How many overclockers are there?

[Nir_Dinur]

Hi,

Just had a conversation with friends about overclockers. argued if there are just a few enthusiast or are overclockers a significant percentage of gamers \ pc users. Tried to google it but got nothing. Anyone knows where to look?

Thanks!

 

[CountMike]

I don't think anybody's keeping statistics, I for one OC anything in sight !! Just punch in "Overclock" in Google and watch it fly !!! I got About 12,300,000 hits, that's a lot of OC.

 

[Wolfshadw]

What follows in pure speculation and in no way are these figures listed as proof or actual numbers. They are merely presented as proofs of concept and in no way should be taken as exact figures. I'm guessing at numbers, but only assuming on the decisions made here. There is no proof that anything listed below actually happened. AGAIN, THIS IS ONLY A PROOF OF CONCEPT.

I look at it this way. Overclocking use to be a niche regime. Only a few people actually knew what it was and how to do it; and when I say "a few", I'm talking in the area of tens of thousands. The problem for overclockers was that word was getting out and more and more people were wanting to get into it; most without even bothering to learn what it meant or the consequences. They just heard "Free performance increase" and went all in.

The part you need to figure out is at what point do Intel, AMD, and motherboard manufacturers decide it's profitable to make the designation between chips, advertise it, and take the market away from that original niche crowd? Because, that's exactly what happened.

Back in the Pentium 4 phase of Intel chip processing, there were no differences in chip naming. It was a Pentium chip or it wasn't. There was no such thing as a P4K chip. All chips had the capability of being overclocked; some a great deal, some, only a tiny bit, if at all. Back then, that wasn't Intel's concern. As long as they all performed at their base speeds, it was good enough.

But the overclocking market grew and Intel found an opportunity. Some marketing genius over at Intel figured out, "Hey! We don't need to guarantee a specific overclock, but we can market it as an overclock capable processor, and charge a higher price!" They're getting the same product. We're just charging them more. Then, to keep the original niche market from destroying the market we stole from them, we'll introduce artificial limits on our processors, so our non-overclock processors cannot be overclocked at all and hence the "K" vs "Non-K" processor market was born.

Motherboard manufacturers soon followed suit and created the "H" vs "Z" chipset market (though not likely the first iteration).

Again, it all boils down to at what point does it become profitable for chip manufacturers. Fact of the matter is there are several billion home computers in use on the planet today. The vast majority of those computers are prebuilt computers (I'd say somewhere in the high ninetieth percentile). However, that still leaves several dozens of millions of computers that are being built at home. I would say, probably less than half of those (but growing) actively overclock.

-Wolf sends

 

[aquielisunari]

What follows in pure speculation and in no way are these figures listed as proof or actual numbers. They are merely presented as proofs of concept and in no way should be taken as exact figures. I'm guessing at numbers, but only assuming on the decisions made here. There is no proof that anything listed below actually happened. AGAIN, THIS IS ONLY A PROOF OF CONCEPT.

I look at it this way. Overclocking use to be a niche regime. Only a few people actually knew what it was and how to do it; and when I say "a few", I'm talking in the area of tens of thousands. The problem for overclockers was that word was getting out and more and more people were wanting to get into it; most without even bothering to learn what it meant or the consequences. They just heard "Free performance increase" and went all in.

The part you need to figure out is at what point do Intel, AMD, and motherboard manufacturers decide it's profitable to make the designation between chips, advertise it, and take the market away from that original niche crowd? Because, that's exactly what happened.

Back in the Pentium 4 phase of Intel chip processing, there were no differences in chip naming. It was a Pentium chip or it wasn't. There was no such thing as a P4K chip. All chips had the capability of being overclocked; some a great deal, some, only a tiny bit, if at all. Back then, that wasn't Intel's concern. As long as they all performed at their base speeds, it was good enough.

But the overclocking market grew and Intel found an opportunity. Some marketing genius over at Intel figured out, "Hey! We don't need to guarantee a specific overclock, but we can market it as an overclock capable processor, and charge a higher price!" They're getting the same product. We're just charging them more. Then, to keep the original niche market from destroying the market we stole from them, we'll introduce artificial limits on our processors, so our non-overclock processors cannot be overclocked at all and hence the "K" vs "Non-K" processor market was born.

Motherboard manufacturers soon followed suit and created the "H" vs "Z" chipset market (though not likely the first iteration).

Again, it all boils down to at what point does it become profitable for chip manufacturers. Fact of the matter is there are several billion home computers in use on the planet today. The vast majority of those computers are prebuilt computers (I'd say somewhere in the high ninetieth percentile). However, that still leaves several dozens of millions of computers that are being built at home. I would say, probably less than half of those (but growing) actively overclock.

-Wolf sends

Sounds personal. Sorry to hear.

 

[CountMike]

Hey Wolf, good assessment but you have to go even further back in time, way back. In 368, 486 and Pentium1 processors, simple surgery to MB that included a resistor change and a cut in a trace secured few extra KHz out of processors. AMD K5 processors we had going from 133MHz to 160 that way. Then there were Athlon "Barton" core processors that were first Black editions, some with unlocked multiplier and others that could be unlocked by connecting dots on the back of processor using graphite pencil.
There always were people trying to get more bang for the buck even if that meant putting a spur under saddle or larger carburetor on the car engine.

 

[Wolfshadw]

What follows in pure speculation and in no way are these figures listed as proof or actual numbers. They are merely presented as proofs of concept and in no way should be taken as exact figures. I'm guessing at numbers, but only assuming on the decisions made here. There is no proof that anything listed below actually happened. AGAIN, THIS IS ONLY A PROOF OF CONCEPT.

I look at it this way. Overclocking use to be a niche regime. Only a few people actually knew what it was and how to do it; and when I say "a few", I'm talking in the area of tens of thousands. The problem for overclockers was that word was getting out and more and more people were wanting to get into it; most without even bothering to learn what it meant or the consequences. They just heard "Free performance increase" and went all in.

The part you need to figure out is at what point do Intel, AMD, and motherboard manufacturers decide it's profitable to make the designation between chips, advertise it, and take the market away from that original niche crowd? Because, that's exactly what happened.

Back in the Pentium 4 phase of Intel chip processing, there were no differences in chip naming. It was a Pentium chip or it wasn't. There was no such thing as a P4K chip. All chips had the capability of being overclocked; some a great deal, some, only a tiny bit, if at all. Back then, that wasn't Intel's concern. As long as they all performed at their base speeds, it was good enough.

But the overclocking market grew and Intel found an opportunity. Some marketing genius over at Intel figured out, "Hey! We don't need to guarantee a specific overclock, but we can market it as an overclock capable processor, and charge a higher price!" They're getting the same product. We're just charging them more. Then, to keep the original niche market from destroying the market we stole from them, we'll introduce artificial limits on our processors, so our non-overclock processors cannot be overclocked at all and hence the "K" vs "Non-K" processor market was born.

Motherboard manufacturers soon followed suit and created the "H" vs "Z" chipset market (though not likely the first iteration).

Again, it all boils down to at what point does it become profitable for chip manufacturers. Fact of the matter is there are several billion home computers in use on the planet today. The vast majority of those computers are prebuilt computers (I'd say somewhere in the high ninetieth percentile). However, that still leaves several dozens of millions of computers that are being built at home. I would say, probably less than half of those (but growing) actively overclock.

-Wolf sends

Sounds personal. Sorry to hear.

Nope. Not personal. The only thing I've ever attempted to overclock (if you can even call it that) was changing my AST 486 DX2-50 to a DX4-100 by adding what I could best describe as a daughter chip from Cyrix (if I remember correctly).

Otherwise, I've never overclocked anything else.

-Wolf sends

 

[CountMike]

Overclocking is also fun and I consider it a sport, should be included in Olympics.