I agree - I don't think overclocking is worth risking the life of your cpu, motherboard, or video card. Especially with how fast computers are nowadays and how much they cost.

The old saying comes in my mind " If you cant run with the big dogs stay on the porch "
And How much ram does juan have?

well for the first thing, there both p4's so meh,

second theres a serious differnece in ther system stats and the OS there using, the windows 2k takes less ram (less memory leaks) compared to windows 98

if you matched two systems side by side, you might boost the preformance quite abit with proper cooling.

but i dont nor will i ever overclock unless i have money to throw away

I agree with you there not saying it is not going to make it "Faster" but you will never see the difference once your past the 2ghz mark. There will be a difference but seriously any normal user will not see a tab difference that is why I Disagree with overclocking.

Well yeah, of course.

Your argument is flawed because overclocking a system isn't just about the chip, it's about everything involved in the system.

Take the CPU. Is the 2GHz machine a Willamette or Northwood core based chip?

The RAM difference is stifling, the first has 4 times the amount of the second system, and the 1.8 system may very well have SDRAM, depending on chipset.

Hard drive platter densities, along with rotational speeds have a very profound effect on a system's performance and general "feel" while operating.

The graphics subsystem could be interpreted a few different ways as well 64MB vs 16MB isn't a fair comparison, as the 16MB card is no doubt 4 or 5 years old. Are both of the cards AGP, PCI, or are they different per system? That 64MB card is definitely a Radeon based card, and that 16MB is a RAGEXL. lol The 2D performance would be just about equal, but the 3D performance would be a joke on the 16MB, I doubt you could even play a recent game as most have been requiring no less than 32MB or 64MB cards.

The operating system has a huge effect on system performance as well, and let's not forget about how 2000 thrashes 98 with comparable hardware, let alone plug and play compatibility, and driver base. There some hardware peripheral cards that won't work with 2000 because they weren't designed to be used in an OS that's primarly business use based, but that's a rather moot point now that XP has been in the market for over two years.

You're comparing apples to kiwis. They're both a fruit, but so very different.

This thread isn't even about overclocking.

Take two of John's system, and compare the overclocking with whatever tool you want. The OC'd machine will win with any CPU related test taken.

And for the record, keep your system cool, make sure the CPU has enough voltage, don't buy shitty parts (this is very pertinent), and there's no reason to fear overclocking. When you prepare for the overclock properly by purchasing quality components, and take measures to ensure that the system will be able to tolerate the increase in speed, there's no reason to even consider the chip destroying itself, your system crashing, or any of your other components deciding to fail.

That said, you can't push anything too far either. There is a ceiling to overclocking with every component, and once you hit that plateau it's time to stop pushing.

I'm not trying to tell you that just because John's system has a higher clock it's faster, just that you should probably do some research before giving sage advice on a topic you know nothing about.

You can disagree until your blue in the face about it, but there will be someone just as inverse proportionally calm and cool about it on the flip side of the coin.

Overclocking has it's place, the enthusiasts will continue to do so until fully clock-locked chips have been implemented.

With all other components identical; two systems

an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ has a standard clock rate of 1.47GHz, multiplier of 11, and a front side bus speed of 133MHz.
Change the bus speed to 200MHz, and you have a system running at 2.2GHz.

Side by side, the 2.2GHz system will romp all over the 1.47GHz system namely because of the raw clock speed associated with it. It will boot faster, and programs will open quicker, or be waiting on the hard drive (very plausible). Change the bus speed of system 1 to 166MHz, and the gap won't be so wide concerning performance. Equal them, and of course the performance will be equal for both systems.

I'm saying that a user will probably notice such an increase in speed, but they likely wouldn't care either way. They just want it to work, and keep working a long, long, long time. Users don't like change because it upsets the harmonic balance and karma associated with a familiar machine. Work IT somewhere and you'll see.

haha someone open a poll now see how many people think it is pointless to overclock. Now let me ask you have you ever took a look at PC MOD KINGDOM? Then you would know I like to see overlocked systems running on coolant & GAS! haha. Man I know my resources with overlocking if you want to see and push that extra 10 Nano Seconds faster that is up to you.

Juan can have a 1ghz duron machine and John have a P4 2.0ghz Juan will always smoke him. Overclocking doesn't matter anymore or make a seeable different any more whats so ever. If you disagree with me on that then so be it. I am just starting chat. No hard feeling just wanted to put out the point of "Overclocking" now a days is like putting a speedometer in your car that goes to up to 200MPH now listen

"your computer is only as fast as your slowest component"

Just wait until you experience SNDS, then you'll think twice. However, if you've got money to burn then what the hell? Even if everything goes "properly" you can never assure a stable system.

You're right, if your overclocking a 3.0 GHz chip then what's the point? Unless, of course, it's for bragging rights.

Spend some time at an overclockers forum, it can be very tempting, especially when you hear the success stories. All in all, it looks like great fun, but most of us just can't take those kinds of risks.

~Masta

The posters on this site aren't going to care because they're biased. They all ready have a pre-conceived notion that the black plauge is going to consume their family and next of kin if they up the fsb 1MHz.

I can't get to your site because it's down. "Page cannot be displayed" is all I see. You may want to have a look at that.

You may very well know your resources concerning overclocking, but that doesn't give you the right to say that it's pointless. That's called an opinion, not factual, so take that how you may. It's a choice, just like you claimed, so leave it at that.

Same case, same motherboard, same power supply, some cheap 4MB trident video card (AGP), and same OS (XP for example):

Take that 1GHz Duron system, pair it with say 4 striped 15k 18.3gig SCSI Seagate Cheetah drives, load it up with 2gigs of decent quality DDR-RAM, an Apollo 133 chipset based board, and that thing will fly in terms of data throughput.
Put a four gig 5400 old Western Digital drive on that P4 2GHz (100fsb, 20x multi) system, 64MB of DDR-RAM and I would bet $1,000 that system isn't going to get a whole lot of work done as far as data throughput, but it won't be far ahead of the "lowly" Duron in terms of CPU power either.

There are different areas of performance.

And when you say ""your computer is only as fast as your slowest component," I say "that's the component I need to replace or make faster."

And more often than not, the hard drive is the culprit. A 7200rpm drive just does not put out enough sustained data transfer to sufficiently choke a system. The other components of the system all wait (either directly or indirectly) for the drives to spin up, seek to the correct sector on the drive, read the information from the platter, put it into cache, and be spit back out across the PCI bus that it's almost an exercise in futility when it comes to using a disk drive.

Tell me, would you rather use a 48x cd-rom drive, or a 2x cd-rom drive to pull data from a 700MB disk? That's what it feels like to me when using a 5400rpm drive compared to a 7200rpm drive (and I have two of them in a stripe set if you're concerned).