I have not been overclocking for a year. I was thinking what the reasons were. I think it is because the gain in practical performance has been lessened for the following reasons:
#1 Overclocking, even up to 50% increase in speed, doesn't translate into 50% noticeable performance increase. The performance of overclocking a cel 366 to 550 is much more noticeable practically (not in benchmark tests) than a 1ghz to 1.5Ghz.
#2 Noise. Are you willing to live with that much noise eventhough a quiet 1Ghz machine is adequate?
#3 Stability. Again, do you care if a machine runs at 1ghz or 1.33ghz if there's a chance of instability? What's shocking is that I actually considered using cheap intel boards (from compgeeks and ebay) to build systems for my friends because of its stability, the lack of maintainence needs, and the lack of things my friends/relatives can screw up in the bios.
#4 Faster ramping up of speeds coupled with a comprable rate of price decrease renders any $$ "saved" from overclocking minimal. When you overclock a celeron 366 to 550, you saved about 150-200 bucks; and this savings can last you for up to a year. Now, the "savings" from OCing, is much smaller and lasts much shorter.
Overall, overclocking is approaching a point of diminishing returns. Can you distinguish between two systems (same ram, motherboard, harddrive, and video card) with one running at 1.33ghz and one running at 1.7Ghz; without the use of benchmarks??
end of rant
#1 Overclocking, even up to 50% increase in speed, doesn't translate into 50% noticeable performance increase. The performance of overclocking a cel 366 to 550 is much more noticeable practically (not in benchmark tests) than a 1ghz to 1.5Ghz.
#2 Noise. Are you willing to live with that much noise eventhough a quiet 1Ghz machine is adequate?
#3 Stability. Again, do you care if a machine runs at 1ghz or 1.33ghz if there's a chance of instability? What's shocking is that I actually considered using cheap intel boards (from compgeeks and ebay) to build systems for my friends because of its stability, the lack of maintainence needs, and the lack of things my friends/relatives can screw up in the bios.
#4 Faster ramping up of speeds coupled with a comprable rate of price decrease renders any $$ "saved" from overclocking minimal. When you overclock a celeron 366 to 550, you saved about 150-200 bucks; and this savings can last you for up to a year. Now, the "savings" from OCing, is much smaller and lasts much shorter.
Overall, overclocking is approaching a point of diminishing returns. Can you distinguish between two systems (same ram, motherboard, harddrive, and video card) with one running at 1.33ghz and one running at 1.7Ghz; without the use of benchmarks??
end of rant
