Overclocking the AMD Spider

An anonymous reader writes "AMD has released two videos that show an overview of the new AMD Spider platform and how easy it is to overclock it with a single tool. The AMD Spider is based on AMD Phenom processors, the newly released ATI Radeon HD 3800 series discrete graphics and AMD 7-Series chipsets."

Why overclock when you can undervolt?

[twfry]

I really don't see where the need to overclock comes from anymore. Today's speeds are pretty darn fast and I'd assume that if you actually have a real need for more processing power, that you should be able to come up with the couple hundred bucks for another socket/proc.

Lately I've been undervolting to build silent systems. The latest AMD Brisbane processors at 2.1GHz can be undervolted to 1.05V and still pass my stress tests at speed, and stay below 40C with the 'silent' fan modes.

Re:Why overclock when you can undervolt?

[bigstrat2003]

Everyone wants different stuff. I have less than no interest in a quiet (let alone silent) system, but I am interested in a fast system. I never have been an overclocker, but I can easily understand those who are... it's about squeezing every last drop of performance out of that chip. No different from wanting a silent system, really, as in both cases you're in a relative minority who's taking a concept to its extreme, they're just in different areas.

Re:Why overclock when you can undervolt?

[ceeam]

Why not? Moderately overclocked CPUs generally don't consume much more power (they're still on idle usually, and when they are not they finish their tasks _faster_), they are not louder, they are not less reliable even. Usually overclocking these days is just reversing "market positioning" and restoring proper, designed CPU speed. And if you ever do video encoding or play CPU-bound sims you can never have enough.

But I like silent systems too. But overclocked ones could be silent as well. The days of PIV and early Athlons are long gone thankfully and modern CPUs are pretty energy-efficient again.

Re:What's new?

[drinkypoo]

That IS new, and it IS a big deal. It is a sign! It's a sign that there's enough consumers who want their games to just fucking work on PC without having to worry about what hardware they're going to buy, like a console. Sure, you don't get all the benefits of console gaming, but you don't get all the drawbacks, either. So now AMD is interested in catering to this market - it means that the market [probably] exists, which indicates that the overall gaming market is growing. That's not news to most of us, but it's still a positive sign of the direction in which the market is heading. Personally, I am more interested in integrated systems today because I am no longer chasing the latest and greatest, I just want something cheap that works. My primary system is now a laptop (albeit the most powerful one that was available at the time I purchased it) and I like it that way. I am down to one desktop system and I have drive sleds for it so it can be a variety of testing systems. Everything else is a laptop or some other SFF unit (like my iopener, or my xbox.)