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Isn't overclocking kind of pointless?

MikeJeng said:
Doesn't it void the warranty too?
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Sorry......off topic..........I just read your siggie, I was reading a review last night, apparently the 9450 has an FSB wall at 478mhz, multiply that by the 8 multi and see what she will give.....3.8gig :cry: and the 9550 is so much more expensive.

On topic, for me it's simple, buy top end kit, spend loads of dosh, get good performance, buy low end or mid ranged kit, SAVE loads of dosh, overclock it get better than high end stock performance........only one winner there! :toast:

As far as warranty goes, it's pretty well impossible to show a CPU or a Gfx card has been overeclocked provided it has not been modded of BIOS flashed.
 
sry but. :roll: :roll: :roll:

try maxing games out at 1920x1200 and you will find you need to overclock to get the best experience

even then, sometimes its not enough depending on certain factors.

I am using a 1gb 2900xt, I game at 1920x1200.

I max out every setting in my games, like the witcher etc etc, if i leave my card default at 740core 1ghz memory its clearly not able to run everything maxed.

A voltage bump here, and 930mhz core later and everything is butter smooth where it once was not before. Pointless? ill let you decide that ;)

anyways, overclocking is half the fun, and knowing you got every shred of performance that particular hardware architecture is capable of is the game. I take things to the limits as mujch as possible, not stupid omg im sooo gonna fry that limits, but daft overclocks done in a controlled, safe, long term manor is the way to go
 
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MikeJeng said:
Overclocking just seems to damn complicated.


This is what I think overclocking is:

-Go to BIOS
-change a bunch of stuff
-OMG FAST.
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Overclocking is easy with the right hardware and most importantly knowlege.
Which can be picked up on the web easy you just have to spend the time studying it.

Some people just jump into it without a clue lol.

Its like trying to fly a jumbo jet before reading the manual eventually you're going to crash and burn and it wont be pleasent or cheap.
 
hat said:
Whoever did that epic fails. Who teams up an 8800 with a s939 board?
and yeah it does void warranties but most manufacturers will still RMA for you anyway
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I currently have a 8800GTS teamd with a 939 board but I had no choice in the matter - I wanted a new graphics card to replace my X1800XT which was lacking the power to take CoD4 on at 1028x1024 & would suffer some pretty nasty frame skips which often occured out of no where & get me killed 100% of the time. so in light of that I bought a 8800GTS which i found to be the cheapest offer at the time & bought one & it has improved my gaming experience tremendously even though it IS bottlenecked

& before you saying anything else - im buying/importing more parts from Hong Kong when i got back to visit my family over there. Ive got a C2D Q6600 in the works
 
Paulieg said:
The point is, it's just fun. It's a challenge to get the most out of your hardware. It's simply a great hobby with some legitimate function. :)
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i agree 100% people see me doing at and think im crazy checking things all the time but i enjoy getting the most out of my hardware!!

if you buy a sports car you dont drive it slow all the time you want to once in a while get the most out of it.

its like getting something for nothing when you overclock
 
If you are more worrie about your warrenty than you are about having fun with your pc then its not for you,warranty whores.
 
mandelore said:
no, it IS getting something for nothing :)
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Oh it's not something for nothing. It's like Equivilent Exchange in FMA at the end, Al got his body back and Ed performed a working human transmutation which is supposed to be impossible but apparantly not. He spent like 7 years of his life working twards that.

You DO pay to overclock even if you overclock on everything stock cooler with no extra money spent on overclocking (coolers, beefy power supplies, etc). You pay your time, effort, and probably frustration.
 
FreedomEclipse said:
I currently have a 8800GTS teamd with a 939 board but I had no choice in the matter - I wanted a new graphics card to replace my X1800XT which was lacking the power to take CoD4 on at 1028x1024 & would suffer some pretty nasty frame skips which often occured out of no where & get me killed 100% of the time. so in light of that I bought a 8800GTS which i found to be the cheapest offer at the time & bought one & it has improved my gaming experience tremendously even though it IS bottlenecked

& before you saying anything else - im buying/importing more parts from Hong Kong when i got back to visit my family over there. Ive got a C2D Q6600 in the works
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You can get the Opty 170 S939 really cheap now, that would be a half decent upgrade, I got 3.1gig outta my old one.
 
Tatty_One said:
You can get the Opty 170 S939 really cheap now, that would be a half decent upgrade, I got 3.1gig outta my old one.
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If you can find me one thats 'cheap' within the UK - I will personally fly out to where ever you are & kiss you. nobody here in the UK sells them - even on EBAY their still asking for a premium & i dont want second hand goods. & the price comparison between the opty & Q6600 makes the Q6600 200% more bang for buck
 
FreedomEclipse said:
If you can find me one thats 'cheap' within the UK - I will personally fly out to where ever you are & kiss you. nobody here in the UK sells them - even on EBAY their still asking for a premium & i dont want second hand goods. & the price comparison between the opty & Q6600 makes the Q6600 200% more bang for buck
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No need to fly, you can walk, give me a bit and I will find you one :D
 
Doesn't most mobo's have the option to overclock? It's there for a reason.
If someone doesn't want to, or doesn't feel he or she know's "what to do", then don't.
Just an option that the system can get a bit better.

For me it's an adventure - "Will it break, burn or go faster?" or "Can it go faster than this??".

Before I even knew I could "unlock" or even overclock my graphics card I was almost going to buy another one. But this pile of junk is still holding together..
 
Tatty_One said:
I suppose "cheap" is relative....lets say a lot cheaper than I paid for mine 18 months ago.........firstly from E Bay used, make an offer, might get it for say £65.....

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Amd-Opteron-X...yZ133682QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Next is here new for £68.75 but you will have to wait for 2-3 weeks because it is on special order:

http://www.kikatek.com/product_info.php?products_id=4146&source=froogle

I will keep looking for some more!
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thanks but my dad has just bought my old parts to use as his spare pc :P horray more cash to spend in hong kong
 
Erm...no, not at all.

You go out, you buy a PC, put it together, use it for 6 months and then realise it's not fast enough, what do you do? Go out and buy a new one?

Screw that, overclock the damn thing and put it off for another few months.

That, or like me, overclock it the second you get it purely because you can.

If overclocking is pointless then so are the huge HSFs, watercooling, and all manner of products on the market that aid in cooling.
 
It's not pointless and I understand there are people who simply buy the best video card, MB, sound card, ram, etc so they don't have to OC. I know a few people like that and they don't understand why people do OC. However, IMO their strategy can't be argued. For example someone who has a:
QX9650/E8400
Max. Formula
GTS 512/X2
2 Gigs of ram
XP Pro SP3
is pretty much set and doesn't need to OC to play games and any other home related PC'ing they do. But is it pointless to OC? Not at all, it's all about preference. Some people do it because they can and they have the know how without batting an eye. Now lets not confuse a mild OC with one that may not be 24/7 stable omega, super OC. It seems to me whenever brings up this issue they think upon some extreme OC like going from 2.66 to 4.2 or something like that.
 
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I don't know when I overclocked my parents old 32bit Sempron from 1.6ghz to 1.99 it made a big real world difference.... but I suppose if you have a super system it might be ~pointless.
 
EastCoasthandle said:
It's not pointless and I understand there are people who simply buy the best video card, MB, sound card, ram, etc so they don't have to OC. I know a few people like that and they don't understand why people do OC. However, IMO their strategy can't be argued. For example someone who has a:
QX9650/E8400
Max. Formula
GTS 512/X2
2 Gigs of ram
XP Pro SP3
is pretty much set and doesn't need to OC to play games and any other home related PC'ing they do. But is it pointless to OC? Not at all, it's all about preference. Some people do it because they can and they have the know how without batting an eye. Now lets not confuse a mild OC with one that may not be 24/7 stable omega, super OC.
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Thing is, somebody with that system would be absolutely silly not to oc, because those parts can be taken so far. If anyone ever buys an extreme and doesn't oc, that is just a complete waste of money.
 
the car analogy is very good comparison, you can go the 1/4 mile in 12 seconds if you want but a stock engine goes plenty fast enough and will outlast a dozen rebuilds of that prformance engine that you keep burning things up on.

if you want to get into a pizzing contest comparing benches and scores then its well worth it to you to overclock a basic system to peak performance, but if comparing benches and scores is not that important to you then you are better off building a higher end computer to run stock so it will not have reduced lifespan of components due to overclocking.

some overclock to keep an old underpowereed system as fast as they can so it doesnt need to be replaced, this is what i consider the best use for overclocking something.

some people just do it as a hobby and have money to waste burning up components just to see how far they can go, its all depending on the person more than the actual use of what the computer is needed for.
 
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Overclocking does not necessarily reduce hardware life, each individual piece is somewhat different. Once upon a time some processors needed underclocked.
 
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