KovacsC wrote:
do you really get that much more benefit from overclocking? Why not buy something that you don't have to overclock!
It doesnt matter how much you spend there are huge headrooms for miles more on chips now.
The I7 920? 2.66ghz stock core clock. Does 3.8 piss and in some cases (depending on the manufacturing run) 4ghz. On an air cooler.
That's free performance, 33% more. AMD chips are nowhere near as good (they were tho back in the XP Athlon days !) because AMD cannot afford to leave those kinds of headroom in their chips. My Phenom 2 940 (3ghz stock core clock) will only go to about 3.6 before becoming unstable. Whereas, for example a quad core Intel can do double that.
There is a reason for that of course, you're paying for it. Intel basically hide the max speed of the CPU and charge for it so that you go looking for it. False ecomony of course, because you've paid for it. Intel chips are expensive. People say it's down to the headroom Intel leave but sense says that they could have OCed it themselves and locked it at 3.8ghz. Thing is there's no point, cos as I said you are paying for that performance but you need to squeeze it out yourself. And people love doing that, old cliche 'something for nothing'.
So of course the more you spend the more you CAN expect. Now obviously an overclock is not a god given right but with every single CPU ever made you WILL get an overclock. It depends on the price/manu/end of the quality spectrum but you will get at least something. My E4500 Dave bought from me was 2.2ghz native, I ran it at 2.85 for every waking hour I used it. My Phenom 2 is at 3.4 from the stock 3ghz but only 'cos my motherboard was cheap and the voltage regs are crap.
So yeah, when you pay thousands of dollars you do it for the OC factor. Alienwares are water cooled, you're paying for that. The reward however? well, water cooling is far superior to regular cooling so you can overclock higher and get even more 'free?' speed. Sadly they lock down the bios to prevent you doing so so it's a total oxy moron.
"Here. Have this very expensive and exclusive computer gaming system with water cooling designed to keep your CPU super cool when you overclock but you can't overclock so it's totally stupid"So basically an Alienware now is no different to what you have Kovs. It comes at standard and you can't really change that. So you may aswell buy a 'normal' system like yours and whack in a graphics card.