Is Overclocking Over? 405
MrSeb writes "Earlier this week, an ExtremeTech writer received a press release from a Romanian overclocking team that smashed a few overclocking records, including pushing Kingston's HyperX DDR3 memory to an incredible 3600MHz (at CL10). The Lab501 team did this, and their other record breakers, with the aid of liquid nitrogen which cooled the RAM down to a frosty -196C. That certainly qualifies as extreme, but is it news? Ten years ago, overclocking memory involved a certain amount of investigation, research, and risk, but in these days of super-fast RAM and manufacturer's warranties it seems a less intoxicating prospect. As it becomes increasingly difficult to justify what a person should overclock for, has the enthusiast passion for overclocking cooled off?"
Maybe, maybe not... (Score:5, Interesting)
From a gaming perspective (typically one of the big drivers of overclocking), a few factors that might argue "yes, it's over":
1) For quite a few years now, PC games haven't been forcing the kind of upgrade cycle that they did over the previous 20 years. When Crysis appeared in 2007, it was a game that gave many people an "upgrade or don't play it choice". And after that... the industry retreated. Consoles were the primary development platforms at the time and few PC games pushed significantly past the capabilities of the consoles. Not only did we not see any games more demanding than Crysis, but the vast majority of PC games released were substantially less demanding. As a gamer, if you had a PC that could run Crysis well, you did not need an upgrade. This situation lasted 4 years.
2) Performance has become about more than clock-speeds. The main advances in PC gaming technology over the last few years have come from successive versions of directx. You can't overclock a machine with a directx 9 graphics card so that it can "do" directx10. Same goes for dx10/11.
3) As the entry barriers to PC gaming get lower, the average knowledge level of users fall. PC gaming is, in general, easier and more convenient than it has been at any time in the past. Pick up an $800 PC, grab Steam and off you go. If you just want to play games and are using an off-the-shelf PC from a big manufacturer, you don't need to worry about switching around graphics drivers, sorting out hardware conflicts or any of the other little niggles that used to make PC gaming such a "joy". You can even find cases where PC gaming is easier than console gaming; the PS3, with its incessant firmware updates and mandatory installs has taken us a long way from the "insert game and play" roots of console gaming. People who are new to PC gaming just won't be coming from the kind of mindset that even considers overclocking as something you might even remotely want to do.
4) Among "old school" PC gamers, I think there's been a growing recognition that overclocking has its downsides as well. In an economic downturn, when money is tight, you don't necessarily want to go risking a huge reduction in the lifespan of your expensive toys.
That said, there are a couple of factors that might argue the other way (closely connected to the earlier arguments):
1) System requirements are finally on the move again. After years in stasis, 2011 has seen the release of a number of games with equivalent or higher requirements than Crysis. Bulletstorm started the trend, but Battlefield 3 and - to an even greater extent - Total War: Shogun 2 have really started to push the envelope on PC hardware. A lot of developers openly admit to being bored with console hardware. Even though they still get most of their sales from the consoles, they are using the PC to push beyond what they can achieve there, both to get their studio noticed and to get themselves ready for developing for the next round of console hardware.
2) The downturn also means that people feeling a squeeze on their budgets may be looking to get as much bang for their buck in terms of performance as possible. If you think that your new, overclocked PC will last long enough that you will be able to afford a replacement when it does start to give out, then why not take the risk?
No, it simply doesn't provide the extras it used t (Score:5, Interesting)
It used to mean windows would run faster, games would run faster, everything was FASTER MAN!!!!!111one.
But now overclocking for the at home folks is a case of hit a button in your bios, or in some cases a physical button on the motherboard, and it'll do some overclocking for you, automatically. As its become more automated, the news worthy stuff becomes more and more expensive to implement and show off, and so most things are less news worthy and so it appears "overclocking" happens less. In reality I'd expect it happens alot more, and maybe even when people aren't fully aware of what they are doing.
Also systems being so much faster now, generally provide the speed that users require of them, unless they are the kind of users to be pushing systems to overclock simply for the hell of it, like the guys who get in the news. However you don't see these guys then gaming and getting 200fps on these systems, or anything exciting like that anymore. Its simply overclocked, and shown it to be "stable" at said speed. No one ever goes "lets see how many FPS can we get outta this baby now!", its all become very much a concept thing rather than actually running systems at these speeds for any sensible amount of time.
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
I overclock my nook color from 800 mhz to 1200 mhz. I overcock my phone from 1 ghz to 1.4 ghz. My phone CPU's voltage doesn't change one bit and my Nook Color's CPU voltage is mildly higher. The CPU is far and away one of the least power consuming components of these devices -- the NC's screen uses around 1W and the cpu about 35mW. Unless you're overclocking the LCD, it the change in battery life is infinitesmal.
Hahahaha (Score:3, Interesting)
That's like saying, "Do nerds no longer need a proxy for phallic measurement?" As long as there's still testosterone (even if it is minimal in some here) there'll still be people (men mostly) looking to say "We did it first!"
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
You'll save a lot more battery if you undervoltage your CPU. Eg. My Galaxy Nexus by default runs at 1350mV. I can run it perfectly fine on 1200mV, even overclocked to 1,4GHz. By my (possibly completely wrong) logic, the faster the CPU runs, the shorter time it spends in higher voltage states. Thus, overclocking and keeping the same voltage (or even undervoltage) actually saves energy.
(Of course, underclocking also achieves the same since the voltage is lowered automatically. But then I've got a slower device rather than a faster device, while using more or less the same amount of juice.)
Re:It's not dead, it's fun! (Score:4, Interesting)
For me, It's fun and I could care less what some dude did with liquid nitrogen.
About this post, it's hard to determine whether this should be "could care less" or the classic "couldn't care less". :)
You could be interested about liquid nitrogen as you are an overclocker or, you're not as you don't want to go to such an advanced level it just being a fun hobby.
Re:Huh, no (Score:3, Interesting)
Why the fuck would anyone "compile distros all day" on their personal computer? If you're doing it for work, use the work machines. If you're doing it for a hobby, dude, get a better fucking hobby.
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
Noticed the typo just a litttttttle too late, heh.
Actually the Nook is one of the best devices to overclock that I've ever come across -- it's really quite slow running CM7 or CM9 and the extra CPU speed helps immensely. CM9 is unusable without the extra boost, and the overclock takes CM7 from somewhat laggy to silky smooth in most operations.
On my Epic, the overclock isn't super useful now that I'm running CM7 on it too. The normal stock Samsung build of Android has slight amounts of lag without the mild overclock, but CyanogenMod doesn't.