Off Topic:
strange that people are questioning the practice of overclocking
Hey Alex,
My point is that back in the day overclocking was more relevant, at least it seemed that way as the gains you got became noticable in a lot of day to day useage ... we all felt clever as we bought cheap chips and clocked them up to equal or run faster than the flagship processors, it was a nice *fuzzy* feeling as we all thought we were getting the extra performance for free . .
The simple fact is that an overclocked processor costs more money to run than a stock clocked chip which is something I personally didn't realise for years (seems daft in hindsight!) however there are still plenty of scenarios where it makes perfect sense to overclock and depending on your usage patterns the extra power usage may not be that great at all . . . although for a machine running 24/7 it will be very noticable . . .
People who overclock for benching and competitive benching is perfectly valid, it's a fun hobby and is basically "Mine is faster than yours!"
. . .I like to bench myself as its a great way to monitor tiny tiny improvements you have made that wouldn't necessarily be noticable to the human eye/senses but serves a purpose to confirm tha adjustments you have made in the BIOS are doing the system a slight bit of good . . . lots of tiny adjustments eventually becomes noticable if you string enough of them together . . .
Overclocking for overclocking's sake is that benchmarks aside, ePeen aside, what important purpose does it serve if you cannot notice it apart from an electricty bill that noticably becomes more expensive
I still personally like to find the max the chip will run, the overclocking process holds interest in the same way a puzzle game is interesting, but after the puzzle is solved . . . after the benching is done . . .after the ePeen is inflated what happens next . . . .well what normally happens is people settle on a much less agressive overclock for their day to day usage and get on with the real stuff which is to actually enjoy the computer, play games, record music, edit photo's etc etc
Does someone sit their gaming thinking about their 4GHz? . . probably not . . .would they notice if the chip was at 3.5GHz instead? . . probably not?
My point is basically this: overclocking/tweaking should be a one small part of the *total* computer experience . . not the
be-all-and-end-all . . I know from personal experience how easy it is to slip into obsession, to spend more money than is needed chasing, chasing this thing that is constantly elusive when actually everything I actually needed was right there in front of me . . .
Overclock/Tweak to get *optimal* performance . . . beyond this *optimal* point there is little reason for people to continue running an excessive overclock outside of benching! . . . it's just gonna cost more £££
If anybody has been overclocking for 5/10/15 years they will relate to what I am saying, if a newblood overclocker finds what I am saying strange I understand . . . . anyone who tries to make you feel inferior because their system is 500MHz faster than yours is not really a useful member of our community as already discussed outside of benchmarks it really is just a number for most people
Anywho, no point in an i3, or equivalent AMD, over my q6600 is there?
Not really unless you are bored with your LGA775 *puzzle*
