Why?

Neuromancer · #1 07-27-2009

Sort of related to Chuchnit's thread about how long have you been benching, and fav score.

I did not want to poo poo his thread though.

I know at least few of you have been overclocking for a long time, I see Shannon posting he was swapping crystals. I gotta be honest, I have been running computers since 79 and I have no clue what he is talking about lol

I have only been overclocking about 10 years. Started with bus frequency jumpers. Some soft clocking after that, and eventually BIOS settings.

(I do not count the AT 33 to 66MHz turbos to be overclocking since it was a manufactured process)

I see a lot of posts in chuchnits thread, that has their "favorite bench" being in the last few months and scores that I hope to achieve before a computer is sold that gets those scores at stock LOL

So two questions

1) Why did you start overclocking?

2) What was your turning point? (IE What made it become an obsession?)

Neuromancer · #2 07-27-2009

1) I started overclocking about the same time I started building PCs without any help. Well Actually I purchased it. A POS HP unit. onboard AGP no AGP slot, board could handle an upgrade from a 700 MHz celery, to an 800 MHz celery. Got pissed sold the guts, I kept the case, and built my own unit. And I found out, I could adjust the speed.

It became a price thing for me. I could buy a cheap computer and make it better than the best systems at the time. Athlon XP.

2) The turning point for me, was my winnie 3200. Had some busted TCCD Geil sticks that would run nothing but 2 CAS. An 8 dollar rosewill heatsink, (MRII I believe) VIA K8T800 pro motherboard from MSI, and couple of odd shaped HDDs running in raid (a 20 and a 40GB IIRC) Overclocked as far as I could (about 500MHZ on the ram at 2-2-2-5) and popped 35ns Mem latency test in Everest. (TBH, Not sure it was everest at the time, might have been Aida)

That setup was so snappy. I have been chasing that buzz ever since. Ran the gamut of 939 setups. Skipped AM2 cause I did not see the point, and thought DDR2 was too slow due to its much higher latencies. Went c2d and c2q, killed a q6600 trying to get 500FSB. Got a 45nm Q9300 up to about 535 IIRC, and believe me after running c2q, the microstutter going back to C2d was SOO obvious, it did disappear after about 2 weeks though (i just got used to it I guess). Sold everything went Phenom when I got a deal on a 9950BE. Sinked the FET's on a TA790GX and OCed it hell and back.

Then I got me a 920 PhenTwo. The snap was back. Wow. Restored my faith in computers.

DrNip · #3 07-28-2009

1) Why did you start overclocking?
I have always been fascinated with computers ever since my IBM PC Jr. 128 back in the early 80's. I always took them apart, put them back together and tweaked on them. One day I just wanted my pc to run faster and then it was off to the races.

2) What was your turning point? (IE What made it become an obsession?)
Forums made it an obsession for me. Seeing others pc's and results only fueled the fire.

karmakazi · #4 07-28-2009

1.)Started overclocking to gain performance for less $$$ to power gaming setups. (Funny how this hobby takes your original goal of spending less and bitch smacks you) Never a competitive benchmarker until recently (see #2), I would just run the 3d bench flavor of the year to guage system performance. Didnt even imagine a world of people just like me existed until discovering various forums a few years ago.

2.)I lurked around those forums until 2008 when I decided to start benchmarking "for real." What made a turning point for me was hwbot points system. Im a very competitive person (which is why fps/rts/rpg games addict me), so the worldwide ranking at hwbot caught my attention. On my current and old hardware around my house I was able to get up to about 100pts. But then after it was all benched to the limit I said what next? Started buying up lots of cpus and vgas, some irams, and one thing led to another. Then I took the plunge last year getting a copper pot, 2 vga pots, a 50L dewar, etc since air cooling wasnt getting me what I wanted.

Edit: owned everything from a appleIIe onwards, but didnt OC anything until AMD's athlons

Shahryar_NEO · #5 07-29-2009

1) Started overclocking about 3 years ago when i bought a athlon 64 3000+ MX4000 . i got trouble with playing GTA Vice city and i start to overclock to don't buy a new system and unfortunately my graphic damaged and i had to buy a new graphic card at last

2) my turning point was my website . when i established my website i like to provide hardware informations in Persian but after that i figured out one of the most interesting part is Overclocking specially 24/7 overclocking that is so scientific and help you to have best Performance/Price factor . so i read many articles to know about overclocking to provide overclocking informations and news to my countrymans and step by step i learned it .

Bones · #6 07-30-2009

1) Started for me out of sheer frustration with my old system not acting right. Got tired of calling up the ISP guy to fix issues and running down to the PC shop for repairs when needed. After paying through the nose a time or two, got into figuring out how everything works for myself. Eventually dared to build my own PC and was successful - The components I use are still good to this day except for the CPU which finally died not long ago.

2) Turning point was in 06 after wanting to see how well I could get the system I had built earlier to run and had asked about using a XP-M chip with my board ( Soyo SY-K7V Dragon Plus!). After seeing how snappy it was with the chip, it just went from there.

Fuel on the fire afterwards was the challenge of getting a "Lesser" board to run with the big guys and managed to do it ( Asus A7N8X Deluxe 2.0).
I've been going ever since I got the Asus to stand toe-to-toe scorewise with MB's such as Abit NF7's and some DFI LanParty's.

Neuromancer · #7 07-30-2009

Oh yah buddy of mine tried talking me into getting a Soyo Dragon back in the day. Was a poorly paid serviceman though, wife a a second kid newly arrived and 2 car payments, I bought a cheap ass Biostar board. (Thought I killed it, threw it in a closet and 2 years later decided to fire it up. Worked great. Guess 48 hours was not enough time to discharge the caps :p)

freeagent · #8 07-30-2009

i started out of curiousity.. i was in a forum about windows back in 2001 or 2, and a member linked to ocforums. i tried it out, killed some stuff, and went back for more!

what got me hooked was back in socket a days with my nf7-s, and all the modded bioses.. then haveing a heatsink capable of takeing volts! ok , thats a fib, when i broke 1ghz on my 933EB is when i was hooked! i think.. now back to the nf7.. i was hooked when my axp was dominateing my buds 3ghz northwood, in most things.. then came a64! and conroe! and.. i think it was the fact that i didnt have to run what i was sold..

tho i really did hate my first ocing board, wich was a dfi.. i did take a celly 600 to 8 or 900 tho, i cant remember!

i do know that since around 2002 ive spent roughly 10k on hardware.. that kinda chews.. but its been a blast somewhat competeing with someof you guys in other forums, its been fun

btw, reading my post, i think i may have a lil ocd, and add.. ohcrap

Bones · #9 07-30-2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neuromancer

Oh yah buddy of mine tried talking me into getting a Soyo Dragon back in the day. Was a poorly paid serviceman though, wife a a second kid newly arrived and 2 car payments, I bought a cheap ass Biostar board. (Thought I killed it, threw it in a closet and 2 years later decided to fire it up. Worked great. Guess 48 hours was not enough time to discharge the caps :p)

Love that old board.
The Soyo still works to this day and I took a T-bred 2400+ over 2450MHz with it last year in NMC.
The A7N isn't a bad one either and this isn't the highest clock I've ever hit with it.
Pics of both included here.

This is why I do it.

Neuromancer · #10 07-30-2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by freeagent

i started out of curiousity.. i was in a forum about windows back in 2001 or 2, and a member linked to ocforums. i tried it out, killed some stuff, and went back for more!

Heh heh, this guy right here is the real reason I got started in Benchmarking not just OCing. Same forum back in 01/02 Doing the longhorn thing, started chatting, comparing stuff. It got to be great competition. He has had the upper hand most of the time, until A64. (He was slow to adopt) but when he buys HW he BUYS hw.

Never developed Shawn's sense of style. He spends $300 on a motherboard. I buy 4 $100 motherboards lol

IT has been fun though, and beating him in something is like what you guys feel grabbing top 3 in HWbot I guess. Its what I strive for

Thanks Shawn,

For a world of fun and world of hurt