Overclocking Buyer's Guide - September 2004
by Wesley Fink on September 17, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Final Words
Anyone who is an overclocker (or wants to be) should be able to find something that grabs their interest in this Overclocking Guide. With a range of prices from about $900 to just over $2300 for core overclocking components, you should find an overclocking system that can meet your interests or your budget. It was not really our intention to do four Buyer's Guides while looking at overclocking, but it was hard to address what we believe Overclockers are looking for without addressing both the Performance and Value segments of overclocking.This led to recommendations for an Athlon 64 Socket 939 system, a Prescott Socket 775 system, a "first-time" hot Athlon 64 Socket 754 system, and our first recommendation of a value Athlon 64 Overclocking alternative based on the Sempron 3100+. If our choices seem heavily weighted toward AMD, it is only because AMD systems are the ones topping most of the overclocking charts at the moment. If you need convincing, go to www.futuremark.com and look at any top ten list for 3DMark2001SE. 3DMark2001SE is heavily influenced by CPU speed, which makes it very useful for comparing overclocked processor performance. The later 3DMark2003 is more useful for comparing pure video performance since it is much more video centric. You may be surprised to find the 3DMark2001SE ORB shows AMD heavily at the top. If Intel was the current Overclocking darling, as they have been in the recent past, you would see more Intel systems in our recommendations.
We have barely touched on Heatsink/Fans in this Overclocking Buyer's Guide. In all cases, we assumed the retail HSF in our prices unless we stated an alternative as we did for the mobile 3200+ choice. You can always improve overclocking results even further with a better HSF, and we do intend to address HSF recommendations in a future update to the Overclocking Buyer's Guide.
Now, go build your dream overclocking system and let us know what you think in our front page comments section. Whether you agree or disagree with where the Overclocking Buyer's Guide is going, we would like to know what you think.
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whitelight - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
For ram, look into PQI's 2-2-2-5 (2x512mb) solution. It overclocks really well with relatively tight timings and has samsung's tccd chips. It's also cheaper than other solutions ($250)axel - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
Hi, very interesting article indeed.The only thing I do not really understand, and rather see as an error is the following:
You say that almost every top overclockers i.e. in the futuremark 3dmarks ORB database are on AMD platforms. Though, except if I'm not looking at the right place, if I'm taking into account the 5 best scores, I see that 4 of them are running Pentium4 platforms, and only one is an AMD (which is actually on the 4th position of the top-5).
AlphaFox - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
Id like to see how the XP stacks up against the 64 when overclocked.. I have a XP mobile 2600 and am running it at 2.46Ghz and everything I throw at it runs as smooth as silk.. I dont see a need to upgrade unless there was something I couldnt run, or run smooth.eetnoyer - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
Any chance you've tested the limits of the ballistix RAM on the DFI. If so, how high did it reach?Nickel020 - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
Nice article, but there is a mistake on page 5 (CPU and Motherboard: VALUE OC Recommendations):The heatsinks listed (XP-90 & 120) are made by Thermalright, not Thermaltake.
Shinei - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
Nice article, though I'm curious to see how the 3200-M64 performs compared to the Clawhammer and Newcastle desktop cores. I know the Newcastle revisions have an upgraded memory controller, or something like that; does the 3200-M64 have the same upgrades, or is it based on the older Clawhammer revision?And why the choice of OCZ's PowerStream? Antec puts out a 550w that's just as reliable as the 480w you suggested as an alternative... Unless I missed a review that pointed out the OCZ to be more robust than the Antec supply.
qquizz - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
This is my type of review. I can't have too many of them. I do agree with slashbinslashbash about some guidance on value oriented RAM. The price differences between 2-2-2-5 memory and say 2.5-x-x-x value memory is rather drastic. But if none of it will o/c then so be it.slashbinslashbash - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
#2: Under the Value OC Alternative system Wesley writes "Buy an ATI 9800 PRO for $200 less and overclock the heck out of it." So it looks like you were right on the money ;) Personally I'm looking at a 9600XT All-In-Wonder as it's about the same price at Newegg; less performance in games (still reasonable framerates in Doom3) but with the ever-so-cool All-In-Wonder functionality added.slashbinslashbash - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
Great guide. The only thing that I'd ask you to do differently (or rather, to add next time) is to make a "value" recommendation for the RAM. Nowadays I won't use any less than a gig of RAM, but I think it's silly to pay substantially more for RAM than for the CPU. Even just one stick of 512MB in the Value Alternative system costs more than the CPU.I'd like to know some "value" RAM alternatives that might not have such aggressive latency timings but will still keep up with the mobo and CPU, if it's possible. I know you guys can't test every cheapo stick of RAM out there, but... any sort of guidance would be appreciated. All the big brands offer "Value" RAM. Will none of it overclock? Is the performance from the recommended $280 (for 1GB) RAM actually worth the $120 premium it commands over, say, two $80 sticks of Corsair Value Select (on front page of ZipZoomFly)? Would that $120 be better spent on the CPU? It's more than the difference between the Sempron 3100+ and the "Value Recommended" system's A64 3200+.. and it nearly covers the upgrade to both the CPU and motherboard.
Also, two errors: 1) the eVGA 6800GT is listed as $389 under the Value Alternative system but at $383 under the Value Recommended system; 2) the Value Recommended system sums to $1440, not $1460.
Again, great guide, it's probably what I'll be looking at when I decide on my next system.
decptt - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link
For AGP VGA, do you have a value altervative for limited budget not playing doom3?For me, 6800 is too powerful to run multimedia and encoding DivX.
Do you think 9800Pro can be runner up?
Anyone knows about when ATI X series for AGP (X300, X600) will be coming? or ONLY PCI Express :'(