Cars and computers are two different animals. Some of the more valuable cars are ones that nobody wanted when new (odd color, special engine on an ugly model car, etc.). Most of what we collect was made in the millions (specific model computers) and 100's of millions (specific era of machine). Outside of a few items nothing I own cannot be purchased over again if money was not an issue, and some of what I collect (old analog video editing hardware) few would want anyway.

The only overclocking I ever did was to run a 486/133 at 160 and some Pentium II CPUs meant for 66mgz at 100mhz FSB (all ran cool and stable). Even if I burned those CPU's up they are not rare or particularly valuable anyway.

I am cheap and handy with a meter and soldering iron. If it is not worth my time and effort to fix something nobody else will bother either. Some broke stuff I just put on the shelf (machine specific power supplies with no real substitutes for example) because someday it might be cheaper to fix then to replace. All that stuff will get trashed when I die.

Everyone collects hardware but few people (outside of games) bothers to collect application software, and without software we have heavy paperweights. People 200 years from now probably will not care about any specific machines I owned, but they will probably be interested in the engineering and production of the key components that made them all work. Tuning a 4 barrel carburetor is like configuring IRQs on a 286 full of cards, few people know how to do that anyway because of PnP. In 100 years nobody will know how the hell a piston engine car works. Heck computers could be implants under the skin by then.

Basically what I am saying is most of what we hold dear now (which is a very small percentage of the population that collects vintage machines) isn't that important to newer generations. If a few machines out of the millions made last for 100 years that's enough. So enjoy what you have while you are still alive.

Unknown_K wrote:

Basically what I am saying is most of what we hold dear now (which is a very small percentage of the population that collects vintage machines) isn't that important to newer generations. If a few machines out of the millions made last for 100 years that's enough. So enjoy what you have while you are still alive.

Well said.

I'm doing with my machines what I want, Sure I'm dabbling with overclocking if I feel like it. If it's older, more rare stuff, I'm trying to restore and keep it in good condition, but that's it.

I overclocked my 5500 and I was disappointed with how it turned out. Weak/fragile card. Besides that one and my Obsidian cards, I almost overclock all of my hardware whenever I know the gains are worth the additional heat, I have proper cooling to do so and/or the part isn't hard to replace. Haven't had any deaths yet besides the mentioned card above.

Overclocking of retro h/w doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The purpose of overclocking was always to squeeze out more performance per $ of the hardware at the time. But given there is already faster machines that have come since, if you need more performance just get something quicker.

Shponglefan wrote:

Overclocking of retro h/w doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The purpose of overclocking was always to squeeze out more performance per $ of the hardware at the time. But given there is already faster machines that have come since, if you need more performance just get something quicker.

Don't confuse the purpose of then with the purpose of now. Then you wanted a 486 because it was damn faster than your old 386. Now you want a 486 because it is interesting and it allows you to run WinG commander at a precise speed and relive your memories.

Overclocking vintage HW is the same. Then we did it for speed today we do it to relive those memories and see hey, my P3, can I run some stuff it should not have been able to? Yes of course you can get an i7 but that is not the point.

the Car scene has something similar with the modding scene.
Take VW beetles or campers which I'm also into. Stock are classic cars now, however just as many people are adding body kits, improving engine performance, or replacing the engine all together.
Part of me is sad this "irreversible damage" is being done, but sometimes the end result is impressive. Its just the way of the world.

And while I like OEM systems, Most will become parts for more desirable computers, just like engines swaps from relatively boring large family cars are dropped into smaller performance cars.

Personally I don't get overclocking, Its not like the prices are whats limiting us any more. but I get that's where some people get their kicks, squeezing every last bit of performance out of a system (much like the original hot rod's)

I never bothered overclocking except for a few special cases:
Celeron 300a (300->450Mhz)
Athlon XP-M 2600+ (2000->2400Mhz)
C2D E4300 (1800->2400Mhz)

I did dabble a bit, but typically what you gained wasn't noticeable outside of benchmarks, and I'm a conservative kind of guy to begin with, so I'd rather not risk damaging my hardware for differences I'd not notice during actual gameplay. The three cpus I mention above were special cases.

Should we all underclock our hardware, then? 😜

I'll argue with an example: the 300A needs no extra voltage to run at 450. This is the 2nd to best CPU of 1998—the best being the Celeron 333 at 500. It generates more heat, but some nice thermal paste and a good fan will take care of it, and it will run within spec. Why would I run it at 300?

You may argue I cherry picked this example, but I think most people only overclock "legendary overclocking CPUs" and leave the rest of the hardware alone, e.g., most people go for the 300a and not the Celeron 333. That's if they overclock at all, because there is a strong stigma against it: you often see "Ultimate 1998 builds" with a P2 450 which was the most expensive of that year, but not the best performer.

Another example: did you know that according to intel datasheets, slot 1 CPUs are only guaranteed to work up to 50 insertions, but no more? I am pretty sure my old 300a is well beyond that number, as are a few of my Coppermines, etc. Arguing against overclocking is like arguing against plugging and unplugging these CPUs: both deteriorate the CPU by making it work out of spec. So why not campaign against switching CPUs?

I'm not trying to be a jerk, or trying to ridicule the discussion. I just think you hit the nail in the head in the first sentence: "everybody has the right to make their own decisions and have their own fun"

These days I'm not that much of an overclocker, with any new gear that is. But have done it 2 times before, with great success, with what is now considered retro-gear. Single purpose then was for the plain cost-benefit of buying a cheap CPU and using it at great speed. Nowadays it's kept this way mostly due to laziness and nostalgia, heh...

Actually one of them still is operational today, semi-daily - a Pentium4 s478 1.6ghz boosted to a satisfying 2.65ghz (166mhz bus, vs the normal 100mhz), at standard voltage.

No issues, though one of the 15 year old drives has developed a dozen reallocated sectors. Mind you, those have been stable at the same number for almost a decade(!) now, so probably nothing to worry about ?

And yes, I could, and probably should, exchange that lowly 1.6Ghz CPU for a more potent one. While not that much problem vs longevity, as the mobo is fine at this speed and normal voltage, the CPU might eventually develop issues (?).
Have plenty of better spares, but somehow havent gotten that far yet, as it all still works fine... AND the machine is virtually untouched since 2002, only swapped the CD-drive for DVD-burner. So, being sentimental perhaps.

- The other one, a Celeron 566mhz clocked at 850mhz(on a Slotket), BUT with a hefty voltage increase (to 2.1v I think ?), has now (caused) a slightly blown (but still booting) motherboard.
After 14 years the 4 voltage caps vented, probably because of the high voltage sustained for such a long time.
The last few of those years though, I used it partly as an experiment, to see how long the mobo would last.
(Note: this machine saw heavy daily usage during all those 14 years, 6-10hrs at least, as it was my main machine (and doubled as my TV...)

I've overclocked stuff since the days of the 80486 25Mhz. Saw a 25/33Mhz jumper on the motherboard and wondered what would happen if I switched it.

It worked and I was hooked. Pretty much every single system I have ever owned has been overclocked.

My KT7A board has a modded BIOS so it supports Barton CPUs. The socket has some single strands of wire I used to jumper different pins so that it can support the higher multipliers.

It has a XP-M 2800+ running at 2.5Ghz. I'm sure the CPU could handle more, but that is the max the board will do. The cooler is a Thermaltake Big Typhoon that has been lapped and also has a much better fan on it. Keeps it nice and cool.

I've never had a CPU or motherboard die directly because of overclocking. I have killed a number of CPUs over the years because of stupid mistakes.. like when I broke an Athlon chip into 3 pieces because I tightened my homemade waterblock down too tight.
Or the time when I tried increasing the cooling capacity of a K6-2 chip by taking the heatspreader off, sealing the resistor blocks with silicone, then putting the heatspreader back on and injecting water/antifreeze under the heatspreader with a syringe and then sealing that up. It worked for a couple weeks and did run cooler, but then it just died one day. I took it apart to see what had happened and it turned out that the coolant I had used ended up eating away at the silicone and corroded and shorted out one of the resister blocks. Fun times.

The only time a might have fried something from overclocking was a Nvidia 7900GS. Back in the day, there was some story about a whole load that was never supposed to be released.. faulty or something and they were stolen. Pretty sure the one I bought off of eBay was one of them as it matched the exact description. It worked, but artifacted when put under load. I ended up volt modding it as well as putting a huge cooler on it. It ran for about 1 year with a 50% overclock before it fried.

vladstamate wrote:

Shponglefan wrote:

Overclocking of retro h/w doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The purpose of overclocking was always to squeeze out more performance per $ of the hardware at the time. But given there is already faster machines that have come since, if you need more performance just get something quicker.

Don't confuse the purpose of then with the purpose of now. Then you wanted a 486 because it was damn faster than your old 386. Now you want a 486 because it is interesting and it allows you to run WinG commander at a precise speed and relive your memories.

Overclocking vintage HW is the same. Then we did it for speed today we do it to relive those memories and see hey, my P3, can I run some stuff it should not have been able to? Yes of course you can get an i7 but that is not the point.

I'm not talking about not using vintage hardware.

Rather it's a case of buying, say a 100 MHz Pentium and then overclocking it for a little extra performance when one could just as easily get a P-120 or a P-150 or something.

And that's all my point is. There's no real reason to overclock older hardware when faster hardware of the same era is also available.

For those who want period correct, an overclocked Celery 300A or Barton 2500+ is simply emblematic of enthusiast hardware of their time. Not too many people bought P2-450s or Barton 3200+ (400mhz FSB versions) because they were extremely expensive and could essentially be replicated (or exceeded in the case of the 300A) with more budget oriented options.

Plus, wringing out all the performance from your hardware is as fun now as it was then. Coming from the opposite direction, that's also part of what makes slowdown machines fun.

gdjacobs wrote:

For those who want period correct, an overclocked Celery 300A or Barton 2500+ is simply emblematic of enthusiast hardware of their time. Not too many people bought P2-450s or Barton 3200+ (400mhz FSB versions) because they were extremely expensive and could essentially be replicated (or exceeded in the case of the 300A) with more budget oriented options.

True, I can see if one is looking to build a specific model computer from a specific line of processors, the cheaper processors would be more abundant.

That said, the purpose of building a specific line of system while trying to squeeze out maximum performance still seems contradictory to me.

For example, I have two Windows XP boxes. One happens to be the aforementioned Barton-core Athlon 2500 (which back in the day, I did O/C). The other is a newer Intel E8400. Specs-wise there isn't much I can do with the Athlon that I can't do with the Intel, unless maybe running older IDE drives. If I'm just looking to run XP-compatible software and I'm concerned about performance, it doesn't make any sense to me to try to O/C the old Athlon when the much more powerful Intel sits right beside it.

Plus, wringing out all the performance from your hardware is as fun now as it was then. Coming from the opposite direction, that's also part of what makes slowdown machines fun.

Maybe it's just me, but running a comparable OS and software on two machines, when one is much more powerful than the other, trying to boost performance on the slower machine just seems futile.

Even though I typically am not a fan of overclocking, this doesn't mean I see it as some kind of evil thing in itself.
Some chips were downbinned and were actually faster chips, sold as slower chips. Officially this is overclocking, but in reality it kinda isn't in such cases I think.
I see many mobile chips as downbinned as well (like some K6-III+'s or Athlon mobiles) and some were perfectly able to run faster, like many Pentium 1 MMX 233MHz chips...but intel simply didn't want to due to them preferring people to purchase their Slot 1 solutions.
Some other chips which are noticeable good (and safe) overclockers may be (for instance) the AMD 5x75 ran at 160MHz. These chips are not really rare and were produced years after the chips it competed against seized being used (like Pentium 75MHz).

And some other form of "overclocking" could be the unlocking of disabled features (like turning a Radeon 9500 into a 9700). Basically one could see this as overclocking unused pipelines from 0MHz to <insert same speed as rest of GPU> -speeds 😜

What I don't like to see is people carelessly ruining hardware by foolish overclocking (like the play-doh mods or overclocking certain special hardware components to death out of pure boredom, stupidity, idc-ness or arrogance or something). BUT the major disclaimer here is that...if it's theirs, it's theirs, it's their property. So in the end it's their decision period, to each his own 😀

Tetrium wrote:

What I don't like to see is people carelessly ruining hardware by foolish overclocking (like the play-doh mods or overclocking certain special hardware components to death out of pure boredom, stupidity, idc-ness or arrogance or something). BUT the major disclaimer here is that...if it's theirs, it's theirs, it's their property. So in the end it's their decision period, to each his own 😀

The infamous Voodoo 6000 play-doh case. I read the card actually worked after everything was removed?

With specialized and rare hardware like that, an argument could even be made against using it if your goal is to preserve it.

Sometimes things need to run their natural courses.
Graphics card may die sooner if overclocked and pushed to the limit, but even never using a graphics card won't mean it will never die. The only way to preserve them is to (I'm half joking here, mind you 😜) deep-freeze them permanently with no sunlight, somewhere in a man-made cave 9000 miles below the ocean floor and such, never to be used or to be disturbed in any way 😜

Imo it's actually important to keep using retro hardware, for historic reasons, and I think emulators are going to be playing a crucial role here.
At some point in the future, the original hardware will be gone and either impossible or unrealistic to reproduce, but emulating can be replicated much more easily.
Benchmark results, box-art, contemporary price lists, pics & vids, the stories! All of this will be important down the road when it comes to retro gaming.
And yes, this does include overclocking results! Including the screw-ups and fry-ups!! 😁
But known suicidal overclocking of the more special/rare parts for no good reason whatsoever except for the emotional reasons of stupidity I already mentioned in my previous reply... that's just stupid and a pure waste of retrocomputing-resources.

At some point everything will die, but at least memories last longer 😀 (or so we believe 🤣!)

chinny22 wrote:

the Car scene has something similar with the modding scene. Take VW beetles or campers which I'm also into. Stock are classic ca […]
Show full quote

the Car scene has something similar with the modding scene.
Take VW beetles or campers which I'm also into. Stock are classic cars now, however just as many people are adding body kits, improving engine performance, or replacing the engine all together.
Part of me is sad this "irreversible damage" is being done, but sometimes the end result is impressive. Its just the way of the world.

And while I like OEM systems, Most will become parts for more desirable computers, just like engines swaps from relatively boring large family cars are dropped into smaller performance cars.

Personally I don't get overclocking, Its not like the prices are whats limiting us any more. but I get that's where some people get their kicks, squeezing every last bit of performance out of a system (much like the original hot rod's)

The more VW's destroyed the better as far as I'm concerned.

BSA Starfire wrote:

chinny22 wrote:

the Car scene has something similar with the modding scene. Take VW beetles or campers which I'm also into. Stock are classic ca […]
Show full quote

the Car scene has something similar with the modding scene.
Take VW beetles or campers which I'm also into. Stock are classic cars now, however just as many people are adding body kits, improving engine performance, or replacing the engine all together.
Part of me is sad this "irreversible damage" is being done, but sometimes the end result is impressive. Its just the way of the world.

And while I like OEM systems, Most will become parts for more desirable computers, just like engines swaps from relatively boring large family cars are dropped into smaller performance cars.

Personally I don't get overclocking, Its not like the prices are whats limiting us any more. but I get that's where some people get their kicks, squeezing every last bit of performance out of a system (much like the original hot rod's)

The more VW's destroyed the better as far as I'm concerned.

Why?

I work as a MOT tester here, and being in Devon the English Riviera there are a huge number of Golf Mk4's, new Bettle's and T4 van's that frankly are only driven by dickweeds. To get them through the emissions you have to get them REALLY hot, this involves running them at 4000 RPM for 10 minutes or so before the Catalysers get hot enough in an enclosed space. I have mild emphysema, the combo is not a good one!
Never understood why the Golf IV was soo loved, the handling is soggy, they are heavy and a pig to work on. And the smaller 1.4 & 1.6 engine was total rubbish. As for the T4, terrible vehicles, rusty, weak and slow. Yet people pay a fortune for them. It's all brand snobbery, funny really.