E D ’ S N O T E //
LET’s DO IT FOR THE GIGGLES
P
rior to actually sitting down and writing
this Ed’s note, I had a ton of ideas
(maybe not a ton, more like three) as
to what I would write. Afterall, most of what
you read here has nothing to do with anything
that’s actually in the magazine and that’s fine.
It’s the Ed’s note, my note. Where I get to tell
you random thoughts and try and argue or
bring about an opinion within a specific or
limited word count (another reason why print
is ultimately not the medium with which to
engage people or impart information).
The topic or idea I’m sharing with you this
time (after five! months away) has everything
to do with all the hardware you will see and
hopefully read about in the coming pages.
Given that this is TheOverclocker magazine,
one obviously assumes that much of the
content will be dealing with
overclocking or at least involves
overclocking. That is true to
a large extend, but being an
overclocker and specifically
writing in TheOverclocker
should not and does not
preclude me from having
some insight into what is
termed ‘gaming’ and ‘gaming
hardware’. Both of these things,
perhaps in our heads have not
been divorced from their initial
intention or purpose, even
though in reality this happened
a long time ago.
Take for instance
overclocking and why a number
of competitive overclockers,
at least ones which have been
around say at the least ten to
twelve years, got into the hobby.
It was the need for more performance for the
games they played. That isn’t however why they
stayed. Yes, that's obviously not the case for
more recent entrants and I doubt if that will
ever be the reason why people overclock going
forward.
The utilitarian case for overclocking is gone
and it's ok to acknowledge that. Overclocking
your graphics card, CPU or memory has little
to no effect on your games and this has been
the case for a number of years. At the very
least this is true for most high to ultra high-end
machines. It’s rare (NOTE - this is not to say it
doesn’t happen!) that some overclock makes a
particular game playable that was previously
not. It's also rare to find a game which doesn't
work well on said machine as well.
Obviously this isn’t true for low end
hardware, but you’ll find that these
components do not overclock well in the first
place as your options are limited by the tuning
options more than
“ Many
of these
peripherals
are just
great pieces
of tech...”
the inability of the CPU, GPU or even DRAM to
deliver better performance.
Much like all things, overclocking goes
through changes. The reason we did
something 10 years ago doesn’t necessarily
have to be the reason it is being done today.
We must note as well that why overclockers
still do this has changed just as much as how
they do it. More importantly how it's done
reflects exactly where the market is and of
course the evolution of the hobby.
It’s ok for overclocking to have no
immediate use case or purpose outside of
overclocking in itself. For the same reason
that karting, star gazing, gaming and most
hobbies have no utility outside of providing
entertainment. That there are people who get
paid to play games competitively doesn’t give
the activity a greater purpose than this. Nor
is it a requirement. If overclocking’s only
purpose is entertainment, then it works and
should continue to grow from strength to
strength.
This applies to general hardware in this
space as well. There are literally thousands of
gaming mice and keyboards at the moment.
It’s the ‘gaming’ space which has exploded in
popularity and with it the peripherals used for
this have improved tremendously (much like
OC hardware). These headsets, mice and
keyboards are designed and geared towards
"gamers", but the utility of these devices
predate gaming. Prior to the label, these
existed as basic input devices for the personal
computer. The Gaming element sought to
improve what people were already doing with
these and they absolutely did.
That said, given the limitations of these
devices, at least in their application and
current form, the improvements are no longer
in how they better your gaming experience
exclusively or provide a competitive edge.
These ‘gaming’ peripherals or vendors
rather may have to let go of promoting their
product based squarely on its ability improve
or augment one's skill level. That is limiting
as many of these peripherals are just great
pieces of technology. Some so wonderfully
crafted and designed that even those who
have no interest in PC gaming find them
appealing, even if it's for pure aesthetic
reasons. These gaming devices have
transcended their original purpose and that
isn’t something to not speak about or ignore.
It’s literally something to embrace as they
have a lot more to offer outside the confines
of gaming and the untenable promise of
making you a better gamer.
- Neo Sibeko, Editor
Issue 45 | 2018 The OverClocker 03