Is overclocking dying?

[saint19]

Hi all overclockers...

 

Maybe this is the same question of all years, but for example in my country active overclockers at this time only exist one: Me.

 

Maybe in the USA or Europe the thing is different, but I was talking with a friend, old overclocker friend in my country and he told me that overclocking was dying because many users now prefer laptops and tablets.

 

What do you think? I really like the overclock, but I don't want be "alone" in a world were the things aren't how 5 or 6 years ago...

 

Thanks for share your opinion.

[Dreadlockyx]

Overclocking is just getting more and more serious. Since most chips run well under LN2/LHe, people left "normal" overclocking.

 

And for tablets, well... Some still think they're useful. I personally disagree. Also, using laptops/tablets has nothing to do with overclocking. If you /really/ want to get involved in overclocking, buying a tablet is not a problem. The important point is to be active in the OC community.

[K404]

Tablets and mobile will change a lot of things for sure. If desktop sales are down (they are) and there is a demographic shift to casual gaming and mobile.... it is obvious that fewer people will overclock until tablets can be benched and OC'd

 

Why buy a desktop computer specifically for traditional overclocking? It is much easier to get the interest in OC if it involves something that is in your life anyway.

 

Every hobby should start out cheap, but vaguely relevant. The cheap entry to OC is to buy old gear and let's be honest..... most of the world does not care about s939 or 478...... or ATI 3 series or nV 8 series.

[Calathea]

In sweden we have seen a big decline of extreme overclockers. I'd say for the last two years it's been no more than 2-3 active OCers, that includes me. Back when I first got into this hobby with late high end s775 and early X58 systems we were at least 10-15 active. Also posting a thread at XS xtreme oc forum was really big, what happened to that place? I get the general feeling that OCing is dying and these damned locked intel chips aint makin it easier. Oc a cheap 1.8 gig chip to 3 Ghz... those days are over unless you're into bad perfoming AMD cpus.

[chispy]

I dont think is dying , to the contrary i have seen it grow over the years. There is a new very competitive generation of overclockers from my point of view . If you really enjoy it overclocking you will find a way to make it fun and enjoy it all by yourselve like i have done , im the only extreme overclocker in the entire Caribean Islands , i always bench by myself always have a blast.

 

@kenny , well said my friend.

Edited February 19, 2013 by chispy

[inventpl]

Most of the world does not care about 939 or 478, but this is one of most fun to bench platform, I'm not include 775

 

OC a cheap 1.8Ghz to 3GHz, or more is better for me, than clocking Ivy, or smth like change multi, up vcore and You have score ; ofc if You have nice chip

 

People are getting mobile devices, and nothing can change this. I'm also planning to buy smth only for net browsing, but another one, or two systems, must be for overclocking. Of course some overclockers, are gone, but look ; family, ... This can take a lot of time, a lot mouch than oc, and I understund this, because this is mouch better Anyway is private problems, work ...

[TaPaKaH]

Back in the day when I started doing this (late 90s - early 00s), stationaty PCs were pretty much the centre of home entertainment so IT-oriented people faced the choice to either let things stay the laggy way they were or to start doing something about it. As overclocking used to be less mainstream than it is now, it gave significant bragging rights raising overclockers' self-esteem and propelling them to push it to the extreme.

I feel that these days people are less forced to make such choices due to variety of electronic devices they have access to. Even though sales of PCs might have increased over the last decade, these days almost everyone has a laptop and a smartphone to distract their attention, hence a lot less damn about PCs and overclocking is given.

 

As for the old crowd that is floating around - you can't expect people to do the same thing forever. At some point in time everyone will eventually realise that there are more interesting things to do in life than sitting in front of your computer.

Edited February 19, 2013 by TaPaKaH
typo fix

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

Back in the day when I started doing this (late 90s - early 00s), stationaty PCs were pretty much the centre of home entertainment so IT-oriented people faced the choice to either let things stary the laggy way they were or to start doing something about it. As overclocking used to be less mainstream than it is now, it gave significant bragging rights raising overclockers' self-esteem and propelling them to push it to the extreme.

I feel that these days people are less forced to make such choices due to variety of electronic devices they have access to. Even though sales of PCs might have increased over the last decade, these days almost everyone has a laptop and a smartphone to distract their attention, hence a lot less damn about PCs and overclocking is given.

 

As for the old crowd that is floating around - you can't expect people to do the same thing forever. At some point in time everyone will eventually realise that there are more interesting things to do in life than sitting in front of your computer.

 

 

Well written Sam.

[dinos22]

Back in the day when I started doing this (late 90s - early 00s),.

 

doing "this"? weren't you born in 90s

[richba5tard]

I don't think the concept of overclocking is dying, but as Sam said the classic Windows Intel PC tower is no longer the only choice for computing. As long as people can get some free performance, they will try to thinker with it and be the fastest. IMHO our community should embrace trying to overclock tablets, phones, etc. That's why we are putting effort in a truly cross platform benchmark (hwbot prime), a bench which runs both on quad socket i7 server as on a raspberry pi or a samsung galaxy phone.

 

Those mobile platforms are not always easy to overclock, but the PC market also didn't start as a set of easily overclockable and interchangeable components.

 

I don't see this as the end of overclocking, but as a start of a new era. Hope we can survive the jump!

[TaPaKaH]

The thing about overclocking tablets and phones is that it has very little reason to pick up on rational grounds as these devices do not run on continuous power and potential overclockers would have to trade performance (which in most people's opinion is good enough at stock anyway) for a lot more significant battery lifespan. Besides, there is very little you can possibly change about cooling so there is a lot less manouver space for real enthusiasts, when you compare the playground to desktops.

doing "this"? weren't you born in 90s

did my first overclock in 1999, so I guess it counts

[rsnubje]

Does pushing a turbo button count

 

As mediocre overclocker I feel it's sometimes hard to get motivated as you see all those great overclockers with their highly binned chip and you kinda realise you're never gonna get one unless you throw a lot of money at it and in the lower class of overclockers there are too few competitions to care about. The competition now from EK/HWbot is something I highly appreciate because it's more accessible.

[Eeky NoX]

Does pushing a turbo button count

 

So true!! I started overclocking in early 90's though? lol ...20yrs after I still push on buttons (clr cmos, pwr, clr cmos, rst ^^)

 

No graveyard for OC... like it's been said times are changing ppl come, ppl goes away thta's life.

In my country all 1sts famous extreme Ocers gave up. But younger take their place

[dinos22]

OC seems pretty active in my neck of the woods but there is a lot of discontent the way HWBOT runs things and a lot of the things revolve around local forum stuff. I hear things like hwbot is making OC stale and running it into the ground, forgetting this is a community activity and something FUN. I can kinda see where they are coming from particularly with the latest revision...

[jjjc]

Yeah, I would agree. There is still a large amount of interest in overclocking in local forums I visit, people are still benching and splurging out on expensive gear for a couple of extra hundred points in 11 or now 3dmark(12). I feel like there has been two much emphasis on improving hwbot for interest to outsiders, to make it more of an interesting spectator sport when it's never really going to be that imo. We should be working to improve things for the people who are interested and invested in the hobby, not to make it more interesting to people who probably just aren't interested. I think the new Pro league layout, and the reaction to it by members in that league is a prime example of that.

[sin0822]

i don't think its dying, but it is becoming more of a niche type thing.

[Massman]

It's not dying, but evolving. Imho, the biggest problem is follow-through. People are interested in overclocking, but don't really know how to start or are enthusiastic enough to continue with it. But overclocking (as we know it, historically speaking) is highly dependant on CPU and GPU architecture, more so than any for of competition. Simply said, overclocking will be "popular" when the system is CPU bound and the CPU does not scale with voltage or temperature.

 

Like Sandy Bridge.

 

I'm currently putting down some thoughts on paper regarding this.

[saint19]

So good see many overclockers writing their opinion here, would be great see that paper Massmam. I think that return to my previous team would delete that "forever alone feeling", I don't know, lets see what happen and see if some other overclockers write their opinion over here.

[der8auer]

Compared to about 7-8 years ago the community seems still pretty active to me. Of course there are a lot of new faces and some overclockers quit but I don't think overclocking is dying

[Jimba]

I knew about computers when i was about late primary school (10-11_ but didnt really get into it about 3 years later. I wouldnt say it is dying just as things become faster people dont have the "need" to OC but the fun (for me) is still there. Im still young so allot of stuff to learn im sure. plus the one thing i enjoy about overclocking isnt the benching of hardware (that is fun though) but rather the community and friendships formed through this common interest. Ive learnt so much about more then just computers,like culture and languages and a whole heap of other stuff through people I have met and spoken to online and I believe as the community gets stronger and with things such as Skype and local country events (more in Aus would be nice) I believe it will. So yeah It isnt dead at all just evolving as people have said.

[DaCoSa OCX]

hi

We can not forget that the economic crisis affecting the sector very much...

Here in Spain people have to prioritize and organize the money to survive. Not possible money for hardware

 

Before overclocking hobby was 100%, a healthy sport. hehehe

Maybe now it's all very commercial

 

regards

[SF3D]

Just saw this thread. Good topic to discuss.

 

I would not say overclocking is dying, but it is getting so mainstream, that there is no need to make fuss about it.

Almost all users can jump up 1 or more multipliers and have overclocked system.

In our country people were enthusiastic about OC when it was not mainstream and there was still some sort of mysterious cloud around it (late 90's to 200X).

I think people used to enjoy watching when some pioneers of overclocking did something what was totally unreal in that point. Replaced crystal and LN2 for computer!!! Really?

 

Now more than 10 years have passed and overclocking never became popular hobby. It was never that large and it will never get large.

There is just not enough interesting factors in overclocking and it is totally impossible to watch more than 3 minutes for every normal people.

This is the sad fact. I have done this long long time, but none of my normal life friends, wife, kids, parents etc have not been able to watch even a minute, cause it is so boring sh*t.

I feel same way in a poetry course or while I watch 5 minutes of chess match...yawn...

 

HWbot rankings are international and they have a good marketing value for vendors.

HWbot is one of the things which have kept OC alive all these years and have made it sort of a real "professional" hobby.

We also need to thank some vendors who have used money for international competitions, which have been so good for us.

The ones who blame hwbot about making oc so commercial are just so wrong and they can not see the whole picture.

I can understand where those thoughts are coming from, but they are still not correct.

 

We can not forget Futuremark, who have done these professional 3D benchmarks all these years.

We have seen some others trying, but market is so little and the products have been so bad, that there have never been real alternatives.

Maybe this is one reason why our overclocking behavior is what it is nowadays and we focus so much on the 3Dmark scores etc.

If benchmarks would have been totally different since beginning, we could have been having totally different style in our benching.

Asus brought their ..what the hell was name of this program ... oc program for users last year and it did not get warm welcome, if I say it kindly.

The idea was actually good, but it is kind of too late to change how game is rolling.. or who knows in the end.

 

Well, I have been very lucky in my OC career and that way I have been able to do almost all which can be done in this hobby.

These years have been very enjoyable and I sure hope that upcoming years would bring more of these experiences.

If I wouldn't have met all the people I have met so far, I would have stopped years a go. Thank you guys!

 

I have been in HWbot rankings during 2007-2013 and I have been able to keep my top 5 target almost all the time (except sandy bridge fiasco)

I will adapt to this new league which is coming soon and I am happy with it.

 

Like Oliver would say now "Keep pushing it"

Edited February 21, 2013 by SF3D

[Strat]

^ this :celebration: