Overclocking Qs

'newknight', do you realize you are posting in an overclocking newsgroup? I
didn't think so.

Phil Weldon,

But you guys only seem to overclock your CPU. What about the rest of the
system?

What about making your drives faster and bigger? My 1998-vintage P2/300 had
a 6 GB ATA33. My new box has a 40 GB ATA100.

What about that old 10Mbps NIC? My new one has a 100Mbps.

And that old 4MB Velocity video. Minimal gaming capability ... useless by
today's standards. Any new system today has better video (even if you were
to cheap-out with the Intel on-board video).

And the 2x CDRW? Now I have 48x.

After a few years, just about everything in the box is obsolete. (Even the
case style becomes passe!)

So if I were to upgrade and upgrade and upgrade year by year, I'd be
replacing (almost) everything anyway.

"Fishface" ? wrote in message
...
Lester Horwinkle wrote:

But does it do any good? I'm told that you need to gain 30% in
speed before the user notices it. And that's 30% total processing
speed, not just 30% CPU speed. Can you overclock your drives
and your internet to keep up?

If you feel your computer is fast enough, and you don't mind buying
a new one when it isn't, and you don't mind paying top dollar for that
performance, or if you prefer to do other things with your time, there
is absolutely no reason to mess with overclocking.

I bought a motherboard in 1998, put it into a standard ATX case, and
started with a Celeron 300 overclocked to 450 MHz. In a couple
years I put a Pentium III 600e in the same board and clocked it to 800.
In a couple more years I plugged-in a Celeron 1.1A on a Slot-T and
run it at 1.46 GHz. What would have been the cost of that extra free
performance? Quite a bit. How much did I save by not buying a whole
new box twice? Even more.

I remember when I over clocked my 8800 in the old Altair. Yup, blew up like
cherry bomb it did!

Lester Horwinkle wrote:

But you guys only seem to overclock your CPU. What about the rest of the
system?
What about making your drives faster and bigger? My 1998-vintage P2/300
had a 6 GB ATA33. My new box has a 40 GB ATA100.

Yep, swapped those parts out somewhere along the line, too. The expense
was spread-out. Hate to tell you, but that 40 GB drive they give you is about
a generation behind in terms of performance. And the upgrade charge alone
is more than the cost of buying and installing the new drive. Probably void your
warranty to do that, though.

What about that old 10Mbps NIC? My new one has a 100Mbps.

Built into most new motherboards, or under $20 for a PCI card.

And that old 4MB Velocity video. Minimal gaming capability ... useless by
today's standards. Any new system today has better video (even if you were
to cheap-out with the Intel on-board video).

Haven't really been much into gaming in the past. The old card isn't much
worse than onboard video. That is, neither is fast enough to play games
decently.

And the 2x CDRW? Now I have 48x.

Put one of those in, too. About fifty bucks a couple years ago.

After a few years, just about everything in the box is obsolete. (Even the
case style becomes passe!)

Old power supplies may not be enough to run modern hardware. And don't
forget that new little square P4 ATX2 connector. I replaced mine with a
top-shelf unit, and then took it out for my new system...

So if I were to upgrade and upgrade and upgrade year by year, I'd be
replacing (almost) everything anyway.

Yeah, pretty much. For a high end system, I believe I can build one for
a lot less than you can buy a comparable performing machine. Of course,
my time is worth nothing, and my yard could use some work... Anyway,
glad you found something that works for you. So have I.

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 18:03:09 -0400, "Lester Horwinkle"
wrote:

But you guys only seem to overclock your CPU. What about the rest of the
system?

Have you overclocked your ram settings?
What about your TCP/IP settings?
Cable modem?

What about making your drives faster and bigger? My 1998-vintage P2/300 had
a 6 GB ATA33. My new box has a 40 GB ATA100.

15000rpm SCSI drives guy. I'm looking for a good 20-40gig to put in
my 6 year old's computer tho. I'm afraid a 40gig ATA100 is nothing to
brag about.... At one time, yes.

What about that old 10Mbps NIC? My new one has a 100Mbps.

Modern motherboards have onboard gigabit NICs. That's 1000Mbps.
Have you offloaded LAN processing from the CPU to the processor on the
NIC? Else it sits and watches the CPU juggle your game and your
connection.

And that old 4MB Velocity video. Minimal gaming capability ... useless by
today's standards. Any new system today has better video (even if you were
to cheap-out with the Intel on-board video).

True enough. If ya shop around and take a close look at the chips,
some of the onboard video is not too shabby. They're not really
modern. They generally aren't 8x speed. They steal system memory for
textures. Many of the dual CPU motherboards have onboard video but
they don't have AGP slots so you're never going to upgrade the video
using the mb.
Besides, with recent video drivers it takes all of a minute to find
the frequency tab, overclock, test, and lock in the changes.
Hmmm Velocity.... used to have an old STB Velocity 4400 AGP card.
Think it had 16meg on it....

And the 2x CDRW? Now I have 48x.

After a few years, just about everything in the box is obsolete. (Even the
case style becomes passe!)

So if I were to upgrade and upgrade and upgrade year by year, I'd be
replacing (almost) everything anyway.

Ya end up with a lot of parts. Luckily {sic} I have an older son and
a younger son. Everything gets recycled. Everyone is happy when dad
upgrades.

"Fishface" ? wrote in message
...
Lester Horwinkle wrote:

But does it do any good? I'm told that you need to gain 30% in
speed before the user notices it. And that's 30% total processing
speed, not just 30% CPU speed. Can you overclock your drives
and your internet to keep up?

If you feel your computer is fast enough, and you don't mind buying
a new one when it isn't, and you don't mind paying top dollar for that
performance, or if you prefer to do other things with your time, there
is absolutely no reason to mess with overclocking.

I bought a motherboard in 1998, put it into a standard ATX case, and
started with a Celeron 300 overclocked to 450 MHz. In a couple
years I put a Pentium III 600e in the same board and clocked it to 800.
In a couple more years I plugged-in a Celeron 1.1A on a Slot-T and
run it at 1.46 GHz. What would have been the cost of that extra free
performance? Quite a bit. How much did I save by not buying a whole
new box twice? Even more.





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Bait for spammers:
root@localhost
postmaster@localhost
admin@localhost
abuse@localhost
]
~~~~~~
Remove "spamless" to email me.

Lester Horwinkle wrote:
But you guys only seem to overclock your CPU. What about the rest of the
system?

The problem is you are making judgments based on rumor.

What about making your drives faster and bigger? My 1998-vintage P2/300 had a
6 GB ATA33. My new box has a 40 GB ATA100.

What about that old 10Mbps NIC? My new one has a 100Mbps.

And that old 4MB Velocity video. Minimal gaming capability ... useless by
today's standards. Any new system today has better video (even if you were to
cheap-out with the Intel on-board video).

And the 2x CDRW? Now I have 48x.

People capable of, and familiar with, overclocking usually upgrade those
components as they need them and they don't have to wait for a whole new
computer to get a 40 gig drive, or a RAID setup, or a better gaming card, or a
52x CD-RW, or whatever.

After a few years, just about everything in the box is obsolete. (Even the
case style becomes passe!)

So if I were to upgrade and upgrade and upgrade year by year, I'd be
replacing (almost) everything anyway.

The point is they upgrade when they want and with what they want without having
to wait for a 'new box' and compromising with what the manufacturer thinks is
the 'right' combination.

There's nothing wrong with buying pre assembled computers, and it's the best
solution for the typical PC user, but don't be so quick to presume that people
who know what they're doing don't know what they're doing.

And for those who don't initially know what they're doing it can be a valuable
learning experience, if one is so inclined and willing to put in the effort.

"Skid" wrote in message
news:5AVdb.628276$YN5.452436@sccrnsc01...
"Lester Horwinkle" wrote in message
...
But does it do any good? I'm told that you need to gain 30% in speed
before
the user notices it. And that's 30% total processing speed, not just 30%
CPU
speed. Can you overclock your drives and your internet to keep up?

Did me some good, and saved me some cash. I bought the cheapest P4C Intel
offers, a 2.4 ghz, and an inexpensive pair of 256-meg ram sticks rated at
200 mhz.

The cpu is now running at 3.3 ghz, faster than any stock P4, and the
memory
is at 220 mhz with tighter timings than the default for even more
bandwidth.

The system pegs every benchmark and is perfectly stable in every torture
test I can throw at it, looping Prime95 and MemTest86 all night without
errors.

The video card is a cheapo Radeon 9500, modded with a drop of conductive
paint and a bios flash to a full-fledged 9700 and overclocked to faster
than
a retail Pro that cost almost three times as much.

I bought the motherboard, cpu and ram for less than Intel wanted for a
3.2g
P4 cpu alone, and my setup is faster. With a cable connection and a case
full of quick drives, it doesn't lag in any category.

Do I notice the speed? Sure I do.

I can crank up the eye candy to the max and get super-smooth framerates in
the most demanding games. Working in Photoshop, burning a DVD, compiling a
database, I don't waste nearly as much time sitting around waiting for the
computer to complete its tasks.

As others have said, it is a hobby. To me, buying a PC someone else put
together and never touching it except to surf or compose e-mail is the
real
waste.

But then, I also have a BMW and a Saab turbo parked out front in a land
where I'm not supposed to drive over 65 mph. It's just nice to know I can
occasionally blast around the backroads in a machine that responds
instantly
with a real kick in the pants when I give it some juice.

Some people prefer Gateways and Toyotas because they are cheap and fairly
reliable. That's their choice and I respect it.

I have a Dell P4 2.4 on my desk at work. It gets the job done, but it's
not
very exciting and everything takes longer than it does on my homemade
system.

That's why I overclock.

* Kudos...

-a|ex ":^)

newtknight wrote:

Who needs to over clock? Is it computer gamers?
I doubt that there are that many people overclocking
for molecular modeling or something.

Nobody needs to overclock. It is a hobby, it is an obsession.
It enables people to get more life from old hardware. It
enables people to get more value from their hard earned cash.
Overclocking is about efficiency. Production tolerances and
marketing BS result in hardware that is often capable of running
faster than spec. Those who do not wish to extract this extra
perfomance are free not to do so. But you're a smart guy, you
could have figured that out yourself. Besides, what else have all we
introverted, ugly people got to do? Yardwork?! Hell, I'm
married-- if my wife caught me dating, I'd probably never get any,
ever again!

It turns out that the person who heads the support for our PCs and data
systems at work has done overclocking, as he sheepishly admitted. However,
he said you only got a little advantage out of it.

So over clocking is like trainspotting, or geocaching. Well if it works for
you go for it.

However, the questions remains why overclocking? Why not overrefrigeration.
Insulate your refrigerator, have fans blowing on the cooling coils, bootleg
refrigerants, tweak the components, and brag about keeping vanilla ice cream
in your refrigerator compartment. Or perhaps it would be to run your
refrigerator on the least wattage as possible.

What happened to all those people who use to endlessly tweak their stereo
sets in the 1960s. What will be the obsession of fiddling in the future?

In the year 2034, will there be a group alt.overexpress.genome and no one at
the least bit interested in computers?

Well most of the overclockers are good sports, and no I didn't notice the
cross-post when I did the original post..

Well I have to go work with my vacuum cleaner. I give it a little higher
voltage feed, and have replaced the blower fan with lighter weight titanium,
and the insides of the extensions and air conduits are coated for less
friction. I am going to win that vacuum cleaner competition at the next
meet.

Ed


"Peter Cavan" wrote in message
...
Hi
I know people say that Dells are unoverclockable but what I wanted to know
is - are they actually impossible to OC or is it just very hard to do? I
mean with keeping all the hardware the same, not changing the motherboard,
CPU etc.
Thanks for any help
PC

"newtknight" wrote in message
ink.net...

Well I have to go work with my vacuum cleaner. I give it a little higher
voltage feed, and have replaced the blower fan with lighter weight
titanium,
and the insides of the extensions and air conduits are coated for less
friction. I am going to win that vacuum cleaner competition at the next
meet.

Ed

That sounds impressive enough but may I make just one suggestion that might
save you some embarrassment in the future? With all that extra airflow and
pressure you'll be achieving where do you propose that it terminates at? The
stock dust bag??? LOL .... it would blow for sure!!! You best get back to
the drawing board fella.

Hank

"Peter Cavan" wrote in message
...
Hi
I know people say that Dells are unoverclockable but what I wanted to
know
is - are they actually impossible to OC or is it just very hard to do? I
mean with keeping all the hardware the same, not changing the
motherboard,
CPU etc.
Thanks for any help
PC