Hi again,
Thanks for the links guys.
I dont usually overclock either but after reading about the new AMD stuff it became
a curiosity for me still more than a necessity. It is interesting though how much some
people have overclocked.
One of the issues i was wrestling with when i was looking at processors was to go
with either a 2.6GHz unit or a 3.0GHz unit and the price was considerably higher for
3.0GHz, and i eventually decided to go with the 2.6 gigger and since then was starting
to wonder just how different that little difference can make, so i overclocked a measly
10 percent and got up to 2.9GHz and now i can experience first hand that there is
so little difference that it's not worth it. I did some speed tests and determined that
Windows itself varies the overall average speed of an application a little anyhow so
the speed varies a little anyway, and even the low end of the timing tests (lower
means faster) has shown that there is so little difference it would make no difference
to the user really. Another way of looking at it is an application that takes 20 minutes
to run (i have to do some very long electrical simulations sometimes) on 2.6GHz would
take 17 minutes and 20 seconds to run on 3.0GHz, so the difference would be hardly
worth it.
I only did this because i wanted to see firsthand what would change, and for sure
nothing significant changes with that small 10 percent change in speed. I guess the
true overclocker guys (and or gals) try to push up farther, but that's not for me as
i dont think i would want to fuss around with water cooling (he he). I've thought
about it, but that's about it.
Oh yeah one interesting point came from this little experiment, and that is that the
temperature and watts used for the core stayed about the same, almost no difference
there either.
Another thing i found out during these tests was that there is a temperature sensor
inside the hard drive too. I've always known about the mobo and CPU sensors, but
wasnt sure if they ever built one into hard drives which i though would be nice to
have. Sure enough, there is one in the hard drive and it's accessible through a
program (free) known as CPUID Hardware Monitor (turns right up with a search) and
so now i can monitor the HD temp too, which i've wanted to do for a long time. I used
to stick a 8 dollar temperature probe into the case and mounted right on the HD case
but now i dont have to do that
What i have to wonder now is how they are accessing that temperature sensor through
software. They have a developers kit available but they want to charge for that.
It must somehow send commands to the hard drive and receive the results back.