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On times with CPUs with so many cores, and with amazing single thread performance even at 3 GHz, overclocking is not what is used to be. E.g. in times when from

by faragon 10y ago

On times with CPUs with so many cores, and with amazing single thread performance even at 3 GHz, overclocking is not what is used to be. E.g. in times when from a 33 MHz CPU you could get 21% speed-up running at 40MHz, or from 300 to 450 MHz on some budged CPUs (+50%, Celeron 300A with 128KB L2 cache), it was way more interesting (even knowing that the overclock could reduce the life of the components, because of electromigration, and some components running above their design limits).

klodolph 10y ago
I was under the impression that electromigration is a much more serious problem with modern processors due to the higher current densities—was it also a problem with older processors?
- Baeocystin 10y ago
  Not really. As long as you stayed within the thermal envelope, you were fine. I built hundreds of machines from 1995-2005, overclocking most, and I never had a single CPU failure that wasn't just a DOA chip.
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  Older chips had worse precision and control over overall process (polishing, chemical purity etc). This is a rather niche level knowledge, you would have to ask some ISTFA regular about it.
- 79d697i6fdif 10y ago
  In my experience at least, the olde fears about shortening the life of the chip are non-issue in practice. I've run overclocked PC's exclusively for about 17 years and never had a single failure, even though I've been running folding@home for most of those. By the time the chip is 4 yrs old it's time for a replacement for practical reasons. My current system is a cheap Biostar board running a gen-1 i5 750 that I got second hand. The board dates back to 2009 I think. It's overclocked to around 3.6 ghz with turbo still enabled. About time for a replacement but until a year ago it benchmarked at the same level as $200 chips. Overclocking is definitely still worth it if you want a fast pc for cheap
smcl 10y ago
Yeh - the impact from overclocking isn't quite what it once was. It's nice that nowadays we're not left wanting for CPU speed even for most entry level processors. But I fondly remember feeling pretty excited by the "AXIA" AMD Athlons and pushing them to some pretty amazing results with fairly standard cooling (1.2/1.33GHz -> 1.66GHz and above, iirc)
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  I got a hand-me-down Athlon XP 2500+ around 2004-ish. I had read what you could do with it, so I did: bumped it up to 3200+ specs. It ran like that for years, until I saw the motherboard capacitors leaking and moved on.
  - floatboth 10y ago
    Oh yeah. When I was a kid, my parents bought me an Athlon XP 2500+… overclocked to 3200+ and ran like that for many, many years. Eventually I gave that PC away to someone. I kinda regret that decision now :D
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  Its not the case of Overclocking no longer giving you expected speedup, its INTEL directly FIGHTING with overclockers and blocking every avenue that would enable you to gain performance for free. Nowadays Overclocking is just another premium market segment being milked by Intel with K/Z series chips. Every single Intel chipset is 'in theory' capable of overclocking (multiplier change, Turbo). Its all blocked on the Bios/OEM agreement[1]/microcode(!)[2] level. Sometimes OEMs grow bold and ignore it (Asrock pioneering H81 overclocking), sometimes they get spanked by Intel and quickly release 'updated' bios removing OC. OC in itself works great. You an buy $72 3.2GHz G3258 haswell, OC to 4.3GHz (stock cooler, or ~4.5Ghz on custom) and enjoy >30% speed improvement. Especially great for single threaded games(written in python!) like World of Tanks where your oced $72 cpu performs like $300 4790K. [1] http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/asrock-killed-overclocking-intel-skylake-nonk/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/asrock-killed-overclo... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/3ji7im/nonz_overclocking_removed_from_bios_what_can_i_do/ https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/3ji7im/nonz_o... [2] http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-updates-activation/373250-recent-windows-update-kb3064209-causes-windows-7-not-boot-5.html http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-updates-activation/373250...
Baeocystin 10y ago
The first time I built an Abit BP6 with dual Celeron 300's (overclocked to 450, naturally) I felt like I was getting a supercomputer for cheap. The performance increase going to dual-core was massive, and getting to use the cheap Celerons instead of the crazy-expensive Pentium II's paid for the rest of the system all on its own. The late 90's/early 2000's were exciting times for system builders. Now? Meh. I still build my own, because you can spec out exactly what you want. But there's no longer any compelling performance reason to do anything beyond stock cooling and stock clocks.
- patates 10y ago
  Yeah, and any reasonable overclocking you can do is already automated by some ridiculously designed tuning tool from the manufacturer. I'm not sure about this but I think any overclocking people do these days are for the fun of the journey, not for reaching the destination.
CoolGuySteve 10y ago
I've got a 25% overclock on my i5 2600k going right now using the stock air cooler that's pretty rad. And I'm not an outlier, it's normal for these chips. The Haswell "devil's canyon" model was reportedly also a great overclocking chip. These ~30% overclocks are still out there if you're willing to look for them. (But I believe that 50% celeron was some kind of binning issue caused by marketing). The bigger issue these days is that GPU performance matters so much more for gaming. I've had the same CPU/motherboard for 5 years but I'm on my 3rd GPU.
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  50% Celeron OC lasted almost all the way to Coppermines. I was building PCs at the time specializing in cheap performance. Intel BX + 300A@450 2v, later 366@550 up to 700@1000 after modding slot1 adapters for 1.8-1.9V. Switched to selling AMD when disaster called P4 came out.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Yeah, I've had a 2500k running at 4.6 stable on all cores on stock voltages since it came out. I'm only now feeling a bit of an upgrade itch. If Ryzen CPUs are under $500 for the top models I'll build my next system on their platform and get a 2nd GTX 1080 or upgrade when the Vega 11 / Navi stuff comes out.

by faragon 10y ago

klodolph 10y ago

I was under the impression that electromigration is a much more serious problem with modern processors due to the higher current densities—was it also a problem with older processors?

Baeocystin 10y ago
Not really. As long as you stayed within the thermal envelope, you were fine. I built hundreds of machines from 1995-2005, overclocking most, and I never had a single CPU failure that wasn't just a DOA chip.
rasz_pl 10y ago
Older chips had worse precision and control over overall process (polishing, chemical purity etc). This is a rather niche level knowledge, you would have to ask some ISTFA regular about it.
79d697i6fdif 10y ago
In my experience at least, the olde fears about shortening the life of the chip are non-issue in practice. I've run overclocked PC's exclusively for about 17 years and never had a single failure, even though I've been running folding@home for most of those. By the time the chip is 4 yrs old it's time for a replacement for practical reasons. My current system is a cheap Biostar board running a gen-1 i5 750 that I got second hand. The board dates back to 2009 I think. It's overclocked to around 3.6 ghz with turbo still enabled. About time for a replacement but until a year ago it benchmarked at the same level as $200 chips. Overclocking is definitely still worth it if you want a fast pc for cheap

smcl 10y ago

Yeh - the impact from overclocking isn't quite what it once was. It's nice that nowadays we're not left wanting for CPU speed even for most entry level processors. But I fondly remember feeling pretty excited by the "AXIA" AMD Athlons and pushing them to some pretty amazing results with fairly standard cooling (1.2/1.33GHz -> 1.66GHz and above, iirc)

theandrewbailey 10y ago
I got a hand-me-down Athlon XP 2500+ around 2004-ish. I had read what you could do with it, so I did: bumped it up to 3200+ specs. It ran like that for years, until I saw the motherboard capacitors leaking and moved on.
- floatboth 10y ago
  Oh yeah. When I was a kid, my parents bought me an Athlon XP 2500+… overclocked to 3200+ and ran like that for many, many years. Eventually I gave that PC away to someone. I kinda regret that decision now :D
rasz_pl 10y ago
Its not the case of Overclocking no longer giving you expected speedup, its INTEL directly FIGHTING with overclockers and blocking every avenue that would enable you to gain performance for free. Nowadays Overclocking is just another premium market segment being milked by Intel with K/Z series chips. Every single Intel chipset is 'in theory' capable of overclocking (multiplier change, Turbo). Its all blocked on the Bios/OEM agreement[1]/microcode(!)[2] level. Sometimes OEMs grow bold and ignore it (Asrock pioneering H81 overclocking), sometimes they get spanked by Intel and quickly release 'updated' bios removing OC. OC in itself works great. You an buy $72 3.2GHz G3258 haswell, OC to 4.3GHz (stock cooler, or ~4.5Ghz on custom) and enjoy >30% speed improvement. Especially great for single threaded games(written in python!) like World of Tanks where your oced $72 cpu performs like $300 4790K. [1] http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/asrock-killed-overclocking-intel-skylake-nonk/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/asrock-killed-overclo... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/3ji7im/nonz_overclocking_removed_from_bios_what_can_i_do/ https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/3ji7im/nonz_o... [2] http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-updates-activation/373250-recent-windows-update-kb3064209-causes-windows-7-not-boot-5.html http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-updates-activation/373250...

Baeocystin 10y ago

The first time I built an Abit BP6 with dual Celeron 300's (overclocked to 450, naturally) I felt like I was getting a supercomputer for cheap. The performance increase going to dual-core was massive, and getting to use the cheap Celerons instead of the crazy-expensive Pentium II's paid for the rest of the system all on its own. The late 90's/early 2000's were exciting times for system builders. Now? Meh. I still build my own, because you can spec out exactly what you want. But there's no longer any compelling performance reason to do anything beyond stock cooling and stock clocks.

patates 10y ago
Yeah, and any reasonable overclocking you can do is already automated by some ridiculously designed tuning tool from the manufacturer. I'm not sure about this but I think any overclocking people do these days are for the fun of the journey, not for reaching the destination.

CoolGuySteve 10y ago

I've got a 25% overclock on my i5 2600k going right now using the stock air cooler that's pretty rad. And I'm not an outlier, it's normal for these chips. The Haswell "devil's canyon" model was reportedly also a great overclocking chip. These ~30% overclocks are still out there if you're willing to look for them. (But I believe that 50% celeron was some kind of binning issue caused by marketing). The bigger issue these days is that GPU performance matters so much more for gaming. I've had the same CPU/motherboard for 5 years but I'm on my 3rd GPU.

rasz_pl 10y ago
50% Celeron OC lasted almost all the way to Coppermines. I was building PCs at the time specializing in cheap performance. Intel BX + 300A@450 2v, later 366@550 up to 700@1000 after modding slot1 adapters for 1.8-1.9V. Switched to selling AMD when disaster called P4 came out.
seanp2k2 10y ago
Yeah, I've had a 2500k running at 4.6 stable on all cores on stock voltages since it came out. I'm only now feeling a bit of an upgrade itch. If Ryzen CPUs are under $500 for the top models I'll build my next system on their platform and get a 2nd GTX 1080 or upgrade when the Vega 11 / Navi stuff comes out.