The point of overclocking?

[voss]

I agree with almost everyone here. Getting more for less is the whole point

But you have to wonder what the point of a killer CPU is without a good graphics card to team it up with. Having a 3200+ and more with a Ti4200 is useless. But the real good cards, new FX and 9700-9800 are twice as expensive as the CPUs...

If you save a 100 buks on the CPU but then spend 400 on the gfx card... well... you obviously have money to burn anyway That's why a 9500 non-Pro that works right at 9700 is the trick

But hey, nothing wrong with investing in you PC if you are happy, right.

 

[pelikan]

Yeah, the 9500 softmod and overclock is a great deal if you get a good one. Mine is running at 360/290 right now. I found one used that was tested to successfully softmod.

 

[Macaw]

There's an evolutionary aspect to overclocking. Remember when:

[*]CPUs came attached to the MB and you had to buy a chip extractor to undo them?
[*]Cray's and other super computers using liquid cooling was near science fiction
[*]Intel came out with a ZIF socket so you could pop in and out CPUs
[*]You started buying a *heatsink* for your 486 processor... not necessary but it was "a good idea."
[*]Fans and heat syncs started coming *standard* with CPU's. (This wasn't always the case.)
[*]You didn't get a crazy look if you bought a liquid cooled PC

The idea behind all that was to cool the CPU so it could run at a higher frequency. So overclocking isn't out of the ordinary, it's basically what supposed to happen. You watch... 5 or 10 years from now there will be a debate on which High Performance Nitrogen works best in your PC.

 

[SemperFi]

Macaw, That is a so true about the liquid nitrogen. It got me thinking about how I can use dry ice with a heatsink now. Maybe I can get this 1700XP TbredA to 2.3Ghz yet.

 

[Slammy1]

Originally posted by: SemperFi
Macaw, That is a so true about the liquid nitrogen. It got me thinking about how I can use dry ice with a heatsink now. Maybe I can get this 1700XP TbredA to 2.3Ghz yet.

LOL. They have dry ice systems available now, I saw it reviewed on some overclocker site. Too short of a duration. I think ultimately we'll break away from chips entirely. Things like optical switches and genomic data storage, some funny Sci-Fi crap like that. I overclock to stability and performance. Actually, I saved quite a fair amount of money o/c'ing my 2.4C to 3.3GHz buying a $50 Zalman HSF to slap on it, and it's actually more stable than 2.4GHz and probably runs cooler than a 3.2C.