THE SAME BUT BETTER
S
o here’s another issue of
TheOverclocker. This time there is
an unusual high amount of review
content. This was caused mainly by INTEL’s
release schedule and the bi-monthly nature
of the magazine coming together at a very
specific time to result in this issues content.
As you can imagine, with each new CPU
-mainly the 4790K- there’s a platform or
chipset rather to go with it. As if that wasn’t
enough, just two weeks and a bit ago we
had the new X99 platform show up. So that
is obviously the big hurrah for 2014. Hence
in this issue we are looking at no fewer than
five motherboards and squeezing in the 5960X.
Granted that all of these boards are Z97
offerings, it’s still a lot to evaluate in
the time period we had between the last issue
and this one. The immediate question that
some may have is why didn’t we turn that into
a feature where we do a direct head to head
comparison between all boards. Initially that
was the idea, but it turns out that despite all
these vendors competing for your hard earned
cash, they fundamentally have different
price points and evidently priorities with each
product. How each vendor structures its SKUs
has made it nearly impossible to compare
them head to head. For instance, it remains
true after all these years that no one company
marries overclocking and so called gaming
features together like ASUS. In the unifying of
these two demographics, it makes it hard to
objectively compare their products with the
competition. Still there’s nothing preventing
you from reading the individual editorials as
if they were a single piece. I have to
admit as well that, during the writing process,
it felt as if it was a single continuous article.
More relevant or rather more immediate, is
the cover that we have for this issue. It’s the
first time we have had a game on the cover
and no you’ve not made a mistake and opened
another publication. This was intentional and
spurred on by several factors, one of which is
that games have far better art than hardware.
It really is that simple. As a publication that
prides itself in not only delivering accessible
but honest content, we genuinely love making
great covers. We get it right almost all the time
but there have been times where we could
have done better had we not been limited to
just hardware. Thus, we have The Last of Us,
adorning our front cover. (I should add that
Dane, our game reviewer; is an exceedingly
gifted writer).
Why a console game? Well, why not? Face it there are
titles that make it worth owning a console even if you game
primarily on the PC. If you don’t game on the PC and only
use this platform for overclocking, then the incentive for
purchasing a console should be even greater, because
despite how easy it is these days to just power on a PC and
play. It’s still a far simpler process on any one of the modern
day systems. This is part of the reason why I’ve owned
an XBOX and a Playstation along with a PC for as long as
I’ve been a part of this magazine. The other reason is that,
games such as “The Last of Us” are incredible pieces of
art that unfortunately can only be experienced on these
dedicated gaming platforms. Given that we, power users,
enthusiasts and competitive overclockers have an incredibly
high hardware turn over, there’s no financial reason not to
own any one of these systems. Consider that each is around
$400, it’s not much given that we regularly buy CPUs,
memory, graphics cards that cost significantly more. At the
very least we buy similarly priced components repeatedly in
an attempt to find that golden sample or set.
Even more important, is that during the production of this
magazine I happened to watch TheWitcher: Wild Hunt 35min
video footage. If you’re into that kind of thing, do yourself a
favor and download the 5GB~ or so video. To see it running
in its full glory on what I can only assume is a high end PC
was staggering and was probably the largest contributor in
allowing video game art on the cover. That doesn’t mean the
magazine is changing in any way, it is still primarily focused
on matters of the overclocking ecosystem, enthusiasts,
related technologies and gaming (in that order I might add).
We have just given ourselves creative license to create what
can be an even more visually inspiring magazine. With that
said, enjoy this issue of TheOverclocker. If you have any
thoughts you’d like to share with us do feel free to write in.
Until next time, do take care and keep pushing.
[ Neo Sibeko - Editor ]
Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 3