Hehe, thanks everyone for your kind words but this seriously isn't any kind of news but just a prank by massman, well deserved though
Nothing special or drama involved in my case, overclocking and extreme-overclocking has been a hobby for me past +10 years together with writing hardware news & articles. It also turned from hobby into a full time job in 2000 and in the past good 3DMark scores and WRs were a good way for me as an editor to build up good relationships to manufacturers to help my job. A lot has happened during these 10 years from simple Celeron 300A & Abit BH-6 combo to 6-core CPUs & 4-Way SLI/CFX configurations and it has been an interesting journey to follow how manufacturers have adapted this hobby to one of their key features in product development and marketing.
The passion I had for pushing CPUs and GPUs higher and higher with all different kind of cooling methods (air, water, peltier, compressors, dry ice, liquid nitrogen & liquid helium) during these years is unfortunately just no longer there. Aiming for top spots in benchmarks can be addictive and exhausting. You keep thinking about the last bench session, what could be improved and how much more and worrying about how to match the parts other people have.
Not to mention endless loop with constant product launches which make current results insignificant during one night and recent "problems" in the scene with manufacturer support with cherry picked ES parts the majority won't even have chance to get hands on. Like in every competitive "sports" unfortunately also overclocking includes nowadays too much drama, personal disagreements and even cheating. Even though hwbot have done a great job with rules and guidelines, there are still many loopholes and just your conscience to decide what is right and wrong.
I've been lucky enough to meet most of the known overclockers in several live events around the world and it has been a pleasure to put a face to name. Especially the live overclocking competitions can be very exciting when properly organized and this is still one area which I might be interested of.
I've recently found the same passion I once had for overclocking from golf. It made me realize that a hobby should be something which I do for my own fun, feel happy about it and my mind is relaxed while playing. I also got married earlier this year and if everything goes well we have a second generation overclocker coming up in April. Anyway I'll be following the overclocking scene closely even though not being active myself. Good luck to everyone and enjoy your hobby
Regards,
Sampsa
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Couple overclocking pics from archives:
Slot A Athlon 800 MHz @ 1185 MHz with single stage compressor:
TurboPLL on MSI 6163 motherboard to raise FSB with crystals
AMD Athlon 1400 @ 2187 MHz with LN2 in 2001:
Straight 3,3V line from ATX connector to PWM
Pentium 4 2,2 GHz @ 3,63 GHz and Spi1M:
One of the first LN2 cooled VGA (GeForce 4 Ti4600) in 2002:
Radeon 9700 Pro under LN2 later same year:
ATI Radeon X800 XT PE with (first ever?) solid copper LN2 vga pot by Kamu in 2003:
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Last but not least, macci & me visiting Futuremark 10 years ago