1) Do you own an Intel or AMD CPU
(a) Intel: 41%
(b) AMD: 18%
(c) Both: 41%
This was one of the big surprises in the poll, that such a big proportion of the audience had both types of processors.
2) How do you feel about AMD’s decision to remove pins from its CPU and make any overclocking much more difficult?
(a) There’s nothing we can do about it: 5%.
(b) AMD will always be preferable to Intel; I’ll stay loyal: 3%
(c) AMD has good reason to do this: 4%
(d) I don’t care, I’ll just buy Intel: 6%
(e) Good, this will get rid of the dopes and leave the real overclockers: 2%
(f) It doesn’t matter what any of them do, I go with the best deal at the time: 18%
(g) I won’t buy from AMD: 21%.
(h) I won’t buy from AMD and will tell everybody I know not to, either: 40%
Clearly not too happy with AMD, but as we’ll see later, when it comes to action, there’s a bit of inconsistency.
3) Do you think AMD successfully implementing this will make it more likely Intel will do likewise shortly?
(a) Yes: 61%
(b) No: 34%
Write-in: Intel already does this: 5%
You don’t think this is too good news for overclocking. A number of you didn’t see what the big deal was, given that Intel
has a multiplier lock, too. Of course, as I’ve talked about a number of times, Intel doesn’t have FSB restrictions, and AMD
effectively has.
4) How far will you go to overclock (please indicate all that would apply)?
(a) Spend $40 on a heatsink/fan: 59%
(b) Spend money to replace other parts if an overclocking attempt is not satisfactory: 56%
(c) Build a water-cooling system: 39%
(d) Build a Peltier cooling system: 42%
(e) Solder on a motherboard: 34%
(f) Solder on a CPU: 29%
The percentage of those willing to spend on a heatsink/fan should really be higher than 59%, since many of those indicating they’d do hardcore activity left this blank.
Seems that people are more afraid of fire than water or ice. 🙂
More importantly, the high percentage of those who would take the more advanced measures tells me that those who wrote are more hardcore overclockers than the average; 35%-40% of overclockers aren’t using water-cooling and/or Peltiers, my guess from our database entries is more like 5%-10%.
5) How important is overclocking to you?
(a) Not important at all: 1%
(b) Not very, I’ll easily find something else to do: 11%
(c) One of my primary hobbies: 53%
(d) My primary hobby: 16%
(e) I’m obsessed with it: 20%
Again, the percentages indicate a more hardcore population than the average overclocker.
6) If tomorrow, the most you could overclock anything was 10-15%, how upset would you be?
(a) Not at all, it couldn’t last forever: 4%
(b) I’d be annoyed for an hour: 11%
(c) I would get mad for a couple days: 15%
(d) I would be mad for a long time: 46%
(e) This would really mess up my life: 7%
(f) I’d go berserk: 14%
OK, those who answered are usually hardcore, but not too postal. 🙂
7) Why do you think there’s been so little comment from other websites about this?
(a) They don’t know about it: 26%.
(b) It doesn’t matter so long as you can overclock Intel chips: 11%.
(c) The sites I go to aren’t very interested in overclocking: 5%
(d) They’re being realistic, and know there’s nothing that can be done about it: 10%
(e) They don’t want to make waves and get anybody who might give them free stuff mad at them: 40%.
(f) They’re a bunch of corrupt bastards who have sold out to AMD: 8%
8) If a concerted movement were made to gather up a petition to AMD, and a website you regularly visited would not agree to co-sponsor it, or attacked it, how would that affect your opinion and/or visiting that website?
(a) I’d like them even more for not going along with such a stupid, naive idea: 2%.
(b) I’d like them even more because if AMD goes down, we’re all alone against Intel: 2%.
(c) It wouldn’t much matter: 9%
(d) I would think badly of that, but I’d still visit them about as much as I do now: 43%
(e) I would sharply reduce or stop visiting them: 42%
9) If a concerted movement were made to organize a boycott of AMD products, and a website you regularly visited would not agree to co-sponsor or attacked such a movement, how would that affect your opinion and/or visiting that website?
(a) I’d like them even more for not going along with such a stupid, naive idea: 7%.
(b) It wouldn’t much matter: 10%
(c) I’d like them even more because if AMD goes down, we’re all alone against Intel: 6%.
(d) I would think badly of that, but I’d still visit them about as much as I do now: 35%.
(e) I would sharply reduce or stop visiting them: 39%
10) Which of the following steps would you take to protest AMD’s actions (please indicate all that would apply).
(a) None at all: 4%
(b) I would sign a petition asking AMD to stop doing this: 55%
(c) I would sign a petition asking AMD to stop doing this, or else I would not buy anything from them: 59%
(d) I would write a letter asking AMD to stop doing this: 37%
(e) I would write a letter asking AMD to stop doing this, or else I would no longer buy their products: 36%
(f) I would write a letter asking AMD to stop doing this, or else I would no longer buy their products, and wouldn’t even if AMD had a better deal than Intel: 36%
(g) I would post notes in computer hardware forums advocating that people not buy AMD: 34%
(h) I would write letters to computer websites not supporting a petition why they wouldn’t: 26%
(i) I would write letters to computer websites not supporting a boycott why they wouldn’t: 21%
(j) I would write letters to the media telling them that I and others would not buy AMD products: 19%
(k) I would tell all my friends not to buy AMD products: 43%
(l) I would tell all my friends not to buy AMD products, and make them write letters, too: 36%
(m) I would tell all my friends and business associates not to buy AMD products: 35%
(n) I would post notes in stock market/investment forums telling people about what was happening: 14%
A couple points:
The petition percentages are probably understated because many of those who indicated they would take more advanced action did not check those options.
Although about 60% indicated earlier on in the questionaire that they wouldn’t buy AMD as a result of the action, only about 40% indicated such here.
The more involved the activity, the less likely people would agree to the action.
Did you notice a pattern across the questions, though?
About 40% of those answering the questionaire are what I would call the hardcore. They usually indicated that they would take advanced actions to overclock. They were very likely to indicate overclocking was their major hobby.
They were more cynical about other websites not covering the story, and more likely to say that they would curtail or stop visiting those websites that did not back their interests. Finally, they were almost always more willing to take more action against AMD than those who showed more casual interest.
However, since it is more likely that people most interested in overclocking would be the most interested in answering such a poll, we need to compensate against such skewing, which was always likely to be substantial. We got a number of complaints that the questionaire took too much effort to fill out. That was deliberate; we figured that people who found filling it out to be a burden probably would find doing anything else too burdensome, also.
If we use the willingness to at least water-cool as a consistent indicator of hardcore attitudes, then adjust the polling data in lines with the occurrences of those who at least water-cool when they report their results in our CPU database, we can reasonably extrapolate that 40% hardcore actually represents
about 5-15% of all overclockers. That’s not a big percentage of what is a relatively small group to begin with.
However, that’s a very rough gauge, and it could well be we don’t have a representative sample of overclockers.
What’s more important than the exact percentage of overclockers willing to take a lot of action, though, was the willingness and ability to show that a grassroots movement involving all overclockers was possible. While I certainly thank those who made the effort to spread the word, it apparently didn’t get terribly far.
Maybe that’s the next thing we should discuss, why didn’t people and websites show more interest in this?
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