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"Overclocking Acronyms for Dummies"

177K views 292 replies 193 participants last post by  Red1776 
#1 ·
Below is a list of acronyms you may see around
overclock.net. This thread is to help members decipher commonly used (and maybe not so common) acronyms on OCN.

If you happen to find a new term not listed (even out of date), or know of a definition not given, please post it in this thread and I will update ASAP.

Thanks for your help.


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  1. AA: Anti Aliasing
  2. ADSL: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
  3. AF: Anisotropic Filtering
  4. AFAIK: As Far As I Know
  5. AGP: Accelerated Graphics Port
  6. ALU: Arithmetic Logic Unit
  7. AMD: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
  8. API: Application Programming Interface
  9. AS5: Arctic Silver 5
  10. AC7: Arctic Cooler 7
  11. ASAP: As soon as possible
  12. ATA: Advanced Technology Attachment
  13. ATAPI: Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface (EIDE)
  14. ATX: Form factor was designed to replace the AT form factor
  15. BGA: Ball Grid Array
  16. Bios: Basic Input Output System
  17. BB: Best Buy
  18. Bit: Binary DigIT
  19. BE: Black edition
  20. BSOD: Blue Screen Of Death
  21. BT: Big Typhoon (A heatsink made by TT)
  22. BTDT : Been There Done That
  23. C2D: Core 2 Duo
  24. C2Q: Core 2 Quad
  25. CAS: Column Access Strobe or Column Address Strobe
  26. CBA: Can't be assed (Contributed by Nostrano)
  27. CCC: Catalyst Control Center
  28. CCD: Cold Cathode
  29. CF: CrossFire
  30. CFM: Cubic Feet per Minute
  31. CGA: Color Graphics Adapter (4 Color)
  32. CORE CLOCK SPEED: Speed at which a processor operates
  33. CMOS: Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor
  34. Conus: Contiguous\\Continental United States
  35. CPU: Central Processing Unit A.K.A. Processor or proc
  36. CRT: Cathode Ray Tube
  37. CS: Counter strike or Computer Science, depending on context.
  38. CSAA: Coverage Sample Anti-Aliasing
  39. CS:S: Counter strike Source
  40. D3D: Direct3D
  41. dB: decibels
  42. DODS: Day of Defeat Source
  43. DD: Danger Den [Store to buy Overclocking gear]
  44. DDR: Double data rate
  45. DIMM: Dual Inline Memory Module
  46. DMA: Direct Memory Access
  47. DOA: Dead on Arrival
  48. DOS: Disk Operating System
  49. DPI: Dots Per Inch
  50. DRAM: Dynamic Random Access Memory
  51. DVD: Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc
  52. DVI: Digital Video Interface
  53. EE: Extreme Edition OR Energy Efficient (Depending on context)
  54. EG: Exempli Gratia
  55. EGA: Extended Graphics Adapter (16 color)
  56. EIDE: Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics
  57. EIST: Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology
  58. EVGA: Extended VGA
  59. FAT: File Allocation Table
  60. FDD: Floppy Disc Drive
  61. FPS: Frames Per Second|First Person Shooter|Etc
  62. FPU: Floating Point Unit
  63. FSAA: Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing
  64. FSB: Front Side Bus
  65. FTL: For the Lose
  66. FTW: For The Win
  67. GDDR: Graphics Double Data Rate
  68. GB: Gigabyte
  69. GFX: Graphics/Graphics Card
  70. GHz: one billion clock cycles per second
  71. GPU: Graphics Processing unit AKA the "Core"
  72. GUI: Graphical User Interface
  73. HD: Hard Drive OR High Definition (Depending on the context)
  74. HDD: Hard Disk Drive
  75. HDR: High Dynamic-Range
  76. HL2: Half Life 2
  77. HSF: Heat Sink Fan
  78. HT: Intel's Hyper Threading
  79. HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language
  80. HTT: AMD's Hyper Transport Technology
  81. HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol
  82. IDE: Integrated Drive Electronics
  83. IHS: Integrated Heat Spreader
  84. I/O CONTROLLER: Input Output Controller
  85. IMHO: In my honest/humble opinion
  86. IMO: In my opinion
  87. IOH: Input/Output Hub
  88. IP: Internet Protocol
  89. ISA: Industry Standard Architecture
  90. ISP: Internet Service Provider
  91. ITAT: Intel Thermal Analysis Tool
  92. KB: Kilobyte
  93. LAN: Local Area Network
  94. LCD: Liquid Crystal Display
  95. LED: Light Emitting Diode
  96. LGA: Land Grid Array
  97. LLC: Load Line Calibration
  98. MB: Megabyte
  99. MBR: Master Boot Record
  100. MCH: Memory Controller Hub (a name for the NB)
  101. MCP: Media Communications Processor (also called Southbridge)
  102. MFLOPS: (Mega)Floating-point operations per second (1 million FLOPS)
  103. MHz: MegaHertz
  104. MICRON: Micrometer; one millonth of a meter.
  105. MS: Microsoft
  106. MIPS: Million Instructions Per Second
  107. MOBO: Motherboard
  108. MTBF: Mean Time Between Failures (PSU's)
  109. MSAA: Multi-Sampling Anti-Aliasing
  110. NB: North Bridge
  111. NIB: New in Box|New In the original Box
  112. NIC: Network Interface Card
  113. NM: Nanometers
  114. NVIDIA: NVIDIA, is a mixture of "n" a mathematical variable meaning "to the highest degree" and video,which comes from Latin videre, "to see" - implying "the best visual experience.
  115. n00b/nub/Newb/Newbie: New User or not so skilled person with very little experience or knowledge on the subject.
  116. NTFS: New Technology File System
  117. OC: OverClock
  118. OCer: Overclocker
  119. OCN:
    Overclock.net
  120. OCP: Over current protection
  121. OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer
  122. OLED: Organic light emiting diode
  123. OP: Original Poster, or Original Post depending on context.
  124. OpenGL: Open Graphics Library
  125. OS: Operating System (WINDOWS, LINUX, UNIX, DOS, OS2, AND OS X)
  126. OTP: Over temperature protection
  127. OVP: Over Voltage Protection
  128. PATA: Parallel ATA
  129. PCB: Printed Circuit Board / Process Control Block
  130. PCI: Peripheral Component Interconnect
  131. PCI-E/PCX: PCI-Express come in 1x 4x 8x 16x
  132. PCI-X: PCI v2.0+ 2.0 is 266mHz
  133. PCI/AGP LOCK: Function of some motherboards that allows you to lock the Southbridge controllers
  134. PCMCIA: Personal Computer Memory Card International Association
  135. PDF: Portable Document Format
  136. PITA: Pain In The Ass/Arse
  137. POP3: Post Office Protocol version 3
  138. PGA: Pin Grid Array
  139. PIXEL RESPONSE: The time it takes for a LCD pixel to change from black to white (you want 16ms or lower for gaming)
  140. PLL: Phase locked loop
  141. POST: Power On Self Test
  142. PPU: Physics Processing Unit
  143. PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
  144. PSU: Power Supply Unit
  145. QAA: Quality Antialiasing
  146. QFT: Quoted For Truth
  147. QPI: QuickPath Interconnect
  148. RAD: Radiator
  149. RAID: redundant array of independent drives
  150. RAM: Random Access Memory
  151. RAMDAC: Random Access Memory Digital to Analog Converter
  152. RAS: Row Access Strobe or Row Address Strobe
  153. RBX: Type of water block from Danger Den
  154. REFRESH RATE: number of times a CRT's electron beam sweeps across the screen during a full second
  155. REP: REPutation
  156. RGB: Red, Green, Blue
  157. RGBHV: Red, Green, Blue, Horizontal sync, Vertical sync
  158. RIMM: Rambus Inline Memory Module
  159. .rar/rar: A popular file archive format similar to ZIP. Most often used on Apple/Mac systems.
  160. RMA: Return Manufacturer Agreement
  161. ROFL: Rolling on floor laughing
  162. ROM: Read Only Memory
  163. RPM: Revolutions Per Minute
  164. RTS: Real Time Strategy (has other meanings but this is generally what they mean)
  165. PWM: Pulse Width Modulation
  166. S478 S939 SXXX: S= SOCKET XXX= NUMBER OF PINS
  167. SAA: Supersampling Antialiasing
  168. SATA: Serial ATA
  169. SCP: Short circuit protection
  170. SB: South Bridge or Sound Blaster (depending on context)
  171. SCSI: Small Computer Systems Interface
  172. SDR: Single Data Rate
  173. SDSL: Synchronous Digital Service Line
  174. SFF: Small Form Factor
  175. SG: Seagate
  176. SIMM: Single In-line Memory Module
  177. SLI: Scalable Link Interface
  178. S.M.A.R.T.: Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology
  179. SMbus: System Management Bus
  180. SMP: Symmetric Multi-Processors
  181. SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
  182. SPP: System Platform Processor (also called Northbridge)
  183. SSAA: Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing
  184. SSAO - Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
  185. SSD: Solid State Drive
  186. SSE SSE2 SSE3: Streaming Single-instruction-multiple-data Extension
  187. TB: Terabyte
  188. TC: Thermal Compound or TurboCache (Depending on context)
  189. TCP/IP: Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
  190. TDP: Thermal Design Power
  191. TD: Tigerdirect.com
  192. TDX: Type of water block from Danger Den
  193. TEC: ThermoElectric Cooling (PELTIER)
  194. TF2: Team Fortress 2 OCN Server 8.9.16.94:27015
  195. TFT: Thin Film Transistor
  196. TIM: Thermal Interface Material
  197. TL;DR - Too Long, Didn´t Read
  198. TP: Thermal Paste
  199. TRUE: ThermalRight Ultra Extreme
  200. TT: ThermalTake
  201. TTT: To The Top (Used when bumping threads)
  202. UEFI - Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
  203. UPC: Universal Power Cord (used on power supplies)
  204. UPS: Un-interruptible Power System
  205. USB: Universal Serial Bus
  206. UT: Unreal Tournament
  207. UV: Ultraviolet
  208. UVP: Under voltage protection
  209. VC: Video Card
  210. VCORE: Voltage of the CORE of a processor
  211. VDIMM: Voltage of memory (DIMM)
  212. VID: Voltage Identification
  213. VGA: Video Graphics Array
  214. VPU: Video Processing unit
  215. VRM: Voltage regulator module
  216. W3: Sometimes shorted from the WWW or World Wide Web
  217. WAN: Wide Area Network
  218. WB: Water Block ( used to cool a processor with liquid)
  219. WC: Water Cooled (process of removing heat from a processor by means of moving water
  220. WD: Western Digital
  221. WDM Windows Device Manager
  222. WI-FI: WIreless FIdelity.
  223. WP: Water Pump
  224. XE: eXtreme Edition [same as EE]
  225. X-Fi: Xtreme Fidelity
  226. YGPM: You've Got Private Message
  227. ZIF: Zero Insertion Force
  228. .zip|ZIP|ZP: Compression files that save disk space (PKZip is most popular)

---

Credits go out to Xavier1421 for coming up with the name of the thread.

Originally created by SpookedJunglist. Torch passed to Miki.
 
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#4 ·
Thank you goes to Spooked for the great idea, I think the New Members area is a good place for this thread. New members should refer to this Acronym guide when they are lost during a thread where acronyms are used extensively.

This sticky will be a living sticky, meaning people who post pertinent information (ie. new acronyms) will be added to the sticky.

I give that job to Spooked, and I will help out as necessary.

Great job Spooked!
 
#5 ·
Just a couple additions/clarifications:

NB - Northbridge (see original post)

SB - Southbridge (see original post)

HTT and HT are synonomous (for Hyper-Threading or Hyper-Threading Technology), when used in reference to an Intel CPU

VC - video card

PCI-E/PCI-X - PCI-Express

Other than those, looks good.
 
#7 ·
DOS: Disk Operating System

dpi: Dots Per Inch

ATAPI: ATtachment PAcket Interface

EIDE: Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics

GUI: Graphical User Interface

HD: Hard Disk Hard Drive

HTML: HyperText Markup Language

http: HyperText Transfer Protocol

IP: Internet Protocol

ISA: Industry Standard Architecture

ISP: Internet Service Provider

LAN: Local Area Network

NIC: Network Interface Card

OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer

PCMIA: Personal Computer Memory Card International Association

PDF: Portable Document Format

POP3: Post Office Protocol version 3

RGB: Red, Green, Blue

SIMM: Single In-line Memory Module

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

TCP/IP: Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

TFT: Thin Film Transistor

DMA: Direct Memory Access

USB: Universal Serial Bus

VGA: Video Graphics Array

WAN: Wide Area Network

WI-FI: WIreless FIdelity
 
#9 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by Xavier1421

Thank you goes to Spooked for the great idea, I think the New Members area is a good place for this thread. New members should refer to this Acronym guide when they are lost during a thread where acronyms are used extensively.

This sticky will be a living sticky, meaning people who post pertinent information (ie. new acronyms) will be added to the sticky.

I give that job to Spooked, and I will help out as necessary.

Great job Spooked!

Thanks now that i have all this responsibility i wont be able to finish any other
Sticky worthy posts..... J/k
 
#16 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by spookedjunglist

I made this as quick as possible and edit as quick as possible

MHz?????

no!

little 'm' big 'H' little 'z'

...and gHz
 
#21 ·
lol dats what i need..haha ive always wanted to buy one of them, i think that i can finally oc with a bfh in my case!
Quote:


Originally Posted by Crash

Some systems require a "BFH" to fix them. I had a HP that required one.

 
#22 ·
Very... very good, congrats spooked.
Here's another some more for ya:
MIPS: Million Instructions Per Second

MFLOPS: (Mega)Floating-point operations per second (1 million FLOPS)
FPU: Floating Point Unit
TB: Terabyte (1024Gb)
 
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Reactions: SpookedJunglist
#23 ·
Actually the correct termonology is
Uppercase M for Mega
Uppercase G for Giga
and so forth.
Hz is of course hertz (cycles per second)
Also good to remember that lowercase b is used for bits, as in 768Kbps is 768 Kilabits per second (average ADSL speed) and upper case B is used for Bytes, 1024MB is 1024 MegaBytes.

Didn't see these (though I only skimmed through)
LAN - Local Area Network
TCP/IP - Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
DoS - Denial of Service
SDSL - Synchronus Digital Service Line
ADSL - Asynchronus Digital Service Line
Microns - symbol is µ (Alt+0181), also used to describe a processor's manufacturing process (.09 micron = 90 nanometer)
ALU - Arithmetic Logic Unit
FPU - Floating Point Unit
 
#25 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by YiffyGriffy

Microns - symbol is µ (Alt+0181), also used to describe a processor's manufacturing process (.09 micron = 90 nanometer)

Acctually, it is also the co-efficent of friction mew.
figured I would point that out
I like the mew symbol µ µ µ
 
#26 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by YiffyGriffy

Actually the correct termonology is
Uppercase M for Mega
Uppercase G for Giga
and so forth.
Hz is of course hertz (cycles per second)
Also good to remember that lowercase b is used for bits, as in 768Kbps is 768 Kilabits per second (average ADSL speed) and upper case B is used for Bytes, 1024MB is 1024 MegaBytes.

Didn't see these (though I only skimmed through)
LAN - Local Area Network
TCP/IP - Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
DoS - Denial of Service
SDSL - Synchronus Digital Service Line
ADSL - Asynchronus Digital Service Line
Microns - symbol is µ (Alt+0181), also used to describe a processor's manufacturing process (.09 micron = 90 nanometer)
ALU - Arithmetic Logic Unit
FPU - Floating Point Unit

i didnt add Kbps for the simple fact that we dont overclock our modems do we


i started this to help out the noobs... its turned into the complete guide of computer acronyms,,, or not so complete

instead of Overclocking acronyms for dummies


but still thanks for the input
reps your way
 
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