Y overclock??

[GuardianAli]

If you have a slower CPU (ie 700 or less) it is a good way to get some more horsepower.

But higher 750+, it seems like overkill.

DVD playback is super smooth on any 700+ cpu as long as ur not running 50 other things.
Games, as long as ur vid card is decent, gets a boost but come on. The human eye cant tell the difference between 80 and 90..or 100 and 110.
The optimal you want to achieve is 60fps or tad higher. reason is so that despite eyes not noticing past 30fps, the game dips in fps in "congested" times so that the 60 will dip to say 40 and still look smooth.
If u have 120 and it dips to 70 0r 80...u can and wont notice.

So to me...u can argue ..but to ME...if ur vid card is decent..and ur cpu is above 700..besides ego and pride...no reason to overclock.

 

[AdamK47]

Uh oh! I don't think your going to get many people here to agree with this. hehe

BTW - P3 650 @ 1026MHz

 

[GuardianAli]

I know just a thought.

FPS wise and dvd wise (unless ur doign 3d modeling) is there reeally a noticable difference if ur running a 900 or a 1ghz? to me no.

I use to over clock my celery 400 to 500 but that was need.
I have since gotten a 733 pen III and dvd is smooth. Quake gets a regular 70 or so fps with my tnt ultra tad overclocked.

But..thats just me :-D

 

[Eug]

Quake III is very video card dependent. UT seems more CPU dependent than Q3.

I don't play Q3 much, but in UT going from a Celeron 800 to a Celeron 960 makes a pretty noticeable difference at 800x600x16. (I have a V3 by the way, which is the fastest card on earth in UT at that resolution according the AnandTech reviews.)

I find though it depends on how many people are playing. Once you hit the double digits the system can really slow down.

Yeah, in QIII the eye can't really tell the difference between 80 and 90, but 80-90 means 35 in the worst case scenarios. I'd rather have 60 all the time than 35-90 with an average of 70. In fact, the hardcore players I know run at 100+ fps most of the time for this reason. (By the way, with my settings I get over 65 fps in demo001, but I still consider that too slow, and I'm not even hardcore.)

 

[Arcadian]

I think GuardianAli is beginning to realize, along with a lot of consumers, that computer hardware is beginning to largely pass by the requirements of software. This isn't true in all cases, obviously, but the average consumer does not even use 50% of the cycles in a low budget Celeron desktop. In order to understand this, you have to look at it from a business standpoint. What is 60-80% of your customers running in terms of speed? The average consumer uses a computer for web browsing, word processing, and a few simple games. For them, a Celeron 500MHz on i810 video is "good enough". Those of us that require more are in a mere 25%. It's nice to say you've got the fastest computer of all your friends, but I bet even a lot of people on this board don't use their computer to its fullest.

However, GuardianAli must also realize that the other 25% is very important, and for them it is necessary for speed to count. I've never been a huge supporter of overclocking, but if some people feel that it gives them a lot more performance, I think that's great. For me, I feel that overclocking is done at a risk to system stability. My data is too important to lose. If overclocking was as sure a think as some people put it out to be, than everybody would be doing it, instead of only a small percentage.

Software needs to start using more of the hardware in a system before the mainstream sees a need to upgrade. Faster computers are only a means of competing in a very tough business these days. If Intel didn't have AMD, or if AMD didn't have Intel to compete with, you wouldn't see the fast 750+MHz processors that you see today.

 

[BurntKooshie]

I'm on a Cyrix. It is used to its fullest extent simply running a webbrowser but in all seriousness, there's a way to run it at its fullest extent at all times: run a distributed computing project. one of which is RC5. take a look at the link in my signature that has rc5 in it.

 

[Fingers]

anybody in here that is using seti@home or any other distributed software is using their systemt to the fullest. There is not once when I look at how much percentage of my processor that i don't see it gleeming at 100%, and I don't care what 75% of the market does with their computer, all I care is that it would be pretty nice to be crunching away at distributed software while playing Quake III without a noticable slow down. But hey thats just me.

 

[Arcadian]

Seti@home doesn't count, Fingers. Niether does RC5, BurntKooshie.

Both programs are designed to take the full use of your computer's IDLE time. If you are playing Quake III smoothly while running these software apps in the background, it's not because of your processor, it's because Quake III is taking up 95% of your CPU, while Seti will take up 5%. To look at it another way, you can take a theoretical 10GHz CPU, and you'll get much higher throughput for Seti or RC5, but would that mean that the measly 1GHz CPUs are too slow?

What I was talking about was actually needing all the power that current CPUs offer in terms of regular programs running at acceptable speeds, but as I also said, for a percentage of the populations, more speed is desired. For the small percentage of people that want to contribute the highest to distributed computing, or those that want to shave the extra minute per frame from their rendering software, or even those that want to brag about 10 extra fps in their games, it's good that faster processors are available.

The problem is that if most people aren't content with upgrading, there will eventually come a point where people refuse to upgrade, thus causing a loss in sales in the CPU arena. If software doesn't catch up in the mainstream to prevent this, you may not see as much of a race to get the fastest CPU out as you do today.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

Why NOT overclock? If the system is stable, there's no point in not doing it.

 

[Fingers]

well first of all there are settings in each one of those programs to make them run all the time at full speed. I for one take advantage of those options. secondly there are new peices of software coming out all the time to fill up those CPU cycles. contrary to what you may believe it takes a lot longer to write these programs that just a few days. Many programs take years to write and when they come out they will be eating up clock cycles. finally, If you don't believe they are even coming out with better software then why do you think Intel and AMD are coming out with 64 bit CPU's that they are planning on filtering into the consumer market.

 

[ArcadianII]

Fingers, we could get into a Philosophical discussion about the consumer needs of software and hardware, and compare that to the future of the industry, but we'd be wasting our breath. Studies have shown that most consumers feel they don't need to upgrade, and many financial technical analysts have expressed concerns that hardware has far outpaced software. There's no right or wrong answer to this, because we cannot predict the future. However, it is prudent for a hardware developer to invest in other avenues besides the microprocessor business, since it is possible that demand for consumer PCs will decline. I, for one, hope that this doesn't happen for many years, as there is still a lot of innovation possible for the PC platform.

The reason Intel and AMD are investing in 64bit computing is because of this reason. 64bit computers are designed to run on the highest end market segment, that of the back end server. They will probably also find a place on front end web servers. However, innovation in the PC market will only continue as far as there is demand for the low end products. Hopefully you are correct, and software will continue to catch up with the hardware, which will increase demand for faster PCs. But in order to affect the larger percentages of end users, software needs to take on different angles than it has now. We need another software revolution, like the revolution of text based software to GUI interfaces, or that of 2D to 3D, or local desktop to an online desktop. Simply upgrading current software by small degrees may not be enough to push the industry forward.

I hope you are beginning to understand what I am trying to say. I agree with you that better software is always likely to come out, but if it isn't coming out faster than the hardware, it will never catch up.

 

[Fingers]

is good, we see the same point here. Recently as you can see the CPU industry has had rapid improvement. Software writters write programs so that they can be used in current platforms. When technology explodes at such a fast rate it will take time to catch up with the hardware, which can take a year or two. I see the point you are saying that the complexities of software will begin to level off, but if that will ever happen, would be so far in the future that I wouldn't care about it because i would be dead. For my life time hardware speed will comtinue to rise in speed and performance and software will continue to get far more complex. I for one like to have a slightly better computer than the average person because I am a very impatient. I don't like to wait that extra 10 seconds it takes to load windows when you turn on your computer. If the total cost of a top of the line computeris say $100, then I would upgrade every couple months because after a while the fastest of system begin to feel slow to me. Here comes that impatient thing again, if it feels slow then I want it to be faster.
As far as what the future holds in hardware upgrades and whether or not software will need it. Who cares thats why it is the future, nobody knows exactly what will happen and it is all our own biased opinions about what will happen. It is pointless to keep discousing what will happen in the future as nobody in these fourums knows. I would like to end our little conversation here with this, because I'm sure It may be starting to bother some people. So for everybodies sake, you could be right, I could be right, and some weirdo who thinks that you will be able to make a computer case out of a baboon could be right.
sorry if that last part about the baboon sounded weird, but if your wondering where I got it from go to www.2cooltek.com

 

[Eug]

When I recommend a computer a gaming friend, I recommend as fast a well-built high quality computer as he (never a she for whatever reason) can afford. Ie. Good parts, with a screaming fast CPU and videocard if he afford it.

When I recommend a computer to anyone else I always recommend a well-built system with high quality parts, lots of memory and hard drive space, and a "slow" CPU (eg. non-overclocked Celeron 566 these days). Unfortunately, they invariably go out and buy the fastest CPU they can afford, on a cheap-@zz mobo. It just drives me insane. Then they complain when their computer craps out in 6 months.

 

[Envelope]

Eug, I can't agree more..a cheap motherboard will kill you far quicker than a cheap processor. The inventor's of PC Chips motherboards should be executed.

 

[IaPuP]

In games, I like to run at higher resolutions.

Personally, I think 45FPS is plenty, but I find 1024x768x32 to be too low quality to be really "realistic".

I would love to run at 10,240x7,680x40

Until I can do that, I won't be "content" with the CPU I can buy.

Eric

 

[LarryJoe]

GuardianAli - you obviously are not in an overclocking situation because you bought the wrong chip - a 733EB. So to you the point is moot. If you could do it, you would.


You are in the wrong place to be asking that question and as far as frame rates, if I turn my 700 down to 700, I would definitely lose frame rates and I have the best gaming card available. If we judged our passion on noticable differences in performance, I would probably still have my PIII 500 Katmia. It is a passion.

LJ

 

[han888]

is there reeally a noticable difference if ur running a 900 or a 1ghz? to me no.

I agree with this statement there is no different , just for example: i have p3-800@1000 and p3-700@882, and i can not see any different with that 2 system, i can see the different if i do the benchmark!!!! just the benchmark, but if p-166 with p3 there are alot of different! about p2 with p3 there is a bit different, if we play the game, but in windows application we still can not find any different just my opinion

 

[clintT]

because we can!!!

 

[bonkers325]

to gain more performance

 

[AMDfreak]

I think I have a good analogy for you. We are like the guys who used to constantly tweak the engines on muscle cars. They did it just to get the most speed they could, even if the speed limit is still 55 and they can't make full use of that speed very often. We overclock because we can, for bragging rights and because eventually, we WILL be able to use all that power. That's the great thing about computers, there is no speed limit.

 

Overclocking is a Hobby,
So naturally you would want to push it to the limit.
No longer are the CPUs the bottleneck.
And software companies will perpetually make programs more resource inteisive.
So in turn you have to keep putting money into new hardware.
Cmon you think the guys running the show are that stupid.
AHAH they got all of us by the nutties.
But businesses with sensitive data probably dont really need to clock their systems.
Its like a turbocharged 0-60 in 2 second School Bus. hEH