At 8:43 PM -0400 8/28/2008, Wallace Adrian D'Alessio wrote: > >I never understood the barriers to overclocking Mac hardware hacks.
Look at it from the hardware's point of view. The clock tells the hardware how fast to run. Just like putting a jet engine on a riding lawn mower - there's a point where stability becomes an issue. The hardware ends up tripping over itself. PCs are made to be mass-marketed and cheap. One of the ways of doing that is to design only ONE motherboard. Just make it capable of running at multiple speeds. The processor is the highest-cost item. So to make a cheap computer, you use that one motherboard, and a slow processor. Now if the end-user wants to replace that processor with something faster... IOW, notice that most "overclocking" projects start with a low or mid-range system. Not happening at the high-end! The next issue is the intermix of speeds between major components. Memory, Memory Controller. Memory Bus. Processor. I/O Controller. I/O Bus (PCI, PCI-X, etc). As long as they can work together, life is good. If they can't, you lock up (crash). >This year I have read of only one guy willing to take soldering iron >in hand for a Mac. Most Macs are fairly high-end, so they're already running at the upper limit of what the motherboard and the other components can handle. Not so much wiggle room. Um, another "example" over overclocking. Chip manufacturers do not make six versions of a processor that runs at six speeds. They make ONE, that runs at the highest. But fabrication is messy, and many fail. They test the processors. Those that only run at the lower speeds get sold at those speeds (and for cheaper). But it's all a range... If you take a processor that's marked to run in the middle range of that family's speeds, and crank up its clock, it will probably do fine to a point... People that overclock are simply trying to squeeze the extra juice out of the orange, and pray the extra heat generated doesn't cook anything critical. - Dan. -- - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
