RE: Chipspeed (WAS: Take a look at what Insider Weekly had to say about the biggest)

[Jim Langston <jlangston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had a P90 chip in one of my computers.  Wanted it to go faster.
Opened up the box and set the speed to 100.  Worked fine. 1/9th
speed increase for no extra money.

When Intel rates a chip at a certain speed, 90mhz, 500mhz, 1ghz,
whatever, that's what the chip will run at for sure.  Something
they rate at 90mhz *may* run at 133 mhz, or it may not.  Make it
90mhz and they're sure it'll work.  So you can come along and
make sure you have a super powerful fan and up the speed and see
if it works or not.

This is not 100% safe.  From the web sites I've seen a very small
percentage of chips crash and burn (literally) destroying the
chips, 2% or thereabouts was a reported figure for overclockers,
and no one contested that figure.

Roughly 50% of the time, the overclocked chip doesn't work right,
machine hangs, programs won't run, etc.. so you go back and set
the speed back to it's rated speed and all is back to normal.

I would not attempt to overclock a busniness machine CPU unless
I owned the business, however.  I don't feel like buying the
company a new CPU because I fried one out of my own pocket.

Generally, I will overclock when it seems so slow that I'de
just trash it anyway, then no loss if the chip burns.

HTH,

Jim Langston

From: jt <jt@ee.net>

> I never got Leif's original post, but I don't understand this anyway...
>
> I thought chip speeds were determined by the quality of the manufacturing
> process...?!?
>
> Meaning, they produce a batch of chips and rate them according to what
speed
> they can attain.  Sorta like sorting the biggest and best apples into the
> premium class (and charge accordingly) and the others into the regular
class
> of apples...