Overclocking and FFXI

[Surealistic]

you are talking software stuff, NOT overclocking


i guess building pc's, overclocking pc's, and generally knowing what the fuck im talking about mean nothing, because your wrong

but watch me be "proven" wrong again

[Asherek]

You are wrong. Client-side clock desynchronisation is what (at least one type of) speed hack is. That's what a software speed hack does, it lies about what time has elapsed so the client thinks you can have moved X distance in a shorter time. You can duplicate the effect fairly easily should you know what to do.

Except that simply overclocking your PC via your BIOS and overclocking your videocard through registry/tools won't affect your clock synchronization, because modern processors are equipped with the ability to differentiate clock timings vs. the actual interrupt timer. Otherwise, your Windows clock would be off by a huge amount constantly for people with overclocked CPU's.

What you are referring to isn't something that someone just "accidently" stumbles into when overclocking their PC, so really, it's kinda moot in my opinion.

I've seen it a number of times in various 3D game engines, including from an admin POV.

Done right (and I'm not the person to tell you how to do that), it will not cause an issue.

I'm pretty sure that "speed hacks" in FFXI are simply just an extension of POS hacking, since this game relies on the client to tell it where your character is located ingame, not just "clock synchronization". But don't quote me on that.

[Lithiani]

OK, if we are breaking out the e-peen IT stuff, I'm a Cicso Systems & networking tech with more time in the IT industry than I care to think about.

I've also run servers for online games under HL and HL2 engines.

It's more than possible to screw clock synch by hardware alone. If you're saying otherwise, then you are talking out of your arse.

And yes, you can do it with software too.

It won't happen if you have an clue about what you are doing and the correct information on your hardware. Most people don't have the first, and many people won't have access to the second, especially with a commercially supplied machine.

I always say to people, that unless they know what they are doing themselves, they should NOT fuck with it. More grief has been caused by inexperienced people playing at hardware tech than I care to remember. It's like people who decide to play with their cars engine because they know how to change the oil (oh noes, gratuitous car analogy).

[Asherek]

OK, if we are breaking out the e-peen IT stuff, I'm a Cicso Systems & networking tech with more time in the IT industry than I care to think about.

I don't know who you're talking to really here, because I didn't drag out any e-peen stuff.

But if you really want to know, I have a Computer Engineering degree along with software specialization from University of Waterloo, along with 2 years of programming/IT experience from my various co-ops, along with ATI and IBM.

It's more than possible to screw clock synch by hardware alone. If you're saying otherwise, then you are talking out of your arse.

Sure it is. I never said that it's not possible to desynch the clock.

However, you make it sound like that by simply altering your CPU clock speed and your video card clock speed that you will inadvertently desynch your clock and cause you to "speed hack" or something in FFXI.

Fact of the matter is, stuff like that you're not going to just accidently stumble upon by mistake, especially if you DON'T know what you're doing that much. Most people who do basic overclocking have at least a little inkling of what to do, and that's pretty much change the FSB and multiplier setting. Woohoo. Same goes for video cards.

As I said, modern CPU's come with the ability to differentiate timer interrupts and clock speed. This used to be tied together a while back (486 and earlier days), but it's long since been changed.

If you really WANTED to, yes of course you could find ways to override these default mechanisms.

I always say to people, that unless they know what they are doing themselves, they should NOT fuck with it. More grief has been caused by inexperienced people playing at hardware tech than I care to remember. It's like people who decide to play with their cars engine because they know how to change the oil (oh noes, gratuitous car analogy).

[Lithiani]

I was replying to Surealistic and his "building my own pc's" bit. And you would be amazed at what people will manage to screw up while thinking they know what they are doing. My nephew once managed to get his windows clock running backwards. I've still no idea how the hell he did that.

Yes, if you have the nous to know what you are doing, you should be ok. But do not come crying to me if it fucks up. Same reason I never give advice on the subject to anyone who doesn't know how to do it themselves. Without your machine in front of me and with all the details, I'm not going to help you. And if you are even remotely unsure of what you are doing, play it safe and don't.

[Raineer]

you are talking software stuff, NOT overclocking


i guess building pc's, overclocking pc's, and generally knowing what the fuck im talking about mean nothing, because your wrong

but watch me be "proven" wrong again

There's soooo many different ways to "overclock" your system, and just because you know one don't pretend like you know them all.

You can't really post "it's impossible to do that" when people have done exactly that.

Also there's no need for people to post "i been OC'd for years now and nothing", it's not like a random event. It either happens or it doesn't, it has to do with the way calls are made to keep things synchronized, and at what point in that process your overclocking takes place. It's not common that you'll run into the bug but it is still possible...no matter how much you'd like to tell yourself you built every PC in america and never seen it.

[Asherek]

Yes, if you have the nous to know what you are doing, you should be ok. But do not come crying to me if it fucks up. Same reason I never give advice on the subject to anyone who doesn't know how to do it themselves. Without your machine in front of me and with all the details, I'm not going to help you. And if you are even remotely unsure of what you are doing, play it safe and don't.

Man, unless you have an IQ less than your shoe size, there is no way you're accidently going to "desynch" your CPU clock by simply adjusting your FSB and multiplier settings. This is not rocket science.

While your argument might have some merit for someone who wants to reprogram their BIOS or something, seriously, just overclocking your CPU isn't going to cause massive desynch issues off the bat.

[Reality]

overclocking doesn't make FFXI run faster

because the majority of the time, when you're overclocking, you're not running your FSB (or multiplier) out of sync of what the processor was built to be scaled to, so basically you're just changing the specs to a higher model of that same CPU architecture. this would be like me upgrading to an athlon XP 3200+ from my 2500+, and FFXI in-turn making me speed hack

Or I can run my FSB from 166 to 200, and GIVE myself an Athlon XP 3200+

same with GPU/Memory overclocking, you're simply increasing the speed of the GPU/Ram to run at what a theoretically "Later Model" of that same videocard would run at, the fucking game doesn't know what clock speeds your videocards GPU/Ram are anyway

FFXI doesn't know what the fuck any of that is, so it won't react any differently as it would if you simply upgraded your CPU

as far as running your FSB out of spec of what your chipset is capable of, I can't comment on that. but since anyone with a fucking brain wouldn't run their FSB out of spec of what their mobo chipset was capable of out of the box, it's a moot point

[Reality]

There's soooo many different ways to "overclock" your system, and just because you know one don't pretend like you know them all.

when someone talks about "overclocking their system", 99% of the time they're talking about their CPU

multiplier
front-side bus

yeah, there's a fucking trillion ways to do it right there. if a trillion equals 2.

[Kyomu]

Alright, between all the other issues that don't matter, it pretty much is do it safely, give it a try, and see if it makes a difference. That works for me! Was just looking for anyone's experiences, and I got that. Thanks!

[Lithiani]

Yes, if you have the nous to know what you are doing, you should be ok. But do not come crying to me if it fucks up. Same reason I never give advice on the subject to anyone who doesn't know how to do it themselves. Without your machine in front of me and with all the details, I'm not going to help you. And if you are even remotely unsure of what you are doing, play it safe and don't.

Man, unless you have an IQ less than your shoe size, there is no way you're accidently going to "desynch" your CPU clock by simply adjusting your FSB and multiplier settings. This is not rocket science.

While your argument might have some merit for someone who wants to reprogram their BIOS or something, seriously, just overclocking your CPU isn't going to cause massive desynch issues off the bat.

I've been in IT for years, there's lots of people with that problem.

[Matricide]

after reading that, i know for a FACT you have no clue whatsoever about what your talking about

what part of this dont you understand? its a bug. older processors that are overclocked can produce a timing issue that affects the animation frame rate in ffxi, and movement is based on that rate, hence 'speed' hacking.

many people have experienced it, are you fucking dense? you think everyone is just making shit up?

i guess you know every single possible outcome of overclocking every single type of cpu with every single model motherboard in relation to ffxi. good luck with that.

[Surealistic]

ok, since you guys know so much about what your talking about, you do realize that ffxi DOES NOT have direct access to any hardware at all right

you wanna know how this happens? SPEED HACKS, this is the same thing as saying "i dont bot, im on ps2" its called hiding behind a sad excuse that a few people believe is true and try to spread to the masses

[Zigma]

A lot of times you won't really run into problems if you're overclocking straight from the bios (upping the FSB).

Now, a problem I can confirm as it's happend to me is moding the FSB while you're still in windows. A lot of laptops allow this and that's because it saves energy, handy when you're playing on battery.



Surealistic, you're mah nigga and all but go back to computers 101.

[Zigma]

ok, since you guys know so much about what your talking about, you do realize that ffxi DOES NOT have direct access to any hardware at all right

you wanna know how this happens? SPEED HACKS, this is the same thing as saying "i dont bot, im on ps2" its called hiding behind a sad excuse that a few people believe is true and try to spread to the masses

lol omg dude i just read this and rolled on the floor.

Anything that has access to your OS's kernel has access to hardware and software alike. This includes ff11.

[Raineer]

after reading that, i know for a FACT you have no clue whatsoever about what your talking about

what part of this dont you understand? its a bug. older processors that are overclocked can produce a timing issue that affects the animation frame rate in ffxi, and movement is based on that rate, hence 'speed' hacking.

many people have experienced it, are you fucking dense? you think everyone is just making shit up?

i guess you know every single possible outcome of overclocking every single type of cpu with every single model motherboard in relation to ffxi. good luck with that.

No the people that haven't seen it happen say it's impossible.

I HAVENT SEEN CHINA SO IT DOESNT EXIST!!! america is like...really big so no other countries can really exist right?

[Zigma]

after reading that, i know for a FACT you have no clue whatsoever about what your talking about

what part of this dont you understand? its a bug. older processors that are overclocked can produce a timing issue that affects the animation frame rate in ffxi, and movement is based on that rate, hence 'speed' hacking.

many people have experienced it, are you fucking dense? you think everyone is just making shit up?

i guess you know every single possible outcome of overclocking every single type of cpu with every single model motherboard in relation to ffxi. good luck with that.

No the people that haven't seen it happen say it's impossible.

I HAVENT SEEN CHINA SO IT DOESNT EXIST!!! america is like...really big so no other countries can really exist right?

YOU SIR ARE CORRECT!

[Quicklet]

Overclocked through BIOS, never had any issues with speed although about a year after playing FFXI my ATI card broke, but I blame ATI and not the overclocking for that.

[Ferien]

I believe the problem people had was with mobile processors and other processors that would dynamically adjust CPU clock speed to optimize power usage. From what I understand, if your clock suddenly jumps from 1.5 to 2.0 while you're playing the game you'll run into the issue, but the CPUs on most desktop machines don't do this, so that's not going to happen unless you specifically do it.

Also, "Speed" is a variable that's sent by your machine and can be read by the GMs. It's not the same as your position, which is what POS manipulates. I knew a few people who got fucked for fleetool who had the GMs tell them exactly what that value was, and that it was outside of the game's "allowed" range (Flee++ ftl).

And, to be fecetious: I've been at a 25% OC since I built my PC 3 years ago, and I've never, ever had a problem with inadvertently speedhacking.

[Reality]

And, to be fecetious: I've been at a 25% OC since I built my PC 3 years ago, and I've never, ever had a problem with inadvertently speedhacking.

exactly, which is what i said on page 2

overclocking your CPU can't cause "speed hacking", because overclocking is basically upgrading your CPU, except of instead of buying a new chip, you're just changing the clockspeed (multiplier/FSB) to those of an upgraded chip

FFXI doesn't know the difference between going from an Athlon XP 2500+ (11.0 x 166Mhz) to a 3200+ (11.0 * 200mhz). all you'd be doing is increasing your bus speed, which is what your motherboard would do automatically if you popped in a 3200+ athlon XP

same with increasing your videocards GPU/Ram speeds, except it's slightly different because whereas Windows will actually detect your CPU as a different model solely based on it's clock speed, it requires an actual bios flash for it to see your Videocard as something else (i.e. the old 9800 non-pro to Pro bios upgrade, which changed the GPU & Ram speeds in the cards bios, which causes windows to recognize it as a 9800 Pro)

anyways, overclocking doesn't create a situation where your movement speed would increase, it's just not gonna happen, people who have this problem (whether they are or aren't overclocking) is having a problem outside the scope of simple CPU/GPU clockspeeds

this isn't the 386/486 DX days where software ran at absurd speeds because you were running your shit at a speed that at the time, wasn't even possible without doing massive changes to your hardware