OT: New PC!

[JAFisher44]

By the way, SATA is a similar technology to the older PATA technology which is being phased out. PATA, or Parallel ATA, is what you are most likely using if you have the flat ribbon cables connecting your hard drives and cd drives to your computer. Parallel meaning that there are multiple parallel wires in the cable which each carry information at the same time.

In the time of the dinosaurs everything was serial, meaning that there was one wire connecting a drive to a computer. Of course when people ran into frequency limits and could advance no further, someone got the brilliant idea to just add more wires. 8x the connections means 8x the speed.

Well, using parallel wires has its own set of problems. The major one being RF. See, when an electrical signal moves down a wire it creates a sort of radio frequency "shock wave". This shock wave is stronger the higher the frequency of the signal. This RF shock wave interferes with the signals in parallel wires. Over time, several things were done to limit this sort of problem. For example in most modern parallel cables there is an inactive "buffer" wire in between all active wires. This wire helps to absorb the RF interference.

So, now that tech has advanced, we have new materials that can handle far greater frequencies than we used to be able to use, but, if we run in parallel the interference kills the cable. So, we return to serial.

SATA, or Serial ATA, is a new interface for drives that provides serial information transfer for a drive at higher frequencies. Because of the previously stated increases in tech we are now able to increase the frequency to a point that even with only 2 wires (one to send and one to receive) they out-perform 40 wire parallel cables (26 of those carry data). Also, the cables can be much longer for SATA than for PATA, 39 inches vs. 18 inches.

So, basically SATA is a new controller that allows for far faster data transfer at lower power costs. Buy it. Use it. Enjoy it. It's just better.

[Thermodyne]

JAFisher44 said:
Well, fire hazards aside, The reason I would never OC a chip is because it is bad for it. Period. No matter how well cooled the chip is OCing will reduce its life expectancy. Chips are built to run at certain speeds. The process of heating and cooling causes the silicon in the chip to expand and contract. The materials used are rated to do this at a certain speed. If you overclock (even with proper cooling) this will occur more often and to a greater degree and will degrade the chip. This means that the chip will fail sooner than it would at its rated speed, often far sooner. This is why you should not do it.

Not to mention the fact that overclocking your chip is a guarenteed recipie for failure if your cooling system ever hiccups. Sure, overclocking is fun if you can afford to buy a new system every year, or buy multiple chips, if necessary, when things go wrong, but for your average working joe, you would be best served to just use it at rated specs.

If you do insist on overclocking you should go with a Pentium chip, as they seem to tollerate it better, relatively, than AMD chips. However this means that you have to use a Pentium chip (not good if you want a gaming machine). I would also recommend dropping a some cash on a good liquid cooling system as well.

Your first statement is partially true. But it’s not the increase in frequency that causes it. The additional Vcore accelerates electron migration, which is what ages the chip. Heat cycles don’t come into play, and of themselves are not large enough to adversely affect the chip. So my chip last seven years of 24/7 instead of 12, I really don’t care.

Your second statement is false. Chips are hardwired to run at certain speeds. They are designed to run in a target spectrum of speeds. The speeds are determined by binning each lot, then burning to fit inventory needs. If you get a P4 woody of 2.4GHz and another of 1.8GHz, and they have the same lot # on the core, they are the same chip. One had the multiplier burned to 19 and the other was burned to 18. Other than that, they are the same chip.

Your third statement is not true; the materials seldom change within a family of chips. One P4 woody is the same as any other P4 woody material wise. More often than not, it is manufacturing advances that change not the materials.

Your fifth statement is a repeat, but it is still untrue. Electron migration is the problem, and it is caused by voltage. Older processors could be killed by heat, but it took excessive amounts, far beyond what a stable system would run at. Newer chips have built in thermal protection.

Your sixth statement is untrue. If the cooler fails, the thermal protection will shut down the system. More likely, the system would gradually overheat, causing the OC to become unstable, and cause data corruption which would eventually crash the system.

Your seventh statement is sort of a generalization, and a mater of personal opinion. What people can afford is none of my business so long as they manage to pay the bill. Some people OC just to push the state of the art. Others do it because they can’t afford top end hardware to run new games with; others do it because they enjoy it. Who are you to say what would be best for them?

Your last statement is pure uninformed bull****. While Intel systems still hold the reputation of being the most stable, the only place they exceed AMD on OC’ing is raw FSB and cold start on chilled systems. You can not alter the multiplier on an Intel chip, and if you push the Vcore more than a couple of tenths, you’ll be flirting with sudden P4 death. Push it to 1.8v and you can measure the life in hours. AMD chips thrive at 1.8 and on most of them, you can alter the multiplier. Also AMD offers a chip just for the OC’ing crowd. The FX comes with an unlocked multiplier. Also, AMD chips tend to cost less, so it hurts less when you kill one. So, if you want to do serious OC’ing, you are more or less forced to use AMD. Also, 90+% of OC’d computers are cooled with air. Water cooling is for the hard core guys, and phase change is almost a novelty. I probably know 400peeps who OC. Very few, less than 20, use anything other than air for cooling. Perhaps 15 use water and there are five of us with phase change systems. AFAIK, I’m the only one still messing with pelts. The average OC of the people I know is probably 100MHz on the FSB. These systems run for years like this with no problem.

[Renegade 13]

Thermodyne said:
You can not alter the multiplier on an Intel chip, and if you push the Vcore more than a couple of tenths, you’ll be flirting with sudden P4 death. Push it to 1.8v and you can measure the life in hours.

So in other words, OC'ing can easily fry a chip, if you do it wrong! Since many people don't have much knowledge of OC'ing, they really shouldn't do it since there'd be a pretty good chance that they'd totally fry something, simply by doing it wrong. On the other hand, I'm sure you're right that if done correctly OC'ing will do no harm, since when your chip lasts only 8 years instead of the 12 it might have, its so far out of date that it doesn't matter.

[Caduceus]

I love my ATI Radeon X800 XL, but check out NVIDIA New Card

[Thermodyne]

Renegade 13 said:


So in other words, OC'ing can easily fry a chip, if you do it wrong! Since many people don't have much knowledge of OC'ing, they really shouldn't do it since there'd be a pretty good chance that they'd totally fry something, simply by doing it wrong. On the other hand, I'm sure you're right that if done correctly OC'ing will do no harm, since when your chip lasts only 8 years instead of the 12 it might have, its so far out of date that it doesn't matter.

Sure, there is no protection for the uninformed. But, with that said, adjusting Vcore is more advanced than basic OC’ing. And a three year old chip is usually not worth much. Unless you need it and it’s the only one you have. People “OC” all kinds of things and in so doing usually trade off some reliability for performance. Cars, RC toy cars, game consoles, their own bodies are some of the things that come to mind. TV repair has been doing it for years. Remember when that old console TV got dim when you were a kid? A man came out and for a few bucks made it as good as new. He installed a voltage kicker onto the tube harness and kicked the voltage to the guns up. I always wondered what that did to the radiation coming out the other side

Let’s state some obvious things here. IMHO You should not go hog wild OC'ing your only rig if you can't afford to replace it. And it would be best if you had a good knowledge of how PC's work before you start altering default settings.

As an example, the board listed in the build above comes with an OC’ing program. The OC ability of the board is the main reason people will pay almost $200 for it. It will allow you to OC on the fly, or to have it happen automatically only when the system needs more speed. You can set it to specific settings, or as a percentage of system speed. All you need to know is how to use a mouse. It does not allow the average user to make big Vcore changes. These still have to be done in the bios code. IIRC, the highest bump is 10%. That would work fine for anyone willing to invest in some upgraded air cooling. 5% would be fine for any stock system that was not in an overly hot environment. The ability to OC is more or less universally included in aftermarket PC parts these days. The OC’ing crowd makes up the largest segment of the market for these parts, and demand that the ability be included.

[NullAshton]

If you do overclocking right, you can get about a 15% increase in performace, at no risk to the component you're overclocking. Graphics cards are probally the easiest to overclock, since they're more resistant to heat. Simply increase the clock settings bit by bit, playtesting it for 5 minutes every time you adjust it, until you notice graphical artifacts. Then adjust the settings back a little, and do an extended playtest. If a graphics card overheats, you'll know it, because of those graphical artifacts.

[Thermodyne]

wildcard06 said:
I love my ATI Radeon X800 XL, but check out NVIDIA New Card

The 7800 sli’s are cool. The 512’s went on sale marked up to almost $800 dollars on Monday, and were sold out before the end of business on Wednesday. That 800XL is still a pretty stout card, especially since the new High end ATI cards are still more or less vapor ware. The 800 series still hold some of the higher marks.

3DMark01

[Caduceus]

Interesting...

Thermodyne are you Thermo (Rank #2)on the 3D Mark 2003 page?

Where do you work? (You can ignore if that's too personal.)

[Thermodyne]

NullAshton said:
If you do overclocking right, you can get about a 15% increase in performace, at no risk to the component you're overclocking. Graphics cards are probally the easiest to overclock, since they're more resistant to heat. Simply increase the clock settings bit by bit, playtesting it for 5 minutes every time you adjust it, until you notice graphical artifacts. Then adjust the settings back a little, and do an extended playtest. If a graphics card overheats, you'll know it, because of those graphical artifacts.

50% stable, is what we shoot for, but seldom achieve. Best I ever got was 900MHz bump on a 2GHz Northwood. That was with air cooling. The low end CPU's are where the big OC's come from, because that are basicall the same parts as the high end chips. We have about 10 peeps with 50%+ OC's at the moment. Over Clocks

[Thermodyne]

wildcard06 said:
Interesting...

Thermodyne are you Thermo (Rank #2)on the 3D Mark 2003 page?

Where do you work? (You can ignore if that's too personal.)

Yep, that be me. Thoes are on air. I have some higher numbers with the phase change cooling, but I'm still not completly stable. Damn AMD's and coldstart lockups. As a rule, we don't publish results on non-stable systems. I got a new controller for the chiller and I'm working on a bare bones Windows install. When I get some time I'll go after #1 in 03 and 05. The #1 in 01 is a vmodded dual phase amonia coold system, I can't touch that one yet. Perhaps when I get a pair of 7800/512

Sharkys is a good forum for any of you guys with PC questions, or if you just want to talk about PC's

As to my job, PM me.