Future of ATI's Overdrive
 

ATI will introduce Overdrive 4 with the next Catalyst Driver scheduled in March.
Previously you could only overclock your GPU core with Overdrive, and only by a rather small amount.
Now you can overclock both core and memory and the frequency range will be increased to 75% of the next higher class product.

Link (english):
http://www.techpowerup.com/?2245

Why do all manufacturers take away all the fun of overclocking.

Safety margin for all engineering products. A car engine is mostly "de-tuned" so that it lasts longer for one reason. Another reason is to cover manufacturing variance in assuring the end product would meet min specs.

Time after time a good reviewer will point out any overclocking is not a gurantee; and result may differ from system to system given the same sample.

For cars; what I have experienced only....

Toyota engines have better "overclocking" but less factory output specs; while Nissan has higher factory output but less "overclocking" capabilities.

Nissan Skyline is known for high "overclocks" though:)

It used to be tinkering in the bios, finding the right settings, crawling under the table several times a day to reset the bios by jumper. Tweaking windows to the max, overclocking the graka with rivatuner, powerstrip or alike, and then writing the best values in the graka's bios.

Now they make cards which can't be overclocked that easily, and your overclock isn't limited by the chip, but by the speed of the better graka's on the market, basically taking away the fun of overclocking something cheap to a mean powerhouse.

the moment Overclocking became mainstream, it killed the actual "overclocking spirit": getting more for less.

now you need to pay MORE to get hardware which OVERCLOCKS good;

Skyline has been known since the early 70's. It's already "overclocked from factory"; like BFGtech OC cards.:)

Legendary Skyline engines could be found in the Early Z cars; still own one.:D

I heard the reason that skyline's are such performance beasts is because they made a mistake calculating the thickness of the carters, making them thicker then they were supposed to be and thus giving the tuners more headroom, leaving more material to take out without jeopardising safety.


in my humble opinion, that's a big load of cock and bull but it makes for a nice story :D