a lot of the chips can safely be overclocked (actually, clocked back to what they were built to do) without any serious stability issues.

    Of course Intel (and others) wouldn't recommend this kind of thing since it really is doing something that they feel isn't entirely safe. But I don't perceive any enmity between the folks like Tom, from Tom's Hardware Guide, (who first taught me how to overclock) and Intel.
  • 6Mhz? never heard of pulling that off.

    But it was different then. You didn't just move a jumper or two. You replaced crystals, or got exotic & built a variable speed oscillator. And you had to to be careful of which parts could run fast, and which needed to keep their timing so the video would display. And Zilog noted on intorduction that the rated speed was 2.5, but that hand-picked units might run at 4, and that a Z80A that *would* run at 4 would be along soon.

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