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Who is the best overclocker?

Money is a big factor. In addition to knowledge, to get the most extreme performance overclocks you need expensive cooling systems, expensive components (e.g. memory that can handle speeds well above the official specs) and enough money to be able to risk frying your hardware secure in the knowledge that you can just buy more. Other very expensive kit can help. For example, a skilled artisan can lap contact surfaces very smooth and flat by hand, but high-end equipment can do it much better. Money comes into it with quantity, too - if you can afford to buy, say, a dozen CPUs of the same model rather than just one, you will probably get a higher CPU overclock because it will vary between individual CPUs.

Also, performance isn't just about the overclock. For example, memory timings. Someone who really understands all the settings will probably be able to get higher performance than someone who doesn't even with identical PCs with identical clock speeds.
 
WJA96

Most helpful overclocker I have found on these boards by far. ~Not your usual hellraising clocker but someone who engages brain first.

Best overclocker is the guy with the worst kit who modifies things to make it happen regardless.
 
I also thing that the best overclocks are % overclocks.

e.g. its not that hard to push a 2.93Ghz CPU to 3.4Ghz which is just a 15% oveclock, its a different ballgame to push a 100% overclock on 1.8Ghz CPU to 3.6Ghz

Also you have to take into account the technology of the chips you are clocking some are just much harder to clock and require more skill to do so.
 
BlastRadius said:
WJA96

Most helpful overclocker I have found on these boards by far. ~Not your usual hellraising clocker but someone who engages brain first.

Best overclocker is the guy with the worst kit who modifies things to make it happen regardless.
Click to expand...

I'll echo this. No one in this forum gives as much decent advice as WJA96.

Easyrider's 3.8GHz E6400 is really impressive, I remember first seeing that one and being incredibly jealous.
 
easyrider said:
13hrs3.jpg
;)
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pretty handy with photochop are we ;)
make the pics nice and compressed to find the editing flaws lol
im kidding

oooh no what have i started :D

Jokestar
W3bbo
Devious

are some of the others that come to mind
 
no-one gets good overclocks from crap parts, it's all about the luck of the draw or how many cpu's you are willing to try to get the 'special one'. sometimes just shouting enough of the same thing over and over gives a false impression too....not directed at anyone i swear :D:p

my L627B E6600 is a classic example, does 3.8ghz prime stable @ 1.4v under water.....OPB or Fugger couldn't equal that on the same cooling with an inferior chip but their results are insane because they get cherry picked hardware and use monster cascades.

one of the most impressive overclockers i've seen is Eva on XS - that guy really knows his stuff and is really committed and until recently only ever used water and air.
 
<maddness> said:
pretty handy with photochop are we ;)
make the pics nice and compressed to find the editing flaws lol
im kidding

oooh no what have i started :D

Easyrider
Jokestar
W3bbo
Devious

are some of the others that come to mind
Click to expand...


If I didn't have dealings with you and you really did mean it I would take offence.:p

But you know I always wants proof and credible screen shots of prime stabilty;)
 
lol, i still pretty much maintain there is very few "bad" chips/hardware. simply some chips that have different voltage ceilings, react slightly differently and don't clock in exactly the same way as others.

90% of people on forums see some guy say he has 3.4Ghz on a Q6600 at 1.5v, and 1.4v gave him 3.2Ghz, when they try the exact same thing and don't get the exact same result they give up and claim they had a duff chip, where tweaking a few voltages, fsb's, and burning in will give equal/better results.

mostly as with what must be 30-40 chips personally over the past 4-5 years i've had a single bad chip, and even that wasn't terrible a 2800+ 754 chip that would "only" do about 2.3Ghz, and didn't go up even at 2.2v, on air. with hundreds of chips at work, the high hundreds, i also only found 3 or 4 chips that wouldn't hit the upper limits of the averages on the net.

overclocking also has nothing to do with how much you can plough into a cascade, or who you know. a 5Ghz cascade p4 is far less impressive than a 3Ghz air xp/939 early on.

a lot of the best overclocks are situational, ln2 clocks are all but pointless, but nice for release presentations. living in the arctic circle with an aircon benching at 3am helps also ;)
 
Brwmogazos is one name that springs to mind as he had a P4 > 5ghz back when most people were struggling to get much over 4ghz. However I seem to remember him having to sell up his gear due to leaving the country.

As mentioned in this thread the problem with choosing the best overclocker is that a lot of it comes down to resources. Some people have the financial clout to get hold of both extreme cooling (phase) and effectively cherry-pick their cpu by buying more than one and then selling all but the best clockers.

Of course when clocking experience does come in to play, and some people really know how to manipulate voltages, obscure memory timings etc to get the best out of a chip. But in general the gains from doing that kind of stuff are much lower than those you get from throwing loads of cash at it.

Or in other words, if you were to take an everyday overclocker, give him a choice of 3 cpus, the best motherboard around and a high-end cooling solution (plus some time to get used to it) then chances are they would do better than an elite overclocker armed with an average mobo, single cpu and air cooling.

It's important to also distinguish between good overclockers and good benchers. They are not one and the same thing.
 
Welshtom no longer posts here.
fatty1 posted a few times but he is off back to OZ in a few weeks
Brwmogazos went back to Greece to do National service. He finished that I think, but doesn't post here anymore.
 
Of all the people in the UK currently running cascades, i think raja is the only person to have bought one - the rest have all built them, money isn't realy an issue. There are dozens of people on these forums with vastly more money, better spec'd PC components etc than most of the people who benchmark in the UK have.

I don't realy care about benchmarking but the guys who do benchmark in the UK have some real skill :)
 
I'm glad someone mentioned Tom, he really helped me get towards the top of a couple of weescotts tables but that level of knowledge/patience is beyond my attention span unfortunately.

He really knows all the little tweaks to extract the maximum from a clock too, for example i have no doubt that at the same clockspeeds his clocks would be demonsterably faster than mine.

Shame he ain't allowed here any more :( he's currently way under 11 seconds for 1mb superpi on an E6600.

Other than that I'd echo weescott, jokester and w3bbo tbh although I think w3bbo obssesses about stability (;) jk dude, kinda).

You're more likely to get maxxed out suicide shots off jokester, weescott and welshtom.

I touched greatness once... it was cold.. and then my motherboard broke.. again.
 
matt100 said:
Other than that I'd echo weescott, jokester and w3bbo tbh although I think w3bbo obssesses about stability (;) jk dude, kinda).
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Hey - I like a prime run too :D
pirun4.jpg


I enjoy doing superPI runs but tbh unless you have handpicked cpu's and an endless supply of ln2 you aint gonna be breaking any WR's anytime soon. Suicide shots/PI runs are good in a small community as its a fun challenge which I will gladly take part in. Personally I much prefer running a setup that can be used daily and is more indicative/informative of what the cpu is capable of and what can be achieved by the average Joe without the use of extreme cooling. Most consumers I'm sure would relate to this.






.........However, if you wanna gimme a cpu, copper pots, neoprene and a few barrels of ln2, I'll gladly pump 2v+ through it to see how far it will go:D
 
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