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Hardware Technology

Muscle Cars And Smokin' Chips 288

Posted by timothy from the lowrider-fx dept.
YetAnotherGeekGuy writes "IEEE Computer has an article this month, "The Zen of Overclocking" by Bob Colwell. In it the author compares overclockers to hot rodders (which, in my personal experience, are two sets with a significant intersection). More importantly he talks about the phenomenon, the culture, the attitude, and the natural tension between them and the industry in the quest for the right balance between performance and reliability. Thought-provoking, and some good one-liners. Enjoy!"
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Muscle Cars And Smokin' Chips More

Muscle Cars And Smokin' Chips

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  • too bad (Score:4, Funny)

    by AnonymousCowheart ( 646429 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @12:54AM (#8625305)
    "In it the author compares overclockers to hot rodders"
    Too bad the ladies don't think of it the same way...

    • Re:too bad (Score:5, Funny)

      by Not The Real Me ( 538784 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:00AM (#8625338)
      Very true. The muscle car dudes are thought of as masculine and manly, and are the ultimate chick magnets. They score with all the hot chicks and eventually become ultra-successful business executives.

      The overclocking dudes are thought of as girly Poindexters, who if they are lucky, will have a cubicle larger than a bread box and might even move out of their mommy's basement before they turn 45 -- about the same time they lose their virginity.

      • Re:too bad (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gujo-odori ( 473191 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @02:52AM (#8625809)
        I'm an ex-street racer/hot rodder (my two favorite cars were a '70 Challenger whose 383 I replaced with a 440, and my factory 340 '69 Dart Swinger).

        I can tell you that very few of the guys in the street racing and cruising scene came out there with girls, or even had girlfriends. A few of them were married, but they typically only came out for the cruise portions. The racing, which happened later in the evening on dark roads around the city, was attended by young, unattached males.

        Think about it: if you have a girlfriend, how content is she going to be that you spend most of your time and money on your street machine, and your idea of a good time on Saturday night is going to the parking lot cruise at Mervyn's, then heading out to Kearny VIlla for racing? Most of the very few girls I met back then who thought that was fun actually had their own cars, and the cars were better than most of the guys' rides. Their owners could drive, too. The proof of this was that if a guy did get a girlfriend, he would usually become pretty scarce in the street scene after that.

        Even in the seventies at Ruffin Road, where people sometimes even trailered in cars, and ones brought on a tow bar were not at all unusual, those hot summer nights were still almost exclusively male summer nights. I'd guesstimate that no more - and probably less - then ten percent of those guys had girlfriends. That's probably even worse than the Slashdot percentage :-)

        I don't know how things are now, because I'm married and have kids and that just takes precedence over fast cars and makes racing absolutely out of the question, but back in the late eighties/early nineties when I was last involved in the scene, it had mostly been taken over by riced-up Japanese cars and (far worse) lifted mini-trucks whose height above the ground was far higher than the IQs of their drivers. I bet most of those guys didn't have girlfriends either.

        The fact is, most of the hot rodders and street racers have a great deal in common with overclockers (which is probably why I occassionally dabble in overclocking myself): they're technology nerds. Most of them were far more interested in cams, pistons, and going on junkyard crawls looking for cool rare parts than they were in cruising for girls. It was pretty common to turn out early Saturday morning at the Ecology yard in Otay Mesa, toolbox in hand and cash in pocket, and run into people you knew from Saturday night.

        Overclockers are the new hotrodders.
        • Think about it: if you have a girlfriend, how content is she going to be that you spend most of your time and money on your street machine, and your idea of a good time on Saturday night is going to the parking lot cruise at Mervyn's, then heading out to Kearny VIlla for racing?

          You know you're doing something cool when your g/f says "GOD DAMNIT NOT ANOTHER ONE!?!?" and you already know what shes talking about :)

    • Re:too bad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by G-funk ( 22712 ) <josh@gfunk007.com> on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:07AM (#8625374) Homepage Journal
      I think there really is a parallel between car-modifiers and pc-modifiers. There's really four classes:

      a) The "don't know, don't care" crowd. They let a salesman or a "friend who knows about [computers|cars]" tell them what to buy, and they take it to the shop for every bit of maintanence.

      b) The DIYers (like myself) who will change their own oil, brakes, and motherboards.

      c) The real overclokers, and the hot-rodders, who push the boundaries of their chosen field, and are really into getting the most performance from their machines.

      d) Ricers. People with "Type R" stickers, big wings, windows in their cases, clear fans, and who think neon has any place apart from outside a strip-joint.

      • Re:too bad (Score:4, Interesting)

        by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:16AM (#8625434) Homepage Journal
        c) The real overclokers, and the hot-rodders, who push the boundaries of their chosen field, and are really into getting the most performance from their machines.

        d) Ricers. People with "Type R" stickers, big wings, windows in their cases, clear fans, and who think neon has any place apart from outside a strip-joint.

        I kind of have a problem with this.

        Yeah, i'll say that I could equate "ricers" with people who buy a windowd case for their celeron 1700 with onboard video. I'll give you that.

        However, I always split up the overclocker-slash-hotrodder into two camps:

        Muscle Cars - These people use Intel processors. Their processors are almost hopelessly inefficient, huge, expensive, not very intelligent, and run hot. However, they make it all up in raw speed (displacement / horsepower equal to clock cycles)

        Street Racers - These people are the Honda crowd. They buy AMD's because they're cheaper and more intelligent. They know that the clock cycles don't mean as much when your processor isn't able to do as much with them. They value technology over raw power. However, technology only can go so far - currently, the 2.2L VTEC, even when boosted, can't compete with the 460 big block.

        ~Will

        ~Will
        • I don't think there's a great 1:1 comparison here. It's kind of a fuzzy land, because modern large displacement engines have quite a bit of technology pushing them along too. And Intel (your big block analogy) doesn't outrun AMD (your 4-banger analogy) ;). A 2.2L VTEC will never outrun a 460cid (that's like 7.8L-7.9L) V8 without a great disparity in engineering.

        • Re:too bad (Score:2, Flamebait)

          by 74nova ( 737399 )
          hehe... wait, wait, wait. you think it's cheaper to build a honda than a nova? i buy amd's because theyre cheaper and more intelligent. hey, that's the same reason i buy old hot rods, too. well, at least the cheaper part. i can buy a $1k nova(or whatever) and dump $3k into it to put it into the 12's. try THAT with a honda without going back to the 80's and abandoning modern well-engineered honda motors.

          upon second read of your post, you admit that a boosted 2.2 vtec cant compete with a 460. it's a

          • A 2.2L can beat a 8.0+L.... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by xtal ( 49134 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @02:38AM (#8625764)
            Just make that 4000lb monster car turn. F1 cars are only 3.5L for a reason. In most parts of the world, racing involves doing something besides driving in a straight line. A 2.2L engine can deliver 400 hp for a long time; the problem is when you get to rediculous levels of HP it isn't good for a whole lot outside of a drag strip. You can't put the power down.

            upon second read of your post, you admit that a boosted 2.2 vtec cant compete with a 460. it's also going to cost a hell of a lot more to build the honda motor. 4cylinders can be plenty fast, but it takes HUGE amounts of money to do it, especially with hondas.

            4 cylinders means you only need 4 forged connecting rods and pistons and half the honing time. In fact, it works out cheaper to build a very fast 4cyl engine - you don't even need as big a turbo. I am just finishing a project to get 300hp from a 1600cc honda engine. The total expenditure was around $3000cdn, and that was most ly because I wanted to get a brand new turbo not a rebuilt one. That INCLUDED buying another engine to work on. There are millions of those engines and they are cheap.

            You can't work on a V8 engine in your kitchen. A dismantled little 4 banger is very easy to work with. Two guys can easily pick it up. One guy can pick it up dismantled.

            Do you know what insurance is on a 1600cc engine compared to a 8000cc engine?

            Very few people take it this far, but there are a lot of very fast Hondas out there. It once was more expensive, but now it's very cheap to build a 12 second Honda. Cheaper if you don't care about it blowing up.

            Lots and lots of people do this.

            Turbo D16 [turbod16.com] has lots of pointers on how to get started on cheap turbo setups.

            • F1 cars are only 3.5L for a reason.

              Yea. It's called a formula. If they could have bigger engines, they would.
            • F1 cars are only 3.5L for a reason

              Yes, because it's the rules. If they could have bigger engines, they would. And they're also $500,000 grenades that need a replacement/rebuild every race. Not exactly something one can apply to the garage rodder.

              You can't work on a V8 engine in your kitchen. A dismantled little 4 banger is very easy to work with. Two guys can easily pick it up. One guy can pick it up dismantled.

              All true. But I like to use my kitchen for you know, cooking. If you don't have an engine h

            • Re:A 2.2L can beat a 8.0+L.... (Score:5, Informative)

              by StillAnonymous ( 595680 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @06:08AM (#8626381)
              What the fuck are you talking about and what fantasy world are you living in?

              The rules of F1 were already stated.. I won't mention that again.

              "A 2.2L engine can deliver 400 hp for a long time"

              Not nearly as long as a V8 could. A V8 doesn't have to work as hard to generate this kind of power. And torque? Hah. Big blocks rule the torque arena.

              "4 cylinders means you only need 4 forged connecting rods and pistons and half the honing time" ..And you wind up with only half the powerplant..

              "I am just finishing a project to get 300hp from a 1600cc honda engine. The total expenditure was around $3000cdn"

              For $3k, do you know what you could have done with an old V8? Well, far more than 300HP, I'll tell you.

              "You can't work on a V8 engine in your kitchen."

              What kind of drugs ARE you on? I wouldn't work on ANY engine in my kitchen. That's where I prepare food, for fuck's sake. I have a garage for this reason.

              "Do you know what insurance is on a 1600cc engine compared to a 8000cc engine?"

              Smoking the peyote again, are you? Engine size is not the be-all end-all of insurance premiums.. In my city, a 2004 Civic costs DOUBLE what it is to insure a 1969 Camaro. The year of the car is the main determining factor.

              "Turbo D16 has lots of pointers on how to get started on cheap turbo setups."

              And this is exactly where the ricers fail to understand: whatever you can do to a little 2.2L engine, you can do to a 5.7L+ engine. I consistently hear quotes like "oh, all I have to do is throw a turbo or nitrous on my civic and I'll blow that stock mustang away". Okay, buddy, and if the mustang throws a turbo or nitrous on his engine? Then what? Huh? yeah, you get beaten again, and he paid half the price you did.

              These little cars are great for day-to-day driving, but just fucking accept the fact that if you want to soup them up, they are 5x more expensive than a large-engine car and nowhere near as simple to work on.

              • Re:A 2.2L can beat a 8.0+L.... (Score:4, Interesting)

                by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @10:27AM (#8627014) Homepage
                Smoking the peyote again, are you? Engine size is not the be-all end-all of insurance premiums.. In my city, a 2004 Civic costs DOUBLE what it is to insure a 1969 Camaro. The year of the car is the main determining factor.

                The cost and chance of theft are the main factors. My Jag costs several times what the wife's VW does on insurance.

                Overclocking and engine tweaking are very much alike because they are both almost completely pointless and significantly reduce the lifetime of the machine.

                The main reason to get a performance car is handling. It does not matter what you do to the engine, the ability to turn corners will not improve.

                Of course there is a lot that can be done to improve the handling of a US built car, most have abysmal suspensions and terrible steering. My wife used to drive an Omni that her father had given her. The thing felt like it was close to tipping over when you went round an off ramp. Somehow it managed to have understeer AND oversteer at the same time. It was like there was whiplash in the steering, first the thing did not want to turn, then the back end would kick round. This type of behavior was happening at like 30 to 40 mph. Later she was given a Horizon (same car) of the same vintage - just as bad.

                I don't think the SUV craze cold have happened the same anywhere else. You have to start with a tollerance for bad suspensions to end up paying $60K for a delivery truck with leather seats.

                Given the choice of speed or handling I will pick handling every time.

              • Re:A 2.2L can beat a 8.0+L.... (Score:4, Interesting)

                by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday March 21, 2004 @12:47PM (#8627701) Homepage Journal
                You are right that if you want to make a small engine car do the things a large engine car does, it tends to be expensive. To wit: Making them go fast in a straight line. Very few larger vehicles have much in the way of handling. The viper, for example, is supposed to be something of a dog at lower speeds. The corvette only got handling back from its olden days (and then, only comparatively) in the C5 model. Also there is the issue that american cars to this day tend to be built like shit. Since basically everyone is making essentially all their cars FWD, front-engine, transverse mounting they are now all a super pain in the ass to work on. The fact that muscle cars are still front engine, rear drive, without transverse mounting, is the prime attraction for me. Luckily I have an older Nissan which is RWD.

                Now let's come back to the cost to performance analysis from a different angle; Something other than drag racing. It is downright expensive to make a Mustang handle well. First of all only the top end models have come with IRS, and without IRS you don't have handling on uneven surfaces, period. You can argue the point, but when you're making camber switches (as in, the road comes up one way and falls down another) under power, you need IRS. Second the car is heavy and you simply need to reduce that weight as much as possible. The more weight you want to drop, the more it costs. Meanwhile Japanese cars made twenty and more years ago (240Z, anyone?) can outhandle the most modern Mustang GT - and that's not even the example of prime handling.

                So, the point is, it's a question of what you want and what you want to spend on it. You can spend $35,485 to get a Mustang Cobra SVT (390HP) or you can spend $31,670 on a Subaru WRX with 300HP, spend the other $3k on chip, turbo, cam, and fuel system upgrades, bump it to around 375-400hp, and go blow away the mustang. The point is that for the same price as a stock american car you can cleanly improve a japanese car to the point where it will kick the shit out of the american one.

                Now if you are into hobbyist hot rodding, which is to say on the cheap, then American cars have the distinct advantage of being inexpensive, numerous, and pre-smog (for Californians.) There's just not that many interesting early Japanese cars. There's the 240Z, for example, and they are fairly numerous, but there's not THAT many of them. But the other advantage of American cars is that there's a lot of them around here, and they tend to use the same or similar parts over their lifespans. For example in a lot of these motors you can get a crank out of a motor that used the same block with a different bore and stroke, and the heads off a third motor which also used the same block, and make some frankenstein motor with high compression utilizing only stock parts found in a junkyard, and doing some machining/having it done. The machining jobs are necessary on any kind of vehicle so that's no shock. I'm probably going to have the reciprocating assembly on my 2.4 liter balanced; forged rods and pistons are expensive! I can't imagine buying eight forged rods and pistons, plus all the other hardware. It costs enough to do a four cylinder.

                So, in summary: Muscle cars don't handle. The ones that think they do are wrong. They do have their advantages, especially for straight-line driving, but please do try to remember that weight works against you and some of the most insane drag race times (outside of top fuel) have been set in CRXs. Of course, they had american engines in 'em... But then again Jun has a 1,600 horsepower nissan skyline, and it still looks like a (really slick) street car. Argh, I'm getting tangiential again. If you want to go fast in a straight line cheap, American cars do that better than anyone. If you want to go fastest around corners though, Japanese is the only choice.

        • Actually I would say it's the other way around.

          Muscle Cars - These people use AMD processors. Their processors are very cheap for their performance. And most of them hate Intel with a vengance.

          Imports (Street Racers are anyone who races in the streets, I have a mustang cobra which is a muscle car and I street race, an import is any car from outside the US) - These people buy Intel. They have higher clock speeds so they MUST be faster. They don't really care much about AMD and they spend a lot more
          • Dude Intel CPU's have been putting out more heat for at least the last year. Check out the thermal design specs for each and you will see that Intel's max is about 20% higher. I bought what was probably the last CPU from AMD to produce more heat than the comparable Intel chip, the 1.2GHz classic Tbird.
            • Let us also not forget that Intel began the craze with CPUs that are self-destructive when uncooled. Oh sure, Cray did it better, but I'm talking about mass-market. The original pentium engineering test samples are rumored to have melted their sockets.

        • Not all displacement (Score:4, Interesting)

          by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @03:17AM (#8625902) Homepage Journal
          The model T engine had a 2.8 liter engine and put out a whopping... 22hp.
          • The T had a 4.5 to 5.0 compression ratio and a redline of less than 2000 RPM. My 2.4 liter (Nissan's ubiquitous KA24E - I bring it up because it's a more modern economy truck engine) has an 8.6:1 (pretty standard) CR and redlines at 6400 (also pretty normal) and puts out 155bhp. So, 22hp is pretty good :)
        • Rodders have a saying, "there's no replacement for displacement" so maybe there is a similar saying for megahertz?
          • There's not now, although there may be one in the future, and it's because the technologys aren't simiilar enough.

            It's true that clock speed puts an upper bound on what you can do, but in the general case no chip today can max out it's clockspeed effectively, because of other factors. Imagine if nobody had bothered to make new transmissions in the last 50 years, but we still had badass engines. Then the saying would be "theres no replacement for a good tranny", and everyone would think hot rodders like tra

        • Re:too bad (Score:3, Informative)

          by G-funk ( 22712 )
          Small engines have better performance per litre than big engines. Not because chevy sucks and honda rocks, just because it's the law of diminishing returns. Adding CCs is a more efficient way to increase power than adding vtec. The most fuel efficient engine in the world is also the most powerful [bath.ac.uk] and one of the biggest.

          Really, who cares if your car has a 2 litre turbo or a 5 litre v8, if they make similar power? They're both going to use a similar amount of fuel.

          When you get down to it, the reason japanes
        • The funny thing is that the AMD processor is very much like the big V-8 and the Intel processor is like the turbocharged four or six. AMD processors do more per cycle and have less cycles, right? No replacement for displacement, AKA bring on the functional units. Intel processors don't do as much per cycle but they run a lot of cycles. If they miss a prediction (miss a shift, I guess is the best analogy) then it costs them more than it costs the AMD chip.

          This is inverse to the real world because the AMD p

    • Can't kill yourself with a computer. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xtal ( 49134 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:07AM (#8625376)
      Braking from 150mph into an increasing radius turn off the back straight on the other hand.. Women like men who are confident, and there's not much room for indecision on a racetrack.

      (Often) ladies don't find too much that's macho about a XP chip running at 3000mhz (duh), and there's not much risk other than the possible damage to your bank account. So I think this article is just tripe to make those with low self esteem feel better about themselves.

      "Overclockers say, "Instead of buying a new PC, just overclock the old one."

      I don't know any overclockers that say that. I run a mildly overclocked system because I can with no impact on reliability. I've run extremely overclocked and watercooled systems in the past. It was not done to save money on a new PC - a combination of the very top of the line being insanely priced, and "because I can". This article feels like fluff and has a questionable feel to it. I'm suprised it's from the IEEE.

      On the other hand, in my own experience fast cars are a lot more fun than fast women. :-)

    • Re:too bad (Score:4, Funny)

      by ChazeFroy ( 51595 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:10AM (#8625388) Homepage
      Thought-provoking, and some good one-liners.

      Minus the "thought-provoking" comment, how dare he rip off every single review of every American movie from the ten years.

    • Re:too bad (Score:4, Funny)

      by Epistax ( 544591 ) <epistax@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:10AM (#8625390) Journal
      Something about knowing your heat dissipating per square inch just doesn't impressive. What they really like is when you can convert Fahrenheit to Kelvin in your head. THAT gets the ladies.
    • Yeah I know. I mean overclockers buy some top of the line $1,500 PC (if you build it yourself, that goal's quite easy especially when you already have a killer sound system and monitor.) Then some $400 (that's a high guess too) water cooling/peltier setup.

      A fairly cheap hot rodder spends $3,000 on a body $5,000 on a crate motor, $2,000 on a tranny, $4,000 on a supercharger, $4,000 on a paint job (add $2,000 for flames and pinstriping) drives around town in his fast, shinny, custom hot rod unless he's a

  • The AOL Top Speed ads (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 21, 2004 @12:54AM (#8625308)
    That's all I could think of when I read this story. (It turns out it's for speeding up the internet, not cars!)

  • How times do change... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @12:56AM (#8625316) Homepage Journal
    My dad and I were talking with some friends, and I realized a huge "generation" gap.

    They were telling a story about the struggle to drop an engine into a classic muscle car without a lot of room.

    My dad and I countered with a story about the problems with seating some RAM in a motherboard without a lot of room.

    Computer Geeks - the gearheads of the future.
    • How is this a generational thing when both you and your dad told a story about RAM? Wouldn't it make more sense here if it was your dad talking about the car engine and you and a friend talking about the RAM?

      I don't think it's generational at all. Some people are into cars, even still. Others are into Computers. Some are into airplanes. Others like golf. It's just what you like to do.
      • Note the quotes around "generation" - because it's not a person-to-person generation, but an entire era of interests. Almost everyone I know that grew up in the fifties and sixties tells stories of "working on their car." I know very few people that still do this - partly because cars are much more difficult to work on yourself, and partly because people are spending that time working on their computers.

        I know I used the word loosely... at least I know what I meant! :)

    • Re:How times do change... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mad mad ninja ( 610973 ) <will_frag_for_bandwidth.comcast@net> on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:50AM (#8625595)
      I know completely what you mean.
      I have a auto tech class, and much of the talk seemed similar to computer moding/repair, like how most people do not anything about the car or pc, only pay attention to the idiot lights (a big window that pops up and says "dude, you got a fuxored pc") and never open up the inside.
      But modding a car is much more difficult than a PC, as due to the fact it has much more parts that can be removed, as opposed to a pc where there are many parts, but are grouped in larger chunks (video card, motherboard, cpu) and once you figure out what is wrong, you either do a software fix, or replace it as fixing the hardware is probably extremely expensive for what you would need to do (fixing a single cell of bad ram), so it would just be cheaper to go buy a new stick of RAM.

      Cars on the other hand have several systems, that keep subdividing, and have many removeable parts, as if a piston ring is faulty (think of it as a little bit of the cpu) you car will either not funtcion, or not work good, if it was a cpu, you would toss it, but in a car, you would take the time to trace it to a componet and replace it.

      thus, I think overclocking is wanting to be like car modding, but just cannot get the outside respect of car modding. In the long run I think cpu modding is easier (a quick trip into BIOS and maybe 10 minutes of time), but in the long run could be much more difficult (getting tech to let you modify the chips themselfs to work better and other detail modding, even replacing circuits and building faster software). So, we are kind of the next hotrodders, thats why people have lan parties you know.

  • Unnecessary power (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gnuzip ( 670049 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @12:57AM (#8625317) Journal
    They both appeal to people who like to have unnecessary power, simply for the sake of having the additional power, and being able to say "My XYZ can outperform your XYZ", even though efficiency or safety drop dramatically. They're both pretty useless, but they can both be enjoyed as hobbies.
    • I disagree. I overclock, not often, not insanely. I don't do it to say, My XYZ is better than yours, or because I want power for the sake of power. I just want to improve my performance, because I can. Do I need my UT2k3 frame rate to go up from 40 to 45? No. I'm not doing it to prove some point. I just think that if my processor has the headroom, I might as well use it. And it doesn't drop efficiency or safety. I test what I overclock, and regardless of what the Intel engineer claims, I don't get

    • Re:Unnecessary power (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Vancorps ( 746090 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:12AM (#8625408)
      Rrrrright, completely ignore all the science that goes into it. Sorry, but a NOS kit installation properly done does take some talenet. Now program the NOS timer and engine monitor components so your laptop reads out and adjusts the car as needed.

      There is a lot more involved than I think you've taken the time to think about.

      Your statements also ignore the fact that cars are designed to behave the best for the most people. Modding your car does not necessarily mean you are dropping safety or reliability. You can mod your car and end up with much better mileage, conversely you can mod it for better performance which you claim is unnecessary. For many people it is, for some who drive from Phoenix to LA or to Dallas the story changes, there are long stretches where there is no speed limit or the weird AZ traffic laws kick in and everybody goes as fast as their cars will allow to shave an hour or more off their trip.

      I'd say if you're doing the work yourself then its a real good hobby. If you're doing it just because you have the money then yep, completely unnecessary but others would say a 21" monitor is completely unnecessary and still others who say phones and TV aren't necessary, from one perspective they're right but from a lot of other perspectives they're wrong.

    • Pushing boundaries does entail greater risks.

      The same way Toyota or some other manufacturer engineer safety margins, alloy tolerances and so on to trade-off factors to get an an all-around desired target of reliability, power, efficiency, safety. The engineering team most likely knows what they are doing.

      An individual or small time shop can modify things to get characteristics they desire more, at their own risk and usually without the engineering and testing tools to verify the changes as being safe. P
    • They both appeal to people who like to have unnecessary power, simply for the sake of having the additional power, and being able to say "My XYZ can outperform your XYZ", even though efficiency or safety drop dramatically.

      Hardly. Every turbocharged car on the market now comes running pig-rich from the factory. Evening out the A/F ratio to something sensical will increase power, increase mileage, and greatley lessen the chances of running so rich fouling your cats (of which some newer cars have 3).
      • And also increase the risk of your fuel/air mixture getting too lean, and causing detonation, which can result in very expensive damage to engine components. It is better to err on the side of too rich than too lean. They probably are leaving a bit to wide of a buffer, but make sure you know what you are doing, and do not make it TOO lean. As boost increases you need more fuel to keep the fuel/air mixture at the right level. If you decrease the amount of fuel you run the risk of leaning out at higher levels
  • Ehhh.

    He's just jealous because his box crashes on Irrelevant Benchmark Number 6 Epsilon. Mine gets pi. If he put all his chips in a circle and insulated them with rare unguents from the East it'd work.

  • Right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by niko9 ( 315647 ) * on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:05AM (#8625367)
    Except that most kids today think that souping up a PC means a window and lights.

    I'll stick with my stock (i.e. quiet) box anyday.

    --
    • There is a sub-set of hot-rodders who do the same thing. Running lights, spinner rims and chrome are the important thing, not the performance.

      It's all about the bling.
      • There is a sub-set of hot-rodders who do the same thing. Running lights, spinner rims and chrome are the important thing, not the performance.

        And sticking feathers up your butt doesn't make you a chicken.

        Slapping a red "R" sticker, a bleu LED exhaust pipe, a "4U2NVUS" vanity plate doesn't make you a "hot rodder", it's makes you seem desperate for attention. Oh, and a rear window "I saw you lookin'" sticker doesn't count either.

        --

    • Re:Right (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theLOUDroom ( 556455 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:11AM (#8625401)
      Except that most kids today think that souping up a PC means a window and lights.

      And....most kids today think that souping up a car means a big wing and lights.
      • Don't forget muffler to match, oh yeah, it has to be real loud, cause real loud means its going fast!
        • i almost totally agree with your sarcastic remark, but i must argue on one small point: this is not limited to imports. here in oklahoma, the rednecks feel the same way about their trucks. loud != fast
          • Same thing happens with motor cycles, some people just aren't happy unless you can hear them from miles away.
            • I know people (cyclists) who would argue with you on that point. To them, they're not loud for the sake of being loud but so people on four wheels will notice them when they're in their blindspot in the next lane. Direct quote from a biker friend shortly after being run onto the shoulder in the above mentioned situation; "Man, i gotta get a louder bike so these assholes notice me."
              • That would almost be a valid point, it is one I've heard of before, and to that I say, use your damned horn! A constant noise has the exact same effect. When the bike is loud enough you can't tell where it is even though its right behind you or next to you.
                • I dunno about you and your car's soundproofing but I sure can tell where they are.

                  The horn doesn't work coz they don't use it all the time, nor should they.

                  Not saying they should be really loud, but I bet many a biker has been saved by the noise.
    • Overclockers are a subset of modders. There are modders that bias themselves towards quiet versus performance. There are even several sites that devote themselves to silent PCs.

      These modders switch out fans, get larger heat sinks add heat pipes, swap out to quieter power supplies, strategically add sound absorbing materials. Trading small high RPM fans for larger lower RPM fans with same flow ratings usually net a much quieter fan. IIRC, heat pipes were introduced last year to modder community, but Com
  • To get significant performance increases from modern engines, over-clocking, or rather hacking the ECM is essential. It's the only way to tweak a stock engine.
    • It's the only way to tweak a stock engine.

      ECM mods are one way to increase performance, and are important for anyone serious about it, but they're hardly the only way. Simple intake and exhaust mods can yield non-trivial gains, when done properly. And tweaking the power adder on turbo- and supercharged engines can yield significant gains, even with the stock ECM.
    • "To get significant performance increases from modern engines, over-clocking, or rather hacking the ECM is essential. It's the only way to tweak a stock engine."

      Spoken like someone who's never worked under the hood.

      Look, there are plenty of engines and cars out there, from import four-bangers to big-block muscle cars, that require knowing zilch about computers other than they're the black (or metal, most likely) box that runs your fuel injection. (Of course, this means we're cutting out the old-school ca

  • nice article (Score:4, Insightful)

    by UniverseIsADoughnut ( 170909 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:17AM (#8625444)
    I think he made good comparisons and was right on. I wish more people would catch on to things like he mentioned about the locking of chips. The groups that think some company is conspiring against them are as he says insignificant. Probably at best 1% of people overclock, and even then it just means better chance Intel and AMD will get to sell this person more chips since the person fried theirs. This same concept can be expanded to most any conspiracy their people come up with, especialy the ones thought up by many people here.

    Then again, such groups of people never seam to catch on that they don't matter.

    This isn't a troll, just a point, so many people come up with these ideas about companies doing this or that to block linux, or saying linux has so much influence, but the reality is, it is such a small share that companies just don't care. MS may worry about linux in server space, but could care less on desktops. For any move that may seam like something they or any other company does to counter linux can better be explained by non-linux theories. Really it's an over thinking of linux's place that hurts it. It you accept it being small and having no effect you have more the right mindset to change that. If you think it's everywhere and a big force you are blind to it's flaws and less likely to do things to improve it's place. This goes past linux and applies to so many things. People who think everyone overclocks their chips are blind to the fact everyone does not, and thus don't get the fact that the Chip makers don't care about what they do.
    • MS may worry about linux in server space, but could care less on desktops.

      Do yourselves a favor and read Clayton Christensen book about Disruptive Technologies. [disruptive...logies.com] Your comment,if true, is precisely the pitfall he points out in the Innovators Dilemma.

      MS might be many things but the people running it are not stupid and I will venture they are deeply concerned about Linux on Desktop.

    • Stability gets a lot more done than something you have to rebuild after every race. Simply making it through the race, even if it's a quarter mile, requires significant amounts of stability and reliability. Not that performance isn't important, but the two are related, and an "increase" in one will probably facilitate similar changes in the other. An increase in stability is, after all, to a greater or lesser extent, an increase in performance.

      I purchased a Tyan S2390B motherboard with the "B" being the th

  • Overclocking != Instability (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brucmack ( 572780 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:17AM (#8625446)
    First off, since the author worked for Intel over a long period of time, I wouldn't call him the most unbiased of observers... And his claim that he's just an engineer seems rather odd as well. The computer engineers I know are probably more interested in making things run as fast as possible.

    Secondly, there isn't this automatic corellation between overclocking and instability. Sure, it's less stable if one takes it too far, but the way modern processors are made, most lower-speed processors are capable of running with their higher-speed brethren. Sure, if one buys the latest and greatest, it probably isn't going to go very far. But when the P4 and 2.4 GHz is identical to the one running at 1.8 GHz but for the multiplier, it's another story.

    I overclock my processor and video card to avoid having to buy a more expensive component. I don't go too far, don't overvolt the processor too much, etc. So I don't have any instability issues. Yet I still run my components about 25% faster.
  • Being chased down for driving fast comes with the territory when hot rodding a car, truck or motorcycle - then there's things like explaining how the throttle stuck, and needing time on the dyno and wondering if the fuel leak was fixed - the worst thing o'clockers need to worry about is letting the smoke out and being down on Jolt and blowing next weeks allowance.

    Been there done that, and having a fast car/bike is much better than having a fast computer...you can't outrun the cops with a beige box that j

  • Don't you know? (Score:5, Funny)

    by walter_kovacs ( 763951 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:28AM (#8625490) Homepage Journal
    I've got a 6 liter v8 honda civic and a duron overclocked with nitrogen to over 5ghz, so I must have a REALLY small penis. ;-)

  • The mental process is similar. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BCW2 ( 168187 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:29AM (#8625500) Journal
    In my youth I was a hot rodder. Then race car mechanic and crew chief(on outlaw sprint cars). Now I'm a programmer who tweeks the components to get the best performance at home. Looks are ok but performance is the deal.

    Winning isn't everything, but second is the first loser.
    • Now I'm a programmer who tweeks the components to get the best performance at home. Looks are ok but performance is the deal.

      Just one question: what do you use the performance for? I always hear about overclocking and this and that, but no one in the hobby seems to mention much what they do with the added power.

      Winning isn't everything, but second is the first loser.

      I suppose, but in many sports second (and even third) place still pays quite well. :-) I'll happily own a racehorse that *consistently*

      • Power and performance?

        The driving force in the PC industry today is games. There is no reason to have a 3Ghz processor and a $400 video card to do business applications. Games and their ever increasing requirements are what drives all performance oriented development. In workstations the driving force is graphics work and CAD. Those are really the only things requireing the kind of power available today.

  • don't flatter yourself (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportlandNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:31AM (#8625508) Homepage Journal
    Other then the fact that they take something they own and modify it, there are no similarities.

    As somone who grew up around muscle cars,in the 70's, and then went on to overclock almost every generation of intel processor, I feel I can speak on this issue.

    People who hot rod risk there lives. Doing 180 down any street can be fatal, even in the best conditions. Ever see a car lose control at 150 MPH? I have, it aint pretty.

    Ever see what happens when your computer CPU stops working? not a whole lot.

    Here's something you never hear:
    "Mike was overclocking is 3G to 3.75 when suddenly he blew a tire. He'll be out of the hospital in a few month."

    I understand pushing the computer to it's limits, and then some. But It is not as exhilarating as driving so fast the line is solid and one flase move and your going to experience serious hurting. Thats a whole different level of commiment.

    On one hand, I'm glad I don't drive like that any more, OTOH somedays I miss it.

    My point is, the people arn't as similiar as people on the board seem to think.

    Besides, as a kid I always felt I was getting away with something nasty when I would talk about hooker headers.

    • Well, on the bright side, when an overclocker screws up, he won't run the chance of ruining/taking his and non-participants lives and waste municipal resources to clean up his mess.

      On a more serious note, I think you're missing the point. The similarity isn't about the risk taking. The similarity is in their desire to innovate on their own and confidence in their own understanding of the principles behind the machines.

  • Learn by junking old parts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:34AM (#8625518) Homepage Journal
    Modding can be a rite of passage and learning experience before old parts are finally chucked into the bin and/or recycled.
    While personally I have done very little modding byeond simple putting them together in the first place to any of the machines I use every day (added a couple of fans to one, things of that nature), I remember one time the place where a friend of mine works was throwing out all of their old machines. They stripped out all of the hard drives, and told the employees that if any of them wanted any of the machines they could take them. Well after a few days when they were about to throw them away my friend grabbed everything they had left.
    Most of the boxes were old 133mz pentiums, there were a couple of 486s and a few newer machines (P3s if I remember correctly). Since they were not allowed to resell the machines or give them to anyone else, and there was no way my friend was going to use all these machines, we decided to have a little fun with them.
    We did some really odd things to those machines, just trying to see what the limits were of still having a bootable machine.
    The thing is, although I've always been more of a software person than a hardware person (I know enough to build a machine, replace parts, troubleshoot parts, and basically do anything a common person would need done), but I learned a lot about how the hardware works just from hanging out with my friends (most of them were electronics engineers and knew a lot more about the hardware than I did) and seeing what sort of crazy things they came up with.

  • Not just cars and computers... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ktakki ( 64573 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:40AM (#8625543) Homepage Journal
    I used to play in a band with a guitar player who was borderline obsessive about his equipment, particularly his guitar. He was constantly swapping out his pickups, trying new necks, bridges, nuts, and machine heads. It got to the point where he was replacing the capacitors and potentiometers in his guitar with precision components.

    Don't get me wrong, he was an excellent player. None of this detracted from his practicing or performing. And this, I think, is the key: as good a player as he was, I believe that he felt that he was just a hardware upgrade away from excellence, at least in his own self-assessment.

    For the most part, I think that most overclockers, hot rodders, or builders of Frankenguitars are hobbyists, for which these things are an end unto themselves. But there are a few people who do this believe that by building these things their skills, driving or gaming or shredding, will be unleashed, unencumbered by the limitations of their gear.

    k.
  • Bob Colwell's column, At Random, in the IEEE Computer Society's magazine - Computer, is always an interesting if at time odd read. Computer, for those not familiar with it, is a fairly decent yet accessible magazine for IT/EE professionals.

    I am too lazy to look through the archives but I felt that I read the basic gist of this article by Bob before. I know he has mentioned over-clockers before, but maybe this is the first time he focused solely on it for the entire column.

    His stories from trenches are alw

  • Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by rampant mac ( 561036 )
    "...compares overclockers to hot rodders..."

    Except those guys working on their cars are actively looking to get laid on a Friday night.

  • The overclocking wars are always between AMD and Intel. If these are the muscle cars, then we should expect the rise of foreign chips from other countries in the future.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Cars and computers are one and the same. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @04:04AM (#8626084)
    Funny how not two hours ago, in the story [slashdot.org] that appeared just before this one, I posted a long post [slashdot.org] about how car enthusiasts and computer geeks are very similar.

    It's funny... My friends and I are into both cars and computers. I'm thinking of one friend in particular who has the fastest car in the crowd... he is also the only one among us who likes to overclock his stuff. It all started a few years ago when he had a motherboard that allowed him to set the speed with some jumper settings. He said, "Hmmm... This CPU is only supposed to go up to X mhz" (I think it was, like, 233 or something) "but let's put it on 300 and see what happens." Apparently, it worked fine, so he's been pushing his computers ever since.

    Funny thing about reliability vs. performance, too: Among our group of friends, he has had the most hard drive disasters, and has also had the most transmissions break in his car (physically break--as in a loud BAM!!! from power-shifting too much). Both are mechanical systems... I wonder if there is any correlation.

    On the other hand, there are programmers who don't know a screwdriver from an impact wrench, and there is the story I recently read about how new cars' computer codes frustrate mechanics [nwsource.com]. Most of these guys are purely mechanically inclined. I think there is a serious need for people in each of these two industries to familiarize themselves with the other.

    "As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Anderson. It seems that you've been living
    three lives. In one, you're Thomas A. Anderson... The second life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Neo... The third life is lived at drag races and car shows, where you are known as Smoked Chevy and have made every moving violation we have a law for."
    Ok, that's enough rambling.
  • You want to be fast on the street? 0 -> 60 in under 3 seconds? You can spend a shit load of money and time on a car and never get close, never be better than mediocre.

    Or you can get a completely stock bike, not have to make any modifications at all and still be so much faster than the hotrodders that you find it hysterically funny when you hear them talk about fast.

    The same applies to computers. You want fast? You have to know what your applications are doing and frankly, they are very rarely sitting
    • I hate to, uh, rain on your party... no, wait, I don't.

      I've got a 1985 Kawasaki 454LTD and a 1994 Ford Thunderbird LX.

      Bikes are fun until it rains. Or gets windy. Or it gets below 45 or so. Or when there's a lot of gravel on the road. Then they REALLY REALLY suck.
  • In an era when pollution and fuel economy were blithely ignored, my crazy neighbor even put a nitro engine in his car so that he could leave even more rubber on the pavement than a normal overpowered V-8 allowed. If the crazy part isn't obvious yet, consider this: This beast burned fuel like a brush fire, fuel that cost three times as much as gasoline and was available from only one station in the entire city. To the extent that this assemblage was intended as a babe magnet, there is some question about the

  • You're only HALF right... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jxliv7 ( 512531 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @04:54AM (#8626218)
    .As soon as I saw the bio at the end, I realized why I had felt such discomfort reading the article. He was from Intel. The first processor manufacturer to deliberately try to stop overclockers. The first processor manufacturer to offer a CPU with no regard for what the consumer wants. I needn't go on. Argh...

    All of the arguments were basically the party line: don't overclock. It's not good for your system, it's not effective, just buy a new processor (and whatever else is needed to make the "new" computer run). yeah, right.

    I think he does raise some valid if incomplete points. The first is that MOST computer users do not need overclocking. What's the use of a 3 gigahertz CPU to handle word processing, where the input is usually much less than 50 words (perhaps 250 character) per minute? But he misses the point that to overclockers, it's a hobby or challenge can no more be stopped than the use of (let's say) drugs or sexual favors for money or caffeine.

    Overclocking is usually done for a purpose. Gamers, for example, want performance, better performance than the latest out of the box equipment. So, they go to the internet and find the information (and that community of overclockers mentioned) to successfully push their CPU up a notch or two without killing reliability or introducing other glitches. With all the sites for mod-ing and overclocking out there, there's also notoriety.

    Older computers should not be overclocked to avoid upgrading. That would be comparable to taking an engine with 150,000 miles on it, adding a turbocharger, and dropping it into a race car. It won't last long. There are enough uses for older computers (routers, mail servers, Linux workstations, etc.) that justify not upgrading.

    I really look at overclocking like I still look at souping up cars - which incidentally, is as big if not bigger than ever. If you've got the money, honey, and you've got the time, it's your car. Or computer.

    I think the big difference between him and me is that he's an engineer, I'm a computer user.

  • Undervolting (Score:2, Interesting)

    by janaagaard ( 169810 )
    If you're really hip you don't overclock your CPU - you undervolt it, so that you can make your rig super silent by skipping the fan on your CPU cooler.

  • The difference is... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by groomed ( 202061 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @09:55AM (#8626904)
    The difference is that overclocking is a bloody waste of time!

    A car that was fast in the 80s is a car that is fast in the 90s is a car that is fast in 00s -- a computer that was fast two years ago is slow and pathetic today.

  • Car racing is much more adrenaline that PC racing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mustang Matt ( 133426 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @03:12PM (#8628533)
    The big difference is that when you're racing a car it's usually an adrenaline rush. I have yet to have a huge adrenaline rush from squeezing an extra 100 MHz out of my 1.8 GHz athlon xp.

    I absolutely LOVE to race cars. However, it's irresponsible and dangerous on the street. I can't afford the tickets/jail time and the track is too far away. Soooo... I rarely race. Every once in a while if I'm out on an open road I'll do a 0-100 just to keep the memory fresh or take the corners at speeds well above the posted speed limits. But I'm married with responsibilities and not an endless pile of cash so modding PCs is safer and much much much cheaper.

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