Longtime member stopping by/Current state of XS/Hello!

[WeStSiDePLaYa]

Hey guys, Dont spend too much time here anymore, but used to be on this site more time than was good for me... or my budget

Seems pretty quiet in here though. Taking a look through some forums and seeing a lot less activity than I remember. Some really old threads near the top.

Is this more of just what is happening at XS? Possibly the charging for membership now? Or is this more a reflection on the current state of overclocking?

I've been looking to get back into overclocking as a hobby, and it seems things have drastically changed since DFI days and BH-5. It seems to me manufacturers are closing off their systems and the enthusiast is headed the way of extinction.

Somebody tell me different, is overclocking still the fulfilling hobby it was several years ago?

[BeepBeep2]

Xtreme Overclocking hasn't gone anywhere, CPUs have gotten much faster and there seems to be less need for overclocking for normal users now, also AMD and intel do not compete whatsoever anymore.

[Sparky]

I think part of it is because 1) stuff is almost already "fast enough" (umm sorta), but also 2) you almost are forced into buying the premium stuff to overclock. Far less of the buying budget stuff to overclock and beat the high end stuff. Rather annoying...

[Linchpin]

Yeah the days of being able to tinker with everything are over. Having to pay extra for an overclockable CPU kinda kills the buzz a bit for me plus like Sparky said the gains for those of us on more regular cooling aren't mind-blowing and things run fine as it is.

[josh1980]

For me, I left when I was banned from the news section without explanation. Then when I asked about it nobody even responded to me. So I gave this place a middle finger and left. Got an email a few weeks ago after 3 years of no answer that I was being unbanned. Checked this place out and I see its dead. Not to point blame, but I'm thinking that I wasn't the only one that was banned without explanation and then not even responded to. So I moved on to bigger and better things. Figured I'd stop in and see if my thread from 2 weeks ago was responded to and saw this thread.

But yeah, not really active here since the forum isn't that active anymore. It's a chicken and the egg problem and once you start breaking eggs you have less chickens.

[Kingcarcas]

I remember you!! Hi!!!

I'd have to say it's option 2

[NKrader]

For me, I left when I was banned from the news section without explanation. Then when I asked about it nobody even responded to me. So I gave this place a middle finger and left. Got an email a few weeks ago after 3 years of no answer that I was being unbanned. Checked this place out and I see its dead. Not to point blame, but I'm thinking that I wasn't the only one that was banned without explanation and then not even responded to. So I moved on to bigger and better things. Figured I'd stop in and see if my thread from 2 weeks ago was responded to and saw this thread.

But yeah, not really active here since the forum isn't that active anymore. It's a chicken and the egg problem and once you start breaking eggs you have less chickens.

they were a little ban happy for a bit,

and how long has the 1$ member fee been around, it seems like around that time things started dieing.

[josh1980]

I was actually about to become a paying member. I made over $100k/year at the time and I have been pretty liberal with spending money as I had lots of money to spend(anyone remember my rack of WCG crunchers that cost me like $3k and I did it because I could and nothing else).

But, after the ban and getting ignored I had to ask myself if I'd buy a product from a company that treated me like that. When I was forced to answer with a resounding "no" then i decided it was time to move on.

Now I'm a forum moderator somewhere else and I'm on it several times a day. It's not quite like here as we provide a software product and pretty much discuss that and nothing else. But I do have friends there and we chat on IRC and mumble about randome crap all the time.

/wave @Kingcarcas I remember you too!

From what I'm seeing it looks like about 80% of the forum members I remember well haven't been on in months. There's a much smaller following now and most of the posts are a whole new group of people I don't know.

So I'm now in a position where I ask myself if I even want to give this place another go at it after the way I was treated last time. Whole new group of guys to get to know and figure out their strengths and weaknesses. Everyone knows the mantra "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me". So what's the guarantee I won't get fond of this place and then get it in the rear end again? Short answer is their isn't so I'm very hesitant to come back here. Emailed 2 former extreme guys I remember and they left for similar reasons(although not for banning but for moderation).

I remember being moderated once or twice and I couldn't understand why my post was moderated. I got no email or anything. My post was just suddenly deleted even after people had PMed me with a question proving it was on the forum. I don't participate in general flamewars between AMD/Intel or AMD/NVidia. AMD has done some smart things as well as alot of dumb things(I hate their lack of standards with chipsets, chipset features, etc). If you don't use linux or BSD you probably won't understand my complaint against AMD. Intel has done alot of smart things, but some dumb things(I hate their motherboards with a passion).

So at the end of the day I threw a question up a few weeks ago about my laptop: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...aptop-cruncher Response was quite thin. Kind of validates my feeling that there's not much experience and knowledge here anymore(or at least not the participation like there used to be). And nothing sucks more than a bunch of people that don't actually know what they are talking about but think they do. Gets old quickly. I prefer forums where people leave their egos at the door and actually ask for help and admit they don't know something than someone that is clearly clueless but thinks they have all the knowledge they need.

[NEOAethyr]

I got banned once from here, but I was back a week or 2 later, I just shrugged it off, I speak my mind to much .
My bad yo .

I think overclocking is always necessary lol.
At least you need a good board and cpu, and reasonable memory.
Gotta have a little bit of an overclock for 24/7 otherwise anything is sluggish, I don't care what you have.
Gotta push the limits for that overclock factor .

I've overclocked every single rig I've owned minus the very 1st, a ps/2 386.
Totally necessary lol...

Oh and anyways, some of us have lives, no offense intended at all.
Just saying you can't be around 24/7 just on good will for tech support .

[Ace123]

I have been overclocking since I overclocked my k6-2 350 to 450mhz. I have overclocked thunderbirds, thoroughbreds, bartons, 939 opterons, core 2s, athlon x2s, am2+, am3, Fx, i3, i5, i7 on all three platforms and a number of lga 2011 processors and even more countless video cards.

The only thing that has changed is the mainstream acceptance of overclocking. Almost every commercially available motherboard has some advertised overclocking feature, and the products we flock to are chalked full of features. While it has become very easy to mildly overclock, it is still very challenging to get the most out of any piece of hardware. For instance I clocked my haswell at 4.6ghz and my memory at 2933 and got 1120 xtu. Not very good. With hours of tweaking and research and more tweaking I found that the same ram clocjed at 2666 with different timings and massive tweaking in cpu power management and cpu tweakers paradise in my impact bios I was able to score 1192. This is still overclocking at its finest. The luck of the draw is still there. The skill and knowledge is needed to really get the hardware to perform. There are so many benchmarks available to test the system in so many ways. There is a common community now to compare your results with.
Im 6th in the united states and 32nd in the world on the enthusiast league, and I will tell you right now, overclocking for me has never been more alive.

what changed was you lost your ability to adapt and change and accept new things. Just like your parents, you still listen to the music you used to growing up and say the new stuff just isnt the same. It is the same.

[Ace123]

Dbl post

[NKrader]

The only thing that has changed is the mainstream acceptance of overclocking. Almost every commercially available motherboard has some advertised overclocking feature, and the products we flock to are chalked full of features. While it has become very easy to mildly overclock, it is still very challenging to get the most out of any piece of hardware. For instance I clocked my haswell at 4.6ghz and my memory at 2933 and got 1120 xtu. Not very good. With hours of tweaking and research and more tweaking I found that the same ram clocjed at 2666 with different timings and massive tweaking in cpu power management and cpu tweakers paradise in my impact bios I was able to score 1192. This is still overclocking at its finest. The luck of the draw is still there. The skill and knowledge is needed to really get the hardware to perform. There are so many benchmarks available to test the system in so many ways. There is a common community now to compare your results with.

read as,
costs lots of money to bin the best chips.

[NEOAethyr]

read as,
costs lots of money to bin the best chips.

Ooof...
I don't get to bin cpu's and even I don't feel that way.
As long as your cpu is halfway reasonable, or in some cases it's all about picking the right model (opty or mobile athlon days), then there should be no reason why it wouldn't be fun.

Well, I can't say it's always "fun", as it sure can be time consuming.
Research, and spend wisely and you'll have a rig that outlasts anyone else in your area.
It's not just bragging rights, it the ease of mind that your system will do what you need it todo.
Though, it is nice to get compliments from people around you about your kick butt setup once in a while .
And besides, pc gaming is something else in it's self, it a whole different ball game compared to the consoles that everyone is used to, especially way back when everyone had a tube tv hooked up lol (I hated those things with a passion).

And besides it's a great way of learning how to build pc's, if you can build your own and overclock it, most likely it's gonna be better then anything you can buy outright.
And that in it's self gives me piece of mind.
Knowing I saved $1000's in hardware alone by building it myself and getting every penny out of it.