I was thinking about your post asking what is the gain. You stated that a 2GHz and a 1GHz are better than overclocking a pc to 2.1GHz. This is true, but a lot of people don't want to spend the money to go buy/build a second computer when, like me, they can just click their mouse to tell their computer to run faster.
In my situation I have a home built 1.8GHz pentium 4 with pretty much top of the line everything you can buy in it. Before this one I had only bought middle of the range computers from those national stores. I found in all of my previous computers that after two years they were obsolete. By obsolete I mean they wouldn't run over 70% of the newest games (my own personal standard for obsolete, I know). So in building this one I purposely picked out the better quality parts with the express idea of being able to overclock when the time came that it would be considered old thus extending its useful life considerably longer.
I've been overclocking now for about four months (for anyone interested, I went from the 1800MHz to 2018.9MHz, the ram from 266MHz to 298MHz, and the pci clock speed from 33MHz to 37MHz). I have been having no bad side effects that I can see.
Now I realize this might stress my cpu and I might not get as long of a life out of it, but I'm okay with that. Think about the cost of buying or building a new computer. I can build a basic cheap one for around $350 easily, a really good quality one for around $900 to $1100 range. A new 1.8GHz retail cpu with fan goes for $121 on zipzoomfly.com right now. Even if I had to replace the motherboard it would still be cheaper. And if you're talking AMD then it even gets lower, a 2000+ goes for $54. So I'm not too worried about stressing my cpu right now.
And then the odd thing is that once I started overclocking I believe the average temperature of the cpu went down. I have 6 case fans, 12 total in computer, all 6 of those are thermostatically controlled. So when the temp goes up they increase RPM's. They tend to stay revved up a little longer after the temp goes down so on average my cpu runs about 1 degree cooler now.

that's for shure, overclocking in samll steps can realy
value up. Myself also O clock a bit.

Yes I also do not have the money to by every time a new...

from time to time this happends. but instead of putting away
the old and ugly one, give him a new chance as a server, addional crunsher
and so on.

may be some 486, those I realy put away realy to slow
for today.

sorry just 1 fan for 1 cpu, no cases, only 2 cables,
power and network

ok the quicker intel (some)? have cases and 2 fan 3 with this on the powersuplies


Just in the past day had a stability problem with an old amd 1400
cpus runs stable till 1480 (in wintertime), now it's sommertime I have to reduce the speed to 1400. I was not satisfied so I returned to go to 1440 1420
the system runs fine about 48 hours, the hangs, I spend another time for...

Now in Summer this system will be kept by 1400 and it can run as a stone.

In that time when this old amd was stopped due failure he was not crunching, I lost more time as when I didn't touch it..

In reasonable steps I also like to know what's possible to get from,
one day you will know the limit. stay a litte more down and
the cpu will run in a week , in a year, in 5 years..

Overclocking the 2nd

one day I changed on a AMD 2100 from newer memory to older memory, I needed elsewhere. The motherboard povided both sockets.

the system did normaly about 6 to 7 WUs a day (classic seti WUs)
afther changing the memory, Oh what a speed, it crunshed 12 Wus in 1 hour
wow. I realized this system was, due to the cpu and memory timing settings
hopeless overclocked, the bave was not quick, he simply dropped the calculation

for me and my ego great, for the sience garbage.

the experience was good for being done

now I'am a very old man and enjoy the speed and be lucky not to calculate the WUs with a pocket calculator or by hand..

closing:

On ebay may be there are more cheapier offers, used and brandnew


good night

ric