What Are You Willing To Do?

Over the weekend, I found out the following:

AMD has revised its techdocs to remove references to motherboards changing the multipliers.

One person claimed that he could not change the multiplier on a recently purchased Duron, but he hasn’t gotten back to me yet on whether or which pins may have been removed.

A few dozen of you wrote to say you’d be willing to do something to protest what looks to be AMD’s move to stop overclocking.

A few of you wrote to say I was stupid and crazy for suggesting such things, and suggested that this was a great idea to get rid of excess overclockers and leave the real overclockers in peace.

There has been virtually no comment from the other computer websites on this.

What Are You Willing To Do and How Much Of It Are You Willing To Do?

Getting a major corporation to change its mind happens all the time. Even a computer company. Protests made Apple change a policy about a year ago. It’s not impossible.

It takes a lot of work, though, and it takes unity.

To get AMD to change its mind on this is going to require the extended efforts of many, many, many people.

Let me be blunt. Nobody thinks enough of you will do what it takes to protest this. It’s never happened before with this group.

It’s really disconcerting to charge up a hill only to look back and not only find no one following you, but the people you would have thought were your friends shooting at you, too.

So we’d like to know what you think about the whole situation, and what, if anything, you are willing to do about it.

Please answer the questions, and send them back to me
. I will tabulate them and post the results no later than Thursday.

Most of you visit a number of different websites. Many of you go to forums. Just to see if there is enough willingness to spread the word, go to the other sites and other forums or BBSs you normally visit and spread the word about this and ask the websites and people in other forums to go to www.overclockers.com, and/or specifically www.overclockers.com/articles218 and answer this questionaire.

If there is serious interest, we want to get as many computer websites joining us in getting the word out. If this is to have any chance of success, we need most of the websites actively involved.

1) Do you own an Intel or AMD CPU

(a) Intel
(b) AMD
(c) Both

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.
(b) AMD will always be preferable to Intel; I’ll stay loyal
(c) AMD has good reason to do this
(d) I don’t care, I’ll just buy Intel.
(e) Good, this will get rid of the dopes and leave the real overclockers.
(f) It doesn’t matter what any of them do, I go with the best deal at the time.

(g) I won’t buy from AMD.
(h) I won’t buy from AMD and will tell everybody I know not to, either.

3) Do you think AMD successfully implementing this will make it more likely Intel will do likewise shortly?

(a) Yes
(b) No

4) How far will you go to overclock (please indicate all that would apply)?

(a) Spend $40 on a heatsink/fan
(b) Spend money to replace other parts if an overclocking attempt is not satisfactory.
(c) Build a water-cooling system.
(d) Build a Peltier cooling system.
(e) Solder on a motherboard.
(f) Solder on a CPU.

5) How important is overclocking to you?

(a) Not important at all.
(b) Not very, I’ll easily find something else to do.
(c) One of my primary hobbies.
(d) My primary hobby.
(e) I’m obsessed with it.

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.
(b) I’d be annoyed for an hour.
(c) I would get mad for a couple days.
(d) I would be mad for a long time.
(e) This would really mess up my life.
(f) I’d go berserk.

7) Why do you think there’s been so little comment from other websites about this?

(a) They don’t know about it.
(b) It doesn’t matter so long as you can overclock Intel chips.
(c) The sites I go to aren’t very interested in overclocking.
(c) They’re being realistic, and know there’s nothing that can be done about it.
(d) They don’t want to make waves and get anybody who might give them free stuff mad at them.
(e) They’re a bunch of corrupt bastards who have sold out to AMD.

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.
(b) I’d like them even more because if AMD goes down, we’re all alone against Intel.

(c) It wouldn’t much matter.
(d) I would think badly of that, but I’d still visit them about as much as I do now.
(e) I would sharply reduce or stop visiting them.

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.
(b) It wouldn’t much matter.
(c) I’d like them even more because if AMD goes down, we’re all alone against Intel.

(d) I would think badly of that, but I’d still visit them about as much as I do now.
(e) I would sharply reduce or stop visiting them.

10) Which of the following steps would you take to protest AMD’s actions (please indicate all that would apply).

(a) None at all.
(b) I would sign a petition asking AMD to stop doing this.
(c) I would sign a petition asking AMD to stop doing this, or else I would not buy anything from them.
(d) I would write a letter asking AMD to stop doing this.
(e) I would write a letter asking AMD to stop doing this, or else I would no longer buy their products.
(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.
(g) I would post notes in computer hardware forums advocating that people not buy AMD.
(h) I would write letters to computer websites not supporting a petition why they wouldn’t.
(i) I would write letters to computer websites not supporting a boycott why they wouldn’t.
(j) I would write letters to the media telling them that I and others would not buy AMD products.
(k) I would tell all my friends not to buy AMD products.
(l) I would tell all my friends not to buy AMD products, and make them write letters, too.
(l) I would tell all my friends and business associates not to buy AMD products.

(m) I would post notes in stock market/investment forums telling people about what was happening.

Thank you very much.

Email Ed