Good comments on overclocking by Ed at o/cers

[pHaestus]

The editorial is here

I enjoyed this article for two main reasons. First of all, it called se7en at IpKonfig out for being a dumbass. It's true; he once completely MISSED Comdex because someone handed him a card that said "How do you keep a retard entertained? Turn over for answer" on both sides! It also IMO called the "expert" nature of hardware review writers into question and that's always a good thing for consumers.

The other standout comment in the article related to how much credit that someone should take from a big overclock:

"People who buy ready-made extreme cooling systems like Prometeias are sort of like people who buy their Thanksgiving meal from the store. If all they do is put the thing together and fire it up, it hardly involves the same level of effort as putting together a system from scratch. "

I am constantly amazed by the quality of ideas, machining skill, and waterblocks that come out of our Waterblock Design and Construction forum. It's the enthusiasts like those guys who are busily making the blocks from scratch that are really pushing the hobby forward.

My testbed is running now and I should have the first test results posted this week. My main interest is to get through a few commercial blocks to know what the competition is like and then start testing DIY blocks from all of our forum designers. I hope the test data will be as useful to you guys as trying out all the blocks will be to me.

[BillA]

yea, I read that and thought 'not gonna be popular with the geeks'
of course I suspect that few geeks read Ed's stuff as it is way too realistic

[bigben2k]

He he. Looks like Ed had something he just had to share!

Rightfully so. The line that strikes me the most is the comparison of getting to 28'000 feet: take a plane, or climb Everest. I remember going over how I'd OC my system, about a year ago, and one thing that struck me is how some people went for the fastest FSB, with lousy memory timings, giving them a system that performs no better (or worse!) than a system running at stock speeds!


I love to go over the Waterblock Design Forum, and I link people to it all the time, as a source of info/inspiration.

[g.l.amour]

i very much loved the article but only after recognizing alot of dumbass calls on my part.

as billA once told me, there is no free learning... if i'm special in that respect, i demand the right to make my own mistakes... and learn from them. those mistakes have taught me that the principles in that article are all true.

it is the same as in learning any specialty in life, first it all feels like chinese and after alot of hands on experience u are starting to feel the subject matter.

[pHaestus]

Yea that's why I pay attention to BillA now. I have ignored his comments and spent a LOT of wasted effort a few times before

[jaydee]

I can write a book about the content I have for today's "tech" sites and their so called "experts". The internet's main flaw is any idiot with $5 a month and knows how to use a FTP program can make a decent "looking" site. Unlike a real business your not required to have any real skill or knowledge about what your site's about before they give it to you. No tests, no questions, no resumes. Just fill in your credit card number and off you go to fill the tech world full of shit.

Nordic Hardware comes to mind. (sorry Ben, but damn...) That Zalman case (p)review was ridiculous. Not only do they not have a ****ing clue about the product itself but they don't even pretend to know! Christ, if you put an article up about a product at least take the damn time to learn a little about the subject first so when your called out you don't sound like a dumb ass that never heard of a heat pipe before (lon). At least attempt to use google and read a few pages about heat pipes so you can at least pretend to know WTF your doing so when people that DO know WTF their they are doing don't slag your ass for being an idiot! And then don't get all defensive when your called out for not knowing anything when you DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!!

You post an article and people are under the impression that you might actually know more about what the subject is than they do. Unfortunately this is not the case anymore. These people are throwing up stuff they not only don't understand but don't care to understand. They just need new material to keep their freaking alexa rating up so they can brag about it and get more advertisers interested.

And this brings me more to the subject of the overclockers article. The members of forums posting their ignorant shit all over. They think they are cool because their mobo does all the work for them and all they have to do is hit a few keys to change the settings in the bios so all the pre made commercial stuff they bought can be justified to be bragged about. Can't tell someone about their ignorance without it being called a flame. There was once a time that if you where being stupid it was actually ok for you to be called stupid. Now you can not call someone what they are or all hell breaks loose. Your now a arrogant condescending prick that has nothing good to say. Well, god damnit, give me something that I CAN say something good about then. It isn't that damn hard. All it requires is a little effort and some common sense, heaven forbid...

If your CPU temp is 2C over room temp then don't go spamming around how leet you think you are. Maybe we need to start selling clues being people would rather buy stuff for convenience. I will tell you why your CPU is not 2C over room temp for $10.00. Maybe if we put a price on our knowledge people will take it more seriously. Of course it wouldn't be long until they started selling their bought knowledge for half the price after they duplicated it over and over.

At one time I thought the internet would be a place of higher learning and knowledge that would continue forever. That thought sure gets it ass kicked more and more everyday! It is turning into a boarder town like in Mexico. Where they sell you cheap booze and you can get a BJ for $10 and come out dumber than when you went in! Who can shove the most junk in your face in hope you buy into it wins!

It used to be when you got on the net to look for information on a subject you actually learned something. Now you come out more confused than when you went in!!! And that's providing all the pop ups didn't piss you off enough to just give up. It is pretty pathetic you NEED a popup stopper just to browse the freaking net. Now they got viruses in popups! Thank you microshaft for that wonderful web browser.


One of these days I will tell you all what I really think!

[pHaestus]

haha that's a pretty hefty diatribe Jaydee.

I heard the nature of the internet put very succinctly before:

Pro: With modern computers and the internet, ANYBODY can be a publisher.

Con: There are no editors.

[BillA]

from the heyday of the cb radio:

'cb radios are proof that one does not need brains to talk'

the internet is little different if one is interfacing with 'the public'

"Maybe if we put a price on our knowledge people will take it more seriousy."
shit jd, do you realize how effing rich Ben is going to be ?

but that is why I rarely tested anything for free
no cost, no respect
I fear for the tons of scrap copper pHaestus is going to be deluged with

jd, check out iespell - quite easy to use

[nikhsub1]

Originally posted by unregistered

I fear for the tons of scrap copper pHaestus is going to be deluged with...

Me too

[pHaestus]

I am hoping that living in Canada will protect me from SOME of the scrap copper; I am not going to pay to ship DIY blocks back and 2 way shipping from US may be kinda pricey.

On that note, I can already see people sending me a block to test that they value at $100 and then getting pissed when I reject delivery.

[jaydee]

Originally posted by unregistered

jd, check out iespell - quite easy to use

Spell checked.

[BillA]

Originally posted by jaydee116
Spell checked.

a button on the browser toolbar, can't beat it

[bigben2k]

I gotta give you that point about NH, JayDee. I haven't been there long enough to have any influence on their operation. What I can tell you though is that there's no money involved anywhere, so everything is "best effort", even if it means putting up a preview. Hey it's better than nothing!


Speaking of $5/month websites, I just opened the WBTA one: www.wbta.us . No articles though, yet...

[jaydee]

Originally posted by bigben2k
I gotta give you that point about NH, JayDee. I haven't been there long enough to have any influence on their operation. What I can tell you though is that there's no money involved anywhere, so everything is "best effort", even if it means putting up a preview. Hey it's better than nothing!


Speaking of $5/month websites, I just opened the WBTA one: www.wbta.us . No articles though, yet...

Sure it maybe "best effort" for their agenda, but it certainly isn't "best effort" for the readers and that is my problem with alot of sites and not just tech sites. IMO it is not better than nothing as nothing compared to what they are doing would be more beneficial to the reader. Instead they have these previews of stuff with no info if they work or not. That doesn't do anyone any good. All it does is tell a average reader that you posted this product and they think if you posted it you have a better understanding of the product and if you posted it then it is worth buying because surly your not going to post products that don't work and not tell them!?!?! Surly you tested the product throughly and are looking out for the best interests of the people reading the article right??? Isn't that what the articles are for? The best interests of the readers? Hummm, seems not anymore..... Seems using people as sheep to increase the hit counter. Why else would you post an uninformative preview and title it "World Exclusive" eh? It isn't for the readers Ben. Even if they somehow are trying to kid themselves (or you) that it is for the readers. Bottom line is they would not do that kind of thing if the readers best interests where the true agenda.

Of course this is the way I see it.

P.S. That spell checker is sweet Bill!

[BillA]

jd
now you can rant and not look like an idiot
. . . .
well, perhaps half an idiot

[jaydee]

Originally posted by unregistered
jd
now you can rant and not look like an idiot
. . . .
well, perhaps half an idiot

Hey, whatever helps!

[utabintarbo]

Originally posted by bigben2k
I gotta give you that point about NH, JayDee. I haven't been there long enough to have any influence on their operation. What I can tell you though is that there's no money involved anywhere, so everything is "best effort", even if it means putting up a preview. Hey it's better than nothing!


...

Sometimes no information is better than wrong information. Ask George Bush!

Bob

[Cova]

Jaydee - that long post of yours was right on the mark. There are way too many idiots running websites out there and not enough intelligent people doing something about it (not that there's anything they can do about it for the most part - but thats another discussion)

But what really scares me is how much most of the people here seem to like Ed's editorial about it on overclockers. Now don't take this as me trying to defend the ipkonfig article at all - the author of that is one of the idiots I mentioned in the first paragraph. But I think Ed at overclockers is also one of the biggest and most arrogant idiots out there and he's managed to build a large audience for his ranting anyways. It was only a couple weeks ago I was reading something else at overclockers (also by Ed) where he was the one complaining about the overclockability of A64's (it's not in my IE history anymore and I don't feel like searching any harder than that for a link).

In this latest editorial most of his points seem to come from the third and fourth of his "principles of overclocking", which are:

*To ensure a negligible percentage of product failures, CPU manufacturers aim towards making the vast majority of their CPUs capable of running under normal working conditions at speeds which are near, at, or above their highest rated CPU. They don't always succeed in this, but that is their goal, which they usually make sooner or later.
*CPU manufacturers generally rate most of their CPUs at speeds which are somewhat to considerably lower than the CPUs maximum potential speed. Generally, the lower the rated speed for a certain technology, the higher the potential overclock.

Obviously the second of these is not so much a principle but a result of the first. And the first one (third in original article) is an incorrect assumption. The real goal of a CPU manufacturer is to have as high a yield as possible at at least the speed of the most in-demand chip. If only 5% of them are stable at the highest speed, but that is sufficient to supply the demand for that speed, then there's really not a lot of motivation to tweak the process (which is difficult and expensive - though they are likely doing it for other reasons eg. prep to release a new speed of chip). To put it very simply, down-binning most/all of your production (as Ed claims is their goal) is not making efficient use of your resources. I'm guessing Ed's been spoiled lately by the AthlonXP's and P4's which are now both very mature products and has forgotten what its like to OC something new.