It’s an Ed’s Note –
Stop expecting a title!
I
think I need a ghost writer for this part of
the magazine, a peculiar thought indeed
given my very limited creative editorial
contribution in this issue. I’d have imagined
that would allow me to pour all my fleeting
thoughts and incomplete ideas here but that
isn’t the case. With so many changes taking
place in the overclocking enterprise and
hardware in general it’s hard to be certain or
even have a clue of what the future holds for
us all.
MSI has a new line of gaming products,
GIGABYTE and ASRock have similarly named
Z87 boards and I’ve heard conflicting stories
about the future of NVIDIA high end graphics
cards. As to what to make of all this, only
the future will tell, but suffice to say it’ll be
interesting to observe as always.
What recently caught my attention,
unrelated to overclocking or hardware
perhaps, is AMD’s drive to align themselves
with gamers and overclockers indirectly.
Through the re-loaded bundles, AMD has
managed to offer several “triple A” block
buster titles with their hardware including but
not limited to HITMAN, Tomb Raider, Bioshock,
Devil May Cry, a recent announcement of
Battlefield 4. It’s true that not everybody will
enjoy these titles, I find that I’m amongst the
many, who I believe would have invested in
these games at one point or another.
To have these packaged with a graphics card
purchase is a tangible benefit to buying AMD
over NVIDIA, especially when you’re buying
the GHz HD 7970 or other highlight products
in the 7000 series. In contrast to this, NVIDIA
is offering (prior to the Metro Last Light
bundle) an equivalent of $150 USD of in game
purchases within games that are essentially
free. Depending on which side of the argument
you stand on, the “Freemium” model may
make for a compelling business argument.
However, I’m not sure that a strong argument
can be made for it in as far as the quality of
titles is concerned. Thus, I would suspect for
those remotely enticed by bundled games,
AMD’s offering is vastly superior maybe to the
point where no direct comparison can be made
with NVIDIA’s alternative.
Working for NVIDIA though is the GTX TITAN
which when speaking to overclockers and
gamers alike in person seems to be loathed,
but at the same time envied. Understandable
given that it’s $1,000 at the cheapest and up
to $2,000 USD in Brazil. It is only ever going
to land up in the hands of those who have lots
of disposable income or well connected. For
that price though you do get the fastest GPU
for overclocking and gaming. So as much as
I personally think the price is unreasonable,
the rate at which these graphics cards are
selling, negate whatever seemingly negative
sentiment I and those I have spoken to in
person have about NVIDIA’s TITAN.
I’m aware that this is a rather gaming
orientated Ed’s note, but it’s something I’ve
been thinking about for a while and with that
said, I believe there really is too much of a
separation between so called high end gamers
and overclockers. In fact I would suggest
that gamers with a little more money are the
people who eventually become overclockers.
May seem illogical at first, but it stands to
reason that the individuals or demographic
that spends on sub $200 graphics are more
unwilling to take on overclocking than those
who spend $499 on high end parts. Despite
that the risks of overclocking are absurdly over
exaggerated; those with high end hardware
seem more willing to push it further than
those who are a little more price conscious. As
such, I’m fairly confident that with the changes
taking place on HWBOT and the like, we may
just see teams comprised primarily of people
who used to game on very high end machines.
If anything this is good because it will bring
some new blood into the hobby and certainly
liven up what had slowly become an irrelevant
ranking with the old League. Anyway, I’ve run
out of space and it’s time to end this. At the last
minute we decided to pull a spiritual follow
up to my last editorial and instead chose to go
with the first official OC LAB in the industry,
courtesy of GIGABYTE. Also we managed to
get to IDF Beijing and back to bring you some
sweet news about HASWELL and all things
related. Hope you get a kick out of it.
[ Neo Sibeko - Editor ]
Issue 24 | 2013 The OverClocker 3