This is the third forum that I have enjoyed browsing. I have never seen a topic category like this before. I've always wanted to know: What is the obsession with speed? I'm talking about people (which these forums seem to be filled with) that will stop at no cost to make their PC boot up 1.4 seconds faster, or make an application execute .8 seconds faster. (Okay, I made the numbers up, but I think you know what I mean.) I have seen so many people pefectly willing to kill legitimate security measures to obtain "maximum speed". So tell me, how is two seconds going to change your life? To me, a lot of this is as ridiculous as if one were to remove the seat belts and air bags from their car, because the three pound loss will make the car go a half a mile an hour faster. What's the story? Is it just for the sake of the challenge?

Partly. Party it is because we can, just like climbing a mountain. Mostly, me thinks, it is done by the youth - they like to overclock their computers even if it risks breaking them! But I won't hold youth and inexperience against them!

Well I turn off most of my applications at start up so it comes on faster and so I can work with it. Rarely is it seconds but minutes difference if you take items off the startup menu.

Some people just need there computer as soon as possible and get tired of waiting for stuff to load.

I'm w/ cgm. It's annoying to have to wait for like 20/30 seconds after a boot before your computer can start running up to speed.

As for the whole overclocking aspect, a big thing is status. You can consider yourself more of an expert (or nerd, depending on how you look at it) depending on the amount of overclockage (yeah, i said it) you can tweak your processor. Larger percentages mean better tweaking, and better tweaking (sometimes) means "more knowledge". Except when you melt your processor to your mobo..... those vids are cool....

As for myself, i can't overclock anything. I have an eMachines, and after sifting through the bios and mobo hardware, i googled and found that eMachines are pretty much impossible to overclock. So i'm stuck w/ limiting the running processes to get the most speed out of my box. If i'm wrong about eM's, someone please tell me....

Guilty as charged, rlprlp. I spent $70 on a 512mb stick of RAM so it would boot up both the computer and programs faster. I think its worth it so I don't have to wait ten minutes for my computer to boot up, or a another 5 minutes for Photoshop to start. As cgm and HM have said, its minutes, not seconds that I gained. Besides, it was my money, and I spent it my way!

Thanks for all the replies! I couldn't agree more when the time frame can be measured in minutes; I do the same. But it is interesting to hear from those who try to gain "speed boosts" than can only be measured in seconds. I hope more will share their opinions.

Heretic Monkey: So you're a big fan, too? I've been playing guitar about 25 years (yeah, I'm old!). I even played lead for a band that became pretty popular (locally) in the late 90's. Tony Iommi is my HANDS DOWN music hero!

I thought you were talking about the need for speed while driving! heh... well on topic. I am just sick and tired of waiting for my stinkin computer to boot, so I naturally figured out every way to speed it up. And guess what? Windows now loads in about 8 seconds flat. And I'm using an IDE 100 drive as my primary!

And if I had the sources... I wouldnt have a 9800XT, but rather 2x X1950s in Xfire, then junk them when DX10 capable cards come out.

why overclock? why tweak? because i can. am i above burning up a $200 processor? No ive destroyed $10,000 engines because I can.

For the most part i do it because the manufacturers derate the processors to make them all run even. why run at less then full speed. No 2 processors will run the exact same top speed

I personally am not good enough with computers to figure out how to make mine boot faster. But I'm not worried about it, and even if I did know how, I wouldn't bother. In fact, in regards to security, I like to be as thorough as possible, which often means slower performance. But if an anti-virus is set to start as soon as I log on, I'll turn that off because I run virus scans when I want, and don't want to wait an extra 10 mins every time I turn my computer on. And with the options for virus scanning, I tell it to be as thorough as possible and scan everything very thoroughly, even though that takes longer.

Oh, and yea, I thought this was about some people's obsession with driving too fast lol.

Personally I'm not that bothered about how fast my computer starts up, in fact, it takes about 3 minutes before it is ready to use. (maybe longer) This doesn't bother me though because when it is ready it runs perfectly, just with all the programs that I want to use, ready for me. And as I turn the computer on when I wake up and don't turn it off till I go to bed, (sometimes it's on for days before I turn it off again) it makes even less difference.