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To: tcmay who wrote (135143)	5/15/2001 4:53:24 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Tim, my original intention was to show that Pete's "heat-limited" arguments don't hold any water, at least for Pentium III. Later on, we kinda went on a tangent regarding the art of overclocking. <If AMD, Intel, etc. could have sold their chips at 1.5 GHz instead of at 1.3 GHz, don't you think they would have? A lot of bucks in that extra margin of speed!> That very valid argument has been raised many times in the past, only to fall on deaf ears. You'll get a lot more noise over Intel's 1.13 GHz recall, the successes and failures of Uberclocker web sites, and other speculative stuff. <Most of the "uberclockmeister" types of sites I've been to don't have _any_ results of reliability tests, comprehensive test vector reports, etc. A 20% boost in speed hardly seems worth this kind of risk.> These days, if I were to try overclocking again, I'd be more than happy with 20%. Lots of people seem to get way too giddy over 15% or even 10%. I once overclocked a 266 MHz Pentium III to 300 MHz, and it seemed to work very well for a couple of months. But then data corruption errors caused me to lose valuable data on my home system. That's when I decided that it's just not worth it, because even if runs "rock solid stable" for a long time, it only takes one error to ruin everything. Tenchusatsu

To: tcmay who wrote (135143)	5/15/2001 4:53:46 PM
From: Elmer	Respond to of 186894

I used to be a reliability engineer at Intel. Overclocking is fraught with dangers, not just thermal ones. You should also mention that all CPUs must be overclockable or they have no margin for the effects of hot electrons. If a CPU is not overclockable then it is already overclocked. EP

To: tcmay who wrote (135143)	5/15/2001 5:11:59 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Dear Tim: You are operating on some common misconceptions here. Point 1: Intel's own test vectors failed with P3-1.13G. Test vectors are for Manufacturers to get quickly to an opinion that a processor would work in worst case specification conditions. Most test vectors do not cover all possible cases (hard to do with computer complexity now). Linux showed a major fault that the theoretical testing failed to see. Point 2: It has been shown that both Intel and AMD have down binned processors to meet contracts. That is selling processors at below their actual bin because not enough at the requested bin existed. Overclocking is one way to find this out. Celerons were frequently down binned in the old days. AMD has shown this behavior many times before and continues to this day. Point 3: AMD itself puts a blessing on Kryotech's gas cooled (-40C) boxes as they extend their warranty to cover systems sold by Kryoptech and its distributors. Currently, this extends to Tbirds at 1.8GHz. Notice that that is a higher speed than even P4 at this time. The IPS performance is far higher than P4 (2.2 to 2.5GHz) depending on application. I have seen one Kyrotech system being used (and is still in use to this day) as a server for a business. One of this cooling method's advantages is that the temperature varies far less than in most air cooled HSF systems. It stays at -40C die between 65F and 85F ambient. So its likely to be more stable than a box in an office. Point 4: Lifetime of CPUs is limited more by advances in speed and features than by lifetime concerns. I have seen both Intel and AMD CPUs last over 10 years even in heavy use. I upgrade every 18 months or so. I can afford a CPU failure in 2 years. Point 5: Most systems crash due to software problems and bugs than due to hardware failure. If you leave a Windows platform on for a few months, even idle, doing nothing at all, it crashes. Linux and the major UNIX systems do not show this tendency and run for months on even overclocked hardware. Point 6: Overclocking determines the margins for a given system. If it can be overclocked by 20%, it will be more stable than a system that doesn't overclock at all. Thus overclocking can be a test vector as well as die temp, HSF used, etc. I have used this method many times before. One system, a 386DX-20, has run for over 12 years before needing a replacement (bad chipset on MB) as a server. Pete