OK, I've read a bit about this black art of overclocking. I know just enough to be able to fry the CPU in my Shuttle AK35.

But I was wondering if there are any benefits to OCing other than to the power gamesters out there? And for the bragging rights, too!

If I bump my 1800+ to run at 1.7MHz or so, will I see any difference while doing mundane stuff: web browsing, ripping CDs, bootup time<?>, saving 100MB music files?

Thanks,
nosto

For everyday "normal" use there probably isn't much point in OCing your computer at all, apart from as you said "Bragging rights"
But if you do want to OC your computer do it in STYLE go the whole hog and increase your Bragging rights to the Xtreme by getting yourself a really cool case with it's very own built in freezer from http://www.chillblast.com/customer/home.php?cat=53 then you can really BRAG about that SUB ZERO CPU temp, HOW COOL IS THAT? mine is on order " brag brag brag "

BO-YAK-ASHA

That is a totally cool case! But a little pricy for my taste. I'll just toss my whole case in the fridge, and, voila, CheaperKool.

Cheers,
nosto

Well I have no A/C in my house, so maybe I can cool the computer room with that and have a cool room to go to.

When all else fails beat the $%!* out of it!!!

you could benefit from ocing in normal use(boot time, saving 100mb music files) because with your proc set higher your ram will be set higher tooand that means faster boot time, and if your thinking youll just leave your proc alone and run your ram faster, well thatll just make things go slower cuz you want them to run in sync

personally i dont believe in ocing unless your current proc cant do something at default that you want to do, in your case your cpu is a bit slow for todays best apps and games so maybe you should oc for gaming but keep in mind that most games arent so much cpu intensive as vid card, ram, and hdd intensive, most of the time you wont even notice a difference when ocing unless your trying to play farcry on a 500mhz celeron ;)

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

giggles,
just saw your link for the pics.
Nice job!!!

When all else fails beat the $%!* out of it!!!

thanks bro :D

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

I used to believe in not overclocking unless you needed it...but then came the Athlon Barton CPU's...honestly, how can you NOT overclock that CPU? :-P

Even my wife's 2500 is OC'ed to 2.2GHz...although she has a bit of need for it because she's a photoshop monster.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

dude, i have the Barton 2500 and i dont oc it. Kno why? because it is fast enough
why shorten the life of your componets, void your warranties[although undetectable ;)], and risk all kinds of headaches so that you think your computer is running faster. sure in photoshop you need the speed but in almost anything else you will only think that your computer is running faster when in reality its differences in nanoseconds i mean who really sits in front of their computer watching it encode mp3s!
if you really want performance increases get a sata harddrive or a better video card its just common sense get what your computer needs

despite the fact that i own possibly the most overclockable processor ever produced by amd i will not oc until i find a game or app that i actually want to play that does not run at 1.833ghz
that's how i can not oc the BARTON

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

First off, calm down. I was joking. Notice the :-P ?

Secondly, think about it for a second about some of what you're saying...

A Barton 3200 is clocked at 2.2GHz. If you're clocking your barton to 2.2GHz, do you really think your CPU is going to die prematurely? The only difference is if you have to up VCore. Otherwise, they'd both be Barton cores running at the same voltage and same clock speed, FSB, etc. Yes, added heat does shorten the life of silicon, but that in effect also means an Athlon 3200 will have a shorter shelf life than a 2500.

Secondly, think about how much you may be shortening the life of the CPU compared to the CPU's useful life. I have a Celeron 300A OC'ed to 450. Did I shorten the life of the CPU? Probably, but it still works, even though it's only useful to me in a linux router I built for fun.

Thirdly, overclocking your CPU does give you noticeable gains in performance. I notice my boot times are higher, apps start up faster, games run better, I can multitask better, etc. I don't OC for the hell of it. If it wasn't noticeable, I wouldn't do it. This is to a degree dependent on your computer and what you do with your computer. If your video card is underpowered as is for your box, no question - overclocking for games is pointless. (incidentally, while SATA drives are faster, if you actually think that makes a bigger difference than OCing your CPU, you're mistaken most of the time, although it depends what your old drive is, and how much you can OC if you were to.)

I will say this. Even in every day tasks, you will notice a bit of a difference, although it's debatable if it's worth the risk.

Warranty voiding? No arguement there. Personally I have a moral objection to even consider asking for a replacement if I OC my CPU. Even if I could get away with it, it's wrong.

So, don't OC, it's your choice. ;-)

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

wow we always seem to get into heated arguments dont we, i overlooked that :-P sorry about that

and when i say shorten the life of i mean everything in your computer is being overstressed when you reaise that fsb
and in my 2500 i did have to raise the vcore to 1.675 to get it stable when i tried ocing it for a day, the temps only rose 1 degree but its the fsb and voltage that are killers

"but that in effect also means an Athlon 3200 will have a shorter shelf life than a 2500."
no because the 3200 has been rated to run at that speed

and you're crazy ocing that celey to 450mhz that thing will definetly be dying prematurely although you will notice a big performance difference! thats a 50% increase!

"Thirdly, overclocking your CPU does give you noticeable gains in performance"
not in my box!

"If your video card is underpowered as is for your box"
definetly with the geforce3

still i have yet to find something that i cannot do with what i have now
so i dont need to oc

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

So it shortens the life, how many keep there cpus for 10 years aways, most ppl update there every few years, why not take advantage of getting more, if your able to. Besides it is a hobby to many.

"when i say shorten the life of i mean everything in your computer is being overstressed when you reaise that fsb"

False! If your RAM is rated at least the speed your FSB is, you're not overstressing your RAM. If you don't exceed the rated specs of bus speeds your motherboard supports, you don't overstress your motherboard. If your AGP and PCI bus speeds are locked, you don't overstress any cards. For example, on an NForce2 motherboard, if you took a barton 2500 and set the bus speed to 200 (400DDR), the Nforce2 mobo supports that bus speed. If your RAM is PC3200 or higher, it supports 200MHz bus (400DDR). Nforce2 mobos lock the AGP and PCI bus speeds, so those aren't overstressed either. So...if you overclock with knowledge of what you're doing, you can do it without overstressing anything BUT your CPU if you so choose to. Do your homework!

"no because the 3200 has been rated to run at that speed"

Since when does a company's rating necessarily mean what a CPU can and cannot do? Company's do what makes them money. Reality is that an Athlon 3200 and a 2500 are Barton cores. While quality of silicon does vary between chips, AMD isn't necesarily slapping labels on them according to what they can do. They're often times simply artificially limiting what they can do by locking multipliers. Why? Because they want to make money on faster performing CPU's! Not that this is an evil conspiracy...locking multipliers was done much because system builders were overclocking CPU's in systems they built and then selling them at officially rated CPU prices of the same speed.

Fact: Increased heat shortens the life of electrical components, no matter what they're "rated" for. It's not like AMD has a special Athlon 3200 Barton CPU machine that cranks them out. They mass produce barton cores. They then test them to see what they can and cannot do, THEN they divide them into what they'll use them for, only making sure cores that can't do a certain speed aren't used for those CPU's. If they need to satisfy market demands for a 2500, they'll fill those orders even with prestine silicon cores that could have been used to make Barton 3200's. Barton cores are barton cores with small variances in quality, but because they're the same materials, the amount of heat which causes premature death in the CPU's is for all intents and purposes the same for all. Quality of silicon only comes in play as to how high a frequency CAN they operate at.

"and you're crazy ocing that celey to 450mhz that thing will definetly be dying prematurely although you will notice a big performance difference! thats a 50% increase!"

Dude, I bought that Celeron in like 1997 or 1998, and I've overclocked it the entire time. It's STILL not dead!!! What is your definition of premature death?!?! To be honest, if this thing died 4 years ago, I wouldn't have given a crap. Guess what? It's also showing no signs of dying, either!

""Thirdly, overclocking your CPU does give you noticeable gains in performance"
not in my box!"

Yes, it would show a noticeable performance increase. You could tell it was faster! Notice I didn't say significant! That's box relative. In your case, no, I probably wouldn't overclock either.

I'm not trying to insult you; I just want you to understand how this stuff works.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

Hey nosto, looks like your simple question and my simple answer has caused a real heated debate now!!!

BO-YAK-ASHA

"But I was wondering if there are any benefits to OCing other than to the power gamesters out there? And for the bragging rights, too!"

Not really. The question is: if gas was free and you were on an open highway driving a car set at the factory to only go up to 40mph and you could unlock it and go 60mph, why wouldn't you? Well if it turns a 6 hour trip into 4 hours, that's a good reason. But if it turns a 60 microsecond trip into 40 microseconds, maybe that's not much of a reason. And that's reality.

Boot time and large file copying are constrained by hard drive speed first, memory bandwidth second, and cpu speed almost not at all. 99% of the things that your computer does slowly, it does slowly for reasons other than the cpu speed.

A point about electrical stress and heat.

If you put a bowling ball on $10 card table it may break the table right away, or it may break the table over time due to stress. The stress accumulates over time because the structure of the card table is like an analog device - soft, changeable, existing across a spectrum of states of stability.

But if you put a bowling ball on a glass coffee table it will either break the table right away, or never. The stress does not (for the most part) accumulate over time because the structure of the glass table is like a digital device - hard, unchanging, existing in two states only - resisting of the bowling ball (like an infinite resistance diode) or transmitting of the bowling ball (like a diode in a conducting state).

To make up a few numbers, a glass table will support a 8lb, 9lb, 10lb, 11lb bowling ball forever but break immediately if a 12lb ball is put on it. An 11 1/2lb ball is the only weight which might cause it to break down the road while being supported initially. What this means for overclockers is do not run your cpu right on the edge of instability, like say 70C temperature. This is why the general rule for overclocking is use a max temp of 60C at default vcore, 50C at 1.8v, 40C at 1.9v, etc.

yes like i said to begin with get the sata drive or a better video card these are things that will really improve performance in your computer
the 2500 is plenty fast enough at default speeds to run any game out there just fine maybe in cpu intensive tasks like photoshop ocing will benefit you but not in everyday tasks like bootup and app launching like Johnoh said they are ram and hdd intensive

and even if your ram is rated to run at the fsb and your agp/pci slots are locked and your motherboard is rated to run at the speed ocing is still not safe
you're are stressing a componet beyond it's rated limit
its like if you were to go to Macdonalds everyday for three years and eat nothing but the fatiest foods for three meals a day
maybe you wont be dying an early death immediately but sooner or later it will catch up to you

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

actaully a sata hard drive will not speed up your computer any more than would an equivalent rpm, capacity, and cache ide hard drive.

yea you find me a 10000 rpm ide harddrive

in a raid array coupled with another it would be blazing fast plus youd get the small cables and free up an ide channel for more other drives more benefits than ocing

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

giggles your missing the point. try rereading what the pros are for oc.

yeah i wrote some of those pros but the argument is over ocing the 2500 Barton

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

Dude, you said in your previous post...

"when i say shorten the life of i mean everything in your computer is being overstressed when you reaise that fsb"

Now you're saying you're just stressing the CPU.

"you're are stressing a componet beyond it's rated limit"

LOL...If you want to debate, fine, but be consistant! ;-)

And again, please contradict this point...

All bartons are made with the same materials and the same design.
The nature of the material and its design determines how much heat will damage the product.
All 2500's and 3200's are bartons.
Therefore, how is running a 2500 running at 3200 if it's at the same VCore overstressing?

You're stuck on this belief that because AMD rated it as a 2500, it's going to die prematurely at 3200. That's not the case. If a 2500 can't run at 3200, it can't because the core can't take it, period. There isn't any correlation necessarily between what AMD rates the product and what it can do. If there was, how on earth is my Athlon 2500 Mobile rated at 133MHz bus able to hit 208MHz bus, and a total clock of 2400?! If there was, how is it sooooo many people are successfully overclocking their CPU'S?!

Your analogy of McD's makes absolutely no sense. That does not take into account that CPU's are pretty useless in 3 years time. Do you get a new body every three years?

And again, please define what premature death is in terms of time. In your opinion, did crazy HeroPsycho cause his Celeron 300A to die prematurely, even if it died tomorrow? I'm saying no!

Use real facts! Explain to me how what I'm doing to my processor is any different than AMD taking a barton core, and locking the multiplier and setting the bus speed to 200MHz if I were to not overclock farther than 200MHz x 11 with VCore of 1.65!

Adding other components increases your performance, depending on what your system is, etc. If you have an 8M 7200RPM hard drive with a good seek time, going to a Raptor won't make NEARLY as much difference as overclocking your Athlon to 3200 specs, unless you're doing stuff like running a SQL database or some other disk subsystem intensive work. Trust me on that, as I've BUILT servers to do such things.

You're also missing a VERY crucial element about overclocking. How much would that better video card or Raptor cost you? Or two for that PHAT raid array?

Let's do the math...shall we? ;-)

74 gig Raptors are about $180 these days. Two would be $360... And oh, btw, what apps would this array run that your current hard drive can't? Got a SQL database on your box? Running Exchange? uhh, hard core video editing? If no, then none. Congratulations, by your own logic you wasted $360. (not to mention a RAID controller if you don't have one.) And if you're a gamer, congratulations, you just reduced how long it takes to load levels and start the game up...that's about it aside from very minor performance increases due to faster hard drive caching. FPS won't increase even noticeably. Ohh, and if you want to say this is less risky, congratulations, you just doubled the chance of losing all your data due to mechanical malfunction.

(This is no slam on Raptors, I like them!)

How much would the better heatsink you need to overclock cost you?

Volcano 12...$40 on newegg, and that's not a good price, either.

One last comment on something johnoh said...
"Boot time and large file copying are constrained by hard drive speed first, memory bandwidth second, and cpu speed almost not at all. 99% of the things that your computer does slowly, it does slowly for reasons other than the cpu speed."

So tell me, when I raise my FSB to 200MHz over 166, what exactly does that do to my memory bandwidth? That would make my memory running 400MHz DDR, instead of 333MHz...correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking that increases memory bandwidth... :-) Thanks to johnoh for the assist there. ;-)

Boot speeds can be effected significantly if there are processes being loaded on start up, if your registry is large, so that's going to be system dependent to a degree. If those conditions are true, then CPU speeds will effect boot times. Bottom line though I guarantee you will notice a difference if you overclocked it. Will it be significant enough to warrant OCing? That's up to you, and depends on your computer. My point is you would NOTICE it. I said noticeable, not significant.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

im sorry but i still dont notice it! it all comes down to what you do with your computer like i said if you do photoshop then you should oc it will help things gofaster, if you boot play games and shutdown you will NOTICE little or no difference

and the celerons were never good ocing processors becuase for one thing your limited by a small cache so a celeron 2.7ghz probably compares to a P4 2.2ghz
your speed increases only do so much

but really i am amazed that you oced your celeron by 50% props for that
and maybe it wont die before the 10 year expectancy and that surprises me so i guess that means i dont know my stuff. right?

and when i said stress the cpu i was just talking about it specifically i still know that ocing stresses other componets in your computer and not everybody has nforce2 chipsets and not everybody can set their fsb to 200 and be stable without raising the vcore a notch

ocing is and never will be 100% safe there are always risks invovlved if there werent then anybody could do it with cheapo parts and be successful

"All bartons are made with the same materials and the same design.
The nature of the material and its design determines how much heat will damage the product.
All 2500's and 3200's are bartons.
Therefore, how is running a 2500 running at 3200 if it's at the same VCore overstressing?"

yes very true but the processors are made in batches some come out better than others hence the rated speed
albeit the speed ratings are very conservative they still have facts behind them.

personally my 2500 locked up at default vcore and 11x200 i had to raise it to 1.675
this also raised my temps and stressed me out because my temps were too high at 51C cpu 25Csys this was with 5 case fans, ac on, in my basement, with as5 under my hs, zero dust, and cables completely out of airflow's way

and your claim that cpus are useless after 3 years is total bs you said yourself about your old celeron:
"Did I shorten the life of the CPU? Probably, but it still works, even though it's only useful to me in a linux router I built for fun."

you probably did shorten it's life. hmm interesting. and a linux router, that sounds pretty useful to me not to mention the fun you had doing it
just ask my parents who have been using their 400mhz celeron box since 1999

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

"im sorry but i still dont notice it! it all comes down to what you do with your computer like i said if you do photoshop then you should oc it will help things gofaster, if you boot play games and shutdown you will NOTICE little or no difference"

Never said to overclock just because except when I was joking around. How you can't see a difference is beyond me unless there are other parts of your system bottlenecking. As your games go, of course you don't see a difference. You have a Geforce3. I have a 9800 Pro. I can see a significant jump in my games.

"and the celerons were never good ocing processors becuase for one thing your limited by a small cache so a celeron 2.7ghz probably compares to a P4 2.2ghz
your speed increases only do so much"

Not sure what you want me to say there. I have a Celeron 300A. I think modern Celerons suck.

"but really i am amazed that you oced your celeron by 50% props for that
and maybe it wont die before the 10 year expectancy and that surprises me so i guess that means i dont know my stuff. right?"

it means that if you overclock safely it's probably not goinig to die prematurely. Honestly, if the CPU died tomorrow, you can't even say it was because of overclocking. Could have been a surge, or a number of other things. It also means I've been overclocking for a long long time, long enough to know that if you do it right, premature death is often not a consideration.

"yes very true but the processors are made in batches some come out better than others hence the rated speed
albeit the speed ratings are very conservative they still have facts behind them."

Very true. You find that out when it can or cannot take a high frequency. If it can't take the frequency, you find that out well before you permanently damage the CPU. That is, if you overclock the right way.

"personally my 2500 locked up at default vcore and 11x200 i had to raise it to 1.675
this also raised my temps and stressed me out because my temps were too high at 51C cpu 25Csys this was with 5 case fans, ac on, in my basement, with as5 under my hs, zero dust, and cables completely out of airflow's way"

Now you're getting into how much stress does extra Vcore add? My Celeron 300A is 2.10 as opposed to 2V. It's still ok, if that tells you anything. As for your high temps when attempting to overclock, 50C is well within the operating limits of your CPU. An Athlon 3200 would operate about the same.

"and your claim that cpus are useless after 3 years is total bs you said yourself about your old celeron:
"Did I shorten the life of the CPU? Probably, but it still works, even though it's only useful to me in a linux router I built for fun.""

In other words, if this CPU had died, and I wouldn't have had this Celeron 300A. I would have gone and bought one for $10. Actually I wouldn't have bought it because I didn't need to make a linux router. I got bored. Actually I have about 4 CPU's in my office I could have used instead.

Your parents are a different story. I was asking you if YOU planned on keeping your CPU longer than 3 years.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

"yea you find me a 10000 rpm ide harddrive"

"in a raid array coupled with another it would be blazing fast plus youd get the small cables and free up an ide channel for more other drives more benefits than ocing"

when you said "get a sata drive to speed up your computer" you should have said "get a 10k rpm drive...", since 99% of sata drives sold are still 7200rpm.

A raid0 pair of 7200 ide rpm drives is faster than a 10k sata or 10k scsi drive, and is miles cheaper. Sata has a cool cable and that is currently the sum total of its advantage over ide.

A raid0 pair of 10k rpm drives is faster still, but at huge expense.

yes the geforce3 is bottlenecking my system im buying my friends old 9600 when he buys a x800 soon

and YES I DO PLAN ON KEEPING MY CPU AFTER 3 YEARS! im taking it to college with me besides i keep everything but my really old stuff like a 486 im tryin to get rid of and that thing is at least 9 years old

"that is currently the sum total of its advantage over ide."
yea that and its the future of storage and optical drives

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

I keep all my old junk, too, mainly to do extra stuff like make test systems to learn on, etc. For me the Celeron 300A is to the point it's like a 486. I don't think I could do much of anything with it other than a linux router. It's too slow to run a modern linux distro well complete with a GUI. XP is to the point of painfully slow on it even overclocked.

See what I'm getting at? In your case, this Celeron 300A would have ceased to have been useful for you a long time ago. It's like 6-7 years old. I have another Celeron 300A chip I attempted to GIVE AWAY on a local linux user's group board. No one wanted it.

To use it as a main box for me as a gamer? What am I gonna run on it? Old version of Counterstrike?

If you are a gamer, and like playing the latest games, your CPU will have been replaced 3 years from now or sooner, or you're not gonna be able to play the games out at that time. 3 years ago, we were using 1st gen Athlons and early model P3's. If that CPU was in your box, you'd still use it for gaming?! Played a mean game of CS at the time, but uhh, it wouldn't play Doom 3, FarCry, probably would have a really hard time with Warcraft 3. I upgraded the following year actually, going to an Athlon 1700 from a Celeron 566 OC'ed @ 850 (yes, that CPU still runs, too). As you can tell, I don't buy bleeding edge. I get the best bang for the buck, which often means I overclock.

What I find interesting is the fact that with all my overclocking, I haven't once killed a CPU because of it, even with the overclocking I've done for family and friends. Not once. They all still run, or were upgraded before it ever died.

Is it risky? If done right, not any more risky than running a RAID 0 array where all your crucial data is stored. Is it 100% safe? No. Neither is turning your PC on. You're grossly overestimating how much danger there is, provided you do the right things when you OC, and you know what you're doing.

You strike me as the type of person who is smart enough and not too arrogant to benefit well from OCing in certain situations. When you get that 9600 video card, I think you'd benefit well from it with your games.

LOL, I'm just trying to break down your fear of it. I'm not the kind of person who overclocks everything I see just because. I do my homework, get a rough idea of what performance gains I'll get, make sure that I'm not spending too much money to do it, and test to see if I get an appreciable difference in performance, and it's 100% stable. If it's 99% stable, I don't do it. I didn't overclock my old 1700 Athlon because of that reason.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

i still wont do it simply because i dont need to

i forgot about this but in a year or two i was planning to buy a mobile 3200 if cheap enough and maybe a vol 11 [sorry i know how much you like the vol 12s] and oc the hell out of it for the latest next gen games
but this isnt very likely because i might just end up going 64bit

i dont like to sell my old stuff because at the time that i could get a little bit of money for it its still worth something to me and by the time its gotten shoved into the dark corner of my room its worth squat on the market

and you know what ive found out over my whole computer lifetime
hdds are the most sought after hard to get a good deal on componets and you've gotta have one
i can get a 600mhz cpu with a mobo and 128mb ram on ebay for $30 but for just a 4gig hdd itll cost me $10 and thats a 5400rpm once drive du joir now drive du pos that will likely fail on me after a month, its happened before /(

and although i really want to get a pair of sata drives and i can definetly afford it i just wont until the price goes down significantly
sure you can get one 80gig 7200rpm drive for $75 but to make it worthwhile you gotta buy another for that raid array in which case you've spent twice as much for half the storage
what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

You are avoiding the pain of realizing the impotence of your conclusions, a fact which is obvious to everyone else.

please elaborate Johnoh...

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

LOL, I can't figure out if he's calling me or you the fool. I know I'm foolish for arguing this point this long. It's obvious I'm not gonna change your mind.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

Post 27 is based on the signature preceding it.

A 2500+ is like a car with a throttle set at the factory to run at 40mph. Those who unlock this car's throttle sometimes try to drive at 110mph and then crash and die. That creates a perception among most that driving faster than 40mph is dangerous, and a contention on bulletin boards that unlocking your throttle is something you shouldn't do. That the stress on other parts of the car when you drive at 110mph puts the car at risk and therefore you shouldn't even go faster than 40mph. These are wrong conclusions.

Unlocking your throttle is not dangerous, only being dumb about it is dangerous.

Reason the only absolute, irrationality the only enemy - Ayn Rand

Well said.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

"Post 27 is based on the signature preceding it."

lol you got me there, situations like that are exactly what i had i mind when i thought it up
oh the irony

and there's nothing you can say that will get me to set my fsb to 200 you cannot convince me because i have my reasons and i dont care how safe you say it is

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

no problem there.

"let each be fully convinced in his own mind" (let's see if anyone knows the origin of that one!)

I'm not Hitler. Don't OC your box. ROFL!

johnoh going biblical! ohh, man!

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

Oh man, DO WE HAVE AN OBJECTIVIST IN THE HOUSE?! Didn't even notice the Rand quote before.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

your quoting has turned this into a game of Jeopardy

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

What's the matter, giggles? Can't get your Jeopardy on?

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

no really i love Jeopardy

I'll take sarcasm for a thousand Alex...

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

ok Hero these stats dont lie

2500 12secs boot Win 98FE
3200 12secs boot Win 98FE

2500 1min 9secs loading Battle of Britain bf1942
3200 1min 6secs loading Battle of Britain bf1942

3 seconds difference! after already waiting a minute i would never notice that
and all it is is that my ram's running at 400 instead of 333

then i thought i have nothing to do so ill try fiddling around in my bios, so i set my fsb to 204 and my vcore to 1.675 in gradual increases and i was locked up after a minute of Goldeneye

so i set it to 202 and i was steady as a rock

so i loaded up battle of britain and guess what 1min 7secs
actually slower! how? i dont know

@2500 idling 22sys 33cpu
@3200 idling 23sys 35cpu nothing to worry about
but the thing is my ram is not for ocing! Mushkin Basic Green DDR 400 if i set the dram core a nudge higher will it be stable @204 fsb?

btw just so you know before i shutted down i set my fsb and vcore to defaults ;)

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

LOL...

1. You used Windows 98 to compare boot speeds. Why not load DOS while you're at it?!

2. I didn't say overclocking would help you load a Battlefield 1942 map.

3. Why don't you do this? Buy a relatively up to date graphics card, and then compare your frame rates in Battlefield 1942 stock speeds and overclocked, and you tell me if there isn't a significant difference.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

well any decent up to date card would cost at least $100
a good one would cost $150 and i think anywhere over 100 is too much to spend on any computer part

besides i think my card is pretty decent its a geforce 3 ti 64mb
and in a few months my friend will sell me his 9600 so im waitin till then

^(-.-)~~~]>:}>

There are a lot of really good cards for under 100 try looking around, if you want something good your gonna have to pay the price, say giggles get a video card and oc it.

LOL...

Dude, if you're running Win98 and a Geforce3, don't bother overclocking. ROFL!

FYI. 9600's are $90 now. Pros are $120. 9800SE's that have a decent chance of being softmodded to pro's are $120.

If you won't spend over $100 on a computer part, you're severely limiting what you can buy. That often results in you cheating yourself!

Ex. A Geforce 4 440MX would probably be a bit better than what you have at $40. a 9600 Pro is $120. The 9600 is more than 3x as powerful. You buy a 440MX right now, you can guarantee there will be games in one year's time that won't run on it, and there's a good chance it will be this year! A 9600 Pro on the other hand? It's well worth 3x the money in terms of what it can do, and its speed.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

hey my card is still on the game boxes, albeit on the bottom of the supported list but...

a 440mx would suck i saw the benchmarks on thg
i think there was a sale for one for like $20 after 80 mail in rebates but i passed it up cuz my current card is just fine

and whats this softmodding stuff???

and about win 98
whats wrong with it??? fast boot fast shutdown
nice boot screen which you can make to display anything you want ;)

plus xp home is $80 and you can only use it on one computer at a time... not that i illegally use my copy of win98 or that is isnt actually my copy and that i got for free and use it to smite microsoft, no ;)

^(-.-)~~~]>:}>

What's wrong with Windows 98?

1. Horribly insecure.
2. Unstable.
3. Can't effectively handle more than 256M of RAM.
4. Loss of support and driver development.
5. Lack of compatibility with new games (Doom 3 for example)

That's just for starters.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

1. Horribly insecure.
i dont have internet access on my machine anyway and if i did it would be 28.8k and never a chance for viruses and other nasty things

2. Unstable.
under circumstances yes. but thats a very general statement, if you know the ins and outs of the OS and your hardware is stable then you will have no trouble
i have only started having problems since i installed my ati tv wonder card and ati drivers started fighting with nvidia drivers
ie sometimes the software will refuse to run after recording a show and i will have to log out and back in so it can reset itself and watch my recording

3. Can't effectively handle more than 256M of RAM.
i've never heard that before but your probly right

4. Loss of support and driver development.
yes definetly true! my nf7-s's onboard lan and sound drivers dont work with FE so im waiting for my friend to come home from vacation so i can try his SE disc and it should work

5. Lack of compatibility with new games (Doom 3 for example)
i kno! i just looked at the box today at eb games, i was so bummed out
but do you think my machine would handle doom3 anyway!

besides your forgetting the point!!! my win 98 disc cost me nothing because i got it with an old computer
an xp disc would cost $80
not even my ram or my processor or my motherboard cost that much
not to mention the fact that i dont want xp! i dont like xp! im using a computer with xp on it to type this right now and all the computers at my school have xpon them! i hate xp! the only thing i like is that for most things you dont need to feed it drivers but thats the only thing.
what i dont like about it:

1. boot and shutdown times are 4 times that of 98
2. ram consuming
3. it controls you and tells you what to do and fixes things for you without asking or so ive heard
4. you cant fiddle with it as much as win 98
5. it costs $80 for the nonpro version
6. you cant do the trick where you save the win folder to your hdd and point the sourthpath to it in regedit so you dont have to keep popping in the cd
7. you gotta call microsoft to register it! bs

if i was gonna upgrade i would get 2000
its more similar to 98 and it is less power consuming plus its cheaper
^(-.-)~~~]>:}>

Read my sig...

It stands for Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator.

"2. Unstable.
under circumstances yes. but thats a very general statement, if you know the ins and outs of the OS and your hardware is stable then you will have no trouble
i have only started having problems since i installed my ati tv wonder card and ati drivers started fighting with nvidia drivers
ie sometimes the software will refuse to run after recording a show and i will have to log out and back in so it can reset itself and watch my recording"

I can run my XP machine for weeks without reboots. Try that with Win98. The average Windows 9X user has to reinstall their OS every 9 months. Sorry, no contest.

"3. Can't effectively handle more than 256M of RAM.
i've never heard that before but your probly right"

Yep, I am.

"my win 98 disc cost me nothing because i got it with an old computer
an xp disc would cost $80"

But you'll spend $80 for RAM you can't use effectively without XP. Smart move.

"1. boot and shutdown times are 4 times that of 98"

LOL...XP does more with better hardware, and less with less. If your system is fast, this isn't an issue.

"2. ram consuming"

And uses RAM effectively.

"3. it controls you and tells you what to do and fixes things for you without asking or so ive heard"

If it fixes it, who cares?

"4. you cant fiddle with it as much as win 98"

You don't know anything about XP just from that statement alone.

"6. you cant do the trick where you save the win folder to your hdd and point the sourthpath to it in regedit so you dont have to keep popping in the cd"

LOL! Right, it puts the cabs on your hard drive off the bat.

"7. you gotta call microsoft to register it! bs"

Wrong. You have to activate it, and this can be done over the net in 20 seconds.

"if i was gonna upgrade i would get 2000"

And less compatible with games...good call. LOL!

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

I had win98se for years, till i got xp pro, this is by far more stable then win98 could even be, and there is a lot of tweaking you can do to it, both mine boot to me in seconds, and has better features for 1 is driver roll back which i have found usefull. Restore points so if you screw up you can go back to before. And as far as boot screen you can change that.

Mike

"if you really want performance increases get a sata harddrive or a better video card its just common sense get what your computer needs"

Giggles, the whole point of o/c'ing is that you are getting something for nothing. A point you appear to be missing.

Fair enough if you only use your PC for surfing or spreadsheets, but when it comes to gaming I don't know anyone whose system can cope with Far Cry or Doom 3 on max detail at decent resolutions like 1280*1024 and above.

"Giggles, the whole point of o/c'ing is that you are getting something for nothing. A point you appear to be missing"

did you not read why im still using win 98???

and in the five years that my familie's computer has been running we never had to reinstall win98 until i screwed up their hdd by sticking in an old harddrive as master
i just forgot to check the jumper and switched on the computer to find that it booted to win3.1 and when i removed this hdd the computer no longer booted to the hdd with win98 on it
it was my fault completely not win98

btw i love those win3.1 boot times lol flash of a second and to shut it down just press the power button

what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

"What's wrong with Windows 98?
1. Horribly insecure."

My winxp system gets a new virus once every 60 days or so. My win98 system never does.

"2. Unstable."
You mean "less stable than winxp", which is a true statement

"3. Can't effectively handle more than 256M of RAM."
cachemaster fixes this if you don't want to take 3 minutes to do it yourself

"4. Loss of support and driver development."
yeah

"5. Lack of compatibility with new games (Doom 3 for example)"
okay

"But you'll spend $80 for RAM you can't use effectively without XP.