[BGP Spook]

@ricecrispi: People are still overclocking because they can.

People will continue to do so as long as they think they can benefit from it.

Most people won't benefit from it but some do.

Most programs have many times more processing power than they need.

Yet, there are a few programs which seem to have an insatiable appetite for more processing power.

Games mostly, but Vista, and certain media related software see continued benefit from more processing power.

The move toward multicore CPUs may have agitated this problem.

For higher numbers cores you also get lower clocked cores.

Programmers are still not used to dealing with the shift away from higher clock frequencies as the sole means to better performance.

Basically, programmers are don't want to relearn how to write programs.

This leads to continued benefit from pushing clock frequencies up in programs which can still see improvement.

I believe there is also a general attitude of, "Gee people sure have a lot of processing power just sitting there maybe we should invent [next must have application/device] so they can get more use out of their computer."


@jaydee: Thank you for the link but I had already read it.


----------------------------------------------------------------
Something that we may be forgetting is the constant push to shrink the physical size of the chips.

Yes, there is a limit to how much power can be drawn from regular house circuits and some enthusiasts are nearing that limit.

However, every time there is a die shrink there is an increasing likely hood that products will push the thermal density up.

Even if the power draw goes down if the die area goes down disproportionally then the next generation chip is in a worse situation than the last generation chip.