Talk:Overclocking

XS Spam
I've reverted the edits by "FUGGER" because of blatant spam. He owns XtremeSystems (not to be confused with sysextreme.com). Putting "These and more top names can be found at XtremeSystems.org (linked below)." in the intro of the article is spam. Furthermore, adding the link to the XtremeSystems homepage as an overclocking resource when the home page has very little (or none at all?) original articles about overclocking and contains only links to other sites or the XtremeSystems forums. Therefore, having a link to XtremeSystems in both the links of resources and forums is redundant. Also, removing XtremeResources.org from the forum listings is debatable as the site has multiple members in the top 10 in various versions of 3dMark and the forum provides a number of overclocking tips. I just wanted to clarify why I reverted the edits, in case people were wondering. - PS2pcGAMER


 * I have been talking with "FUGGER" via Talk pages and email, and I we have both agreed on some ideas... Notable names in overclocking SHOULD stay at the end of the article, and FUGGER is no exception. I suggested that he give points at the end of the links, and cite particular web articles instead of google searches, to which he also agreed. Lastly, I suggested that he make an article that curtails Overclocking breakthroughs and their record owners, and wiki-link that instead of just posting notable names at the end of the article. I haven't heard from him on the last bit, but this is all being cleared up, so no worries. This guy was kinda "spamming", but he was simply trying to put content back into the article that was originally there.


 * Fair enough. I just thought his additions were not in good taste and they weren't really beneficial to the article.  I will also re-add the link to XtremeResources to bring things back to how they should be.  Hopefully that will be the end of this.  - PS2pcGAMER

Condradictory "Disadvantages" Section
This section repeatedly makes a negative statement about overclocking, then contradicts it with a statement about how it really isn't a problem. It really ought to be changed.

Recent reversion
The editor who added the content that I recently reverted asked me to detail my reasoning for doing so. I'll start with the incorrect explanations. First, higher transistor density does little to make "electrons travel faster". Carrier mobility (the net drift velocity response per unit electric field) is largely related to temperature and band gap energy (through its relationship with carrier effective mass) and to various scattering mechanisms (lattice/phonon, ionized impurity, etc). Making devices smaller doesn't make electrons flow faster, though it does reduce the amount of charges that must be moved around to change transistor modes (which is a large reason smaller transistors are faster). To make electrons (and holes) truly flow faster, you would need to increase the electric field. However, generally VLSI houses try to practice constant electric field scaling (that is, scale voltages with the dimensions to keep electric field roughly constant) in order to avoid hitting carrier saturation velocity too soon as well as a host of breakdown mechanisms (avalanche, tunneling, etc). In reality, constant electric field scaling isn't precisely followed due to some real-life difficulties, but that's a much more advanced discussion.

Now for the ill-drawn conclusions. I would not agree with the assessment that smaller transistors automatically imply better ability to overclock. It is a factor, but it is not nearly the only one nor the simplest one. How much one can overclock a microprocessor is really defined by how much clock speed tolerance the manufacturer sets for a given batch of dies. In other words, it's usually the economics more than the technology that determines how well a chip will overclock. Granted, some processes will facilitate higher clock speeds better than others, often as a virtue of thermal improvements (which is what I would guess is playing a large role in the Pentium D example case), but to take this and conclude that smaller transistors will make a microprocessor more overclockable is an oversimplification. -- mattb

reference 2 invalid?
"Often, an overclocked system which passes stress tests experiences instabilities in other programs.[2]"

In the article cited there is nothing about those computers passing a stress test. In fact it says the computer was overclocked without their knowledge. reference here

Destiny or Fulfillment
The half of what concerns of this type of overclocking is just that, DO NOT OVER 5ghz, it will damage your system. This is really a tricky subject to begin with and not all so new after all. The time it takes to reconsider higher overclocking just lets you believe that you are overclocking 5ghz or in layman's terms going about doing things the wrong way such as visits to nearby convenience stores could help you see more of the world. As a matter of fact, the over clocker is using a slight misrepresentation of the over clockers and their system sublets. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:a000:dfc0:6:dd05:46a5:f88:f542 (talk • contribs)