Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Some Crafty 16.19 results on my XP 2.44GHz

Author: Aaron Gordon

Date: 22:46:57 02/20/03

Go up one level in this thread


On February 21, 2003 at 00:42:50, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On February 20, 2003 at 18:47:00, Aaron Gordon wrote:
>
>>On February 20, 2003 at 14:42:19, Matthew Hull wrote:
>>
>>>On February 20, 2003 at 14:16:12, Aaron Gordon wrote:
>>>
>>>>On February 20, 2003 at 11:42:49, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>That is _not_ the same idea.  The idea that a vendor purposefully underclocks a
>>>>>chip
>>>>>is ridiculous.  The idea that they don't release the next generation at a faster
>>>>>clock rate
>>>>>until the current supply of slower chips is exhausted is not contradictory at
>>>>>all.  Two
>>>>>totally different business practices, one of which makes economic sense, the
>>>>>other makes
>>>>>zero sense.
>>>>
>>>>They make ALL of the chips off the same line. Why do you think you can run out
>>>>and buy an AthlonXP 1700+ (1466MHz) with the Thoroughbred-B core for $56 and
>>>>overclock it to 2.1-2.3GHz? Try that with one of the very first 1700+ chips, you
>>>>will not get over 1.6GHz. Same thing goes for my old Celeron-2 566MHz. It does
>>>>1.1GHz (yes, 566 to 1100) air-cooled. This is a cC0 and basically is a P3-1GHz
>>>>core with some L2 cache disabled. Intel and AMD both make the same stuff and
>>>>mark it to whatever they feel is needed. If Celeron 566's are selling a lot,
>>>>they'll start marking them 566 to meet demand. 2100+'s are selling like
>>>>wild-fire, AMD is putting their latest and greatest silicon in those chips. You
>>>>can pay $300 or whatever it costs for a 2800+ *OR* you can get a 2100+ with the
>>>>*EXACT* same core for $97.
>>>>
>>>>You may know about programming, Hyatt, but you sure don't know about
>>>>overclocking.
>>>
>>>
>>>You sure don't know about the real world where real work is at stake.
>>>
>>>I'll say this, he is wise enough not to waste his time risking mission critical
>>>applications on over-clocked, un-warranteed systems.  Hardware failure risks are
>>>not something to play around with in the real business world, even at a
>>>university.
>>>
>>>It's one thing if you are a hobbyist, but quite another when you are responsible
>>>to your employer for the quality and reliability of the results.  Where I work,
>>>hardware failures mean potentially MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in lost revenue and
>>>penalties.
>>>
>>>Matt
>>
>>
>>I run my main server (dual Celeron 400 @ 552MHz) overclocked, I've also run
>>'critical' servers overclocked. Back when I was working for an ISP I overclocked
>>the crap out of their 3 main servers, one was a single P3-500, one a dual P3-500
>>and another was a dual P2-300. The P3-500 ran 616MHz, the dual 500 did 616 as
>>well and the Dual P2-300 which ran no problem at 450. After spending a few hours
>>of testing those systems were completely stable all the way up until they got
>>retired. My point is if you know what you're doing you won't have any problems,
>>whether you're checking email or serving thousands of people.
>
>
>If you had done that working for me, you'd be unemployed in an instant.  It
>isn't a matter of "knowing what you are doing".  It is a matter of having good
>luck.  And in a business, "luck" is not the way I want to make progress...
>
>I run labs that provide services to hundreds of students, dozens of faculty,
>and off-campus researchers that are using my cluster to provide critical
>computational requirements.  After the AMD fiasco several of us witnessed a
>few years ago, we learned a lesson the hard way.
>
>If you like overclocking, let 'er rip.  But if you do it with someone _elses_
>machine, on a critical application, your future is limited.

The network engineer who maintained the servers is a good friend of mine and he
specifically asked me to do it after talking with the owner of the IP (the owner
of the ISP saw my water-cooling video and was interested). I was asked to
overclock, I didn't do it without asking. I overclocked to reasonable levels and
ran multiple tests, the overclock went fine and as I said the servers were fine
up until their retirement.

Maybe you saw a couple of bad systems once and that scared you or something.. in
reality overclocking isn't bad at all if you don't push the limits to absolute
insanity. Just because you saw something once doesn't mean all of them are like
that. When I went to a Doom2 tournament here in Dallas (CPL Tourney) all of the
tournament machines were P4-1.5GHz's provided by some company (I forget the
name, there are pictures of it though and I'm sure the logo of the company is in
the background, if interested look up the latest Dallas CPL). Anyway, they were
crashing, rebooting, doing all sorts of stuff. I was in the middle of playing
some warm up matches and the piece of junk rebooted on me. Got into windows and
it locked up straight off. Are all P4's like this? Of course not. Whoever
provided those computers needs to go back to school, though, or find a new job.

Now, that was a bad experience for me with Pentium 4's but I'm not going to
blame the CPU. It could have been a combination of the motherboard and memory,
maybe some driver incompatibilities, who knows. You could have experienced the
same thing. No reason to rag on AMD about it.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.