Overclocked

Nineteen ninety-three, three believers and a spark Drawing perfect triangles like lightning in the dark TNT went thunder, then the chip that changed the game Two-five-six, the first one ever built to wear the name Now the whole world renders and it’s never been the same Green lightning, born from grains of sand

Started in a diner booth with coffee going cold Three engineers, a longshot, and a napkin full of gold RIVA came out swinging in the polygon crusade One-twenty-eight, the beachhead where the 3D dreams were made Ninety-eight the TNT lit up the beige machines Twin-texel fire turning basements into battle scenes

Nineteen ninety-three, three believers and a spark Drawing perfect triangles like lightning in the dark TNT went thunder, then the chip that changed the game Two-five-six, the first one ever built to wear the name Now the whole world renders and it’s never been the same Green lightning, born from grains of sand

Two thousand one the shaders let the artists take the wheel Pixels got programmable and water started looking real The 8800 landed like a monster from the deep Unified and hungry while the rivals lost their sleep CUDA taught the graphics card to think outside the game Then RTX bent rays of light and traced them, frame by frame

They bought the bones of Voodoo when the magic hit the floor Took a fallen wizard’s spells and made the lightning roar Every generation whispers, chasing one more frame One more frame.. one more frame

Nineteen ninety-three, three believers and a spark Drawing perfect triangles like lightning in the dark TNT went thunder, then the chip that changed the game Two-five-six, the first one ever built to wear the name Now the whole world renders and it’s never been the same Green lightning, born from grains of sand

Nineteen ninety-three, three believers and a spark Drawing perfect triangles like lightning in the dark TNT went thunder, then the chip that changed the game Two-five-six, the first one ever built to wear the name Now the whole world renders and it’s never been the same Green lightning, born from grains of sand

From a napkin in a diner to the engine of the world Green lightning in the sand

San Jose in ninety-six, black magic hit the shelf Voodoo on the pass-through cable, whole new world to run Sixty frames of Quake and the future showed itself Every kid in every basement knew the age had just begun Glide was our religion and the devs all took the vow We were smooth where they were choppy, and we owned the here and now

Voodoo, black magic on a card Ninety-six, we set the world alight Every frame a spell, we hit ’em hard Too fast to live, too proud to get it right

Ninety-eight the sequel dropped and doubled down the dose Two cards bridged as one, and we christened it SLI A thousand frames and one more, nobody came close The LAN nights and the CRTs, cathedrals in the night Every rig that mattered had our magic in its bones The whole arcade came home to us, and we were on the throne

Voodoo, black magic on a card Ninety-six, we set the world alight Every frame a spell, we hit ’em hard Too fast to live, too proud to get it right

Then we got too hungry, bought the boards, and went alone Partners turned to rivals overnight and shut the door Voodoo3 came limping, thirty-two-bit still unknown TNT was thundering, we weren’t magic anymore Chasing our own shadow while the green machine went past Spells are only spells while the believers hold them fast

Two thousand, and the candle’s out The courtroom where the magic died They boxed our spells and shipped them north The buyer kept our SLI alive

Voodoo, black magic on a card Ninety-six, we set the world alight Every frame a spell, we hit ’em hard Too fast to live, too proud to get it right

Now collectors hunt the old cards, relics of the war Twenty years of frame rates standing tall upon our fall Every bridge between two cards still bears the mark we bore First ones through the wall So light a candle for the pioneers who burned to light the way The magic never died, it just changed hands along the way

And while the embers cooled out west, beneath the northern snow Something red was rising

Eighty-five in Toronto town, three suitcases of dreams An immigrant with steady hands and solder in his veins Building chips for beige machines, the quiet in-between Mach by Mach we learned the craft while nobody knew our name All-in-Wonder in the den, the TV in the tower Rage was slowly waking up and counting down the hour

They said the crown was settled, said the throne was overseas But we were up here sharpening the axe against the freeze

Out of the north where the winter bites Came the crew with a point to prove Rage into Radeon, spoiling for the fight With nothing left to lose Two thousand two and the crown changed hands Ninety-seven-hundred wore it well Watch the far horizon, crimson on the land Red dawn rising

Two thousand two the hammer fell, the R300 roared Ninety-seven-hundred Pro left champions on the floor The rival’s hotrod howled like it was vacuuming the den Ours ran cool and twice as fast, again, again, again We slipped into the living room, the consoles wore our art A Flipper and a Xenos beating like a second heart

They said the crown was settled, said the throne was overseas But we were up here sharpening the axe against the freeze

Out of the north where the winter bites Came the crew with a point to prove Rage into Radeon, spoiling for the fight With nothing left to lose Two thousand two and the crown changed hands Ninety-seven-hundred wore it well Watch the far horizon, crimson on the land Red dawn rising

Two thousand six the phone rang, Sunnyvale on the line Five point four and change to stand the rebels side by side The letters left the boxes but the fire stayed inside Radeon forever, red until we die

Out of the north where the winter bites Came the crew with a point to prove Rage into Radeon, spoiling for the fight With nothing left to lose Two thousand two and the crown changed hands Ninety-seven-hundred wore it well Watch the far horizon, crimson on the land Red dawn rising

And far away in Santa Clara, blue was watching time

Ninety-three, the Pentium Sixty megs of momentum Superscalar, twin-lane math Then a bug crossed our path FDIV, the long division Made the news, forced the decision Swallowed pride, recalled the lot Trust is everything you’ve got

Clockspeed, worship at the clock Tick-tock, silicon can’t stop Raise the ceiling, break the wall Speed is all, speed is all

MMX, the pixels flew Slot cartridges, chrome and new Ninety-eight the legend brewed Celeron, cheap and crude Three-hundred A, the whisper spread Clock it to four-fifty instead Cheapest ticket to the show Overclockers ran the road

Clockspeed, worship at the clock Tick-tock, silicon can’t stop Raise the ceiling, break the wall Speed is all, speed is all

Gigahertz, the great crusade Coppermine against the blade NetBurst bet it all on heat Twenty stages, dead-end street Prescott cooking, critics laughed Space heater on every graph Pride will only take a bow When the numbers fail you now

Rewind the tape to March, two thousand A knock upon the castle gate Some scrappy outfit from the desert Crossed one gigahertz.. first

Clockspeed, worship at the clock Tick-tock, silicon can’t stop Raise the ceiling, break the wall Speed is all, speed is all

Two thousand six, the Conroe came Core 2 Duo, changed the game Tick and tock, year on year Nehalem made the pathway clear I7 crowned, the halo shone Sandy Bridge, the marathon 2600K, the legend stands A decade in enthusiast hands

But the knocking kept on getting louder down the hall The sand remembers everybody Who taught it how to think

Nineteen sixty-nine, a salesman walked off Fairchild ground Eight believers and a handshake out in Sunnyvale Second-source survivor, always second in the count Building what the giant built, for less, on half the sail Every contract was a battle, every win was on the wire Fifty years of almost, feeding hunger to the fire

K6 in the bargain builds kept teenage rigs alive Then Athlon came out swinging in the summer of ninety-nine March of two thousand, first to make the gigahertz arrive Days ahead of destiny, the headline read: our time And when we wrote the 64-bit words upon the page The giant had to speak our tongue to make it to the stage

Ryzen up, when the whole world counts you out Ryzen up, second source to second none We wrote the words the giant had to speak We broke the gigahertz they swore we’d never run Zen by zen we stacked the chiplets on the doubt Ryzen up, the underdog has won

Two cores on one silicon, we turned another page Bought the northern wizards and we wore the red as one Then Bulldozer stumbled and the dark came down the stage Pennies on the share price, vultures blotting out the sun A quiet captain took the wheel and bet it all on Zen Twenty-seventeen the doubted rose to fight again

Ryzen up, when the whole world counts you out Ryzen up, second source to second none We wrote the words the giant had to speak We broke the gigahertz they swore we’d never run Zen by zen we stacked the chiplets on the doubt Ryzen up, the underdog has won

Now every living-room machine has got our beating heart The consoles and the clouds, the halls of EPYC steel From the second-source shadow to the giant’s counterpart Half a century of underdog is turning of the wheel

Ryzen up, when the whole world counts you out Ryzen up, second source to second none We wrote the words the giant had to speak We broke the gigahertz they swore we’d never run Zen by zen we stacked the chiplets on the doubt Ryzen up, the underdog has won

But every engine ever built still needs a road to run

Himem, EMM386, an IRQ séance every night Sacrificing autoexec to get one game to light Boot disks stacked like tarot cards, we read them and we prayed Ninety-five a window opened, and a promise had been made No more begging to the config, no more sixteen kinds of pain One road under every game, and every card the same

Lay the road and floor it, chase one more frame

Draw call! Talk to the metal for me One tongue for a thousand different towers From the Glide wars to the shader age, I hold the key Sixty frames of power They built a big black box and took my name Every game you love begins with a draw call

Seven brought the hardware lighting, eight unchained the shade Nine was golden, half a decade every classic played City 17 was shimmering on cards from either side Red or green, it didn’t matter, everybody rides The console in the lounge room wore my letters on the shell The road had grown an empire, and the empire ran it well

Lay the road and floor it, chase one more frame

Draw call! Talk to the metal for me One tongue for a thousand different towers From the Glide wars to the shader age, I hold the key Sixty frames of power They built a big black box and took my name Every game you love begins with a draw call

Then the red team cut a back road running close against the steel Twelve took notes and dropped the ceremony, kissed the bare machine A hundred thousand calls a frame where thousands used to kneel Overhead is over, we’re the leanest we have been

Draw call! Talk to the metal for me One tongue for a thousand different towers From the Glide wars to the shader age, I hold the key Sixty frames of power They built a big black box and took my name Every game you love begins with a draw call

But the perfect picture’s empty when it plays in perfect silence Somebody give this picture back a voice

The tower used to whisper with a single tinny beep One channel for a heartbeat, and the music locked outside We dreamed in glorious colour while the speakers stayed asleep Somewhere across the water, someone heard us.. and replied

AdLib struck the first chord, FM fire in the shell Then eighty-nine, a blaster with a joystick port and pride Every box in every store sang words we knew so well Compatible, compatible, the doors were open wide And when the demo music came like thunder down the hall We heard sixteen bits of soul

Type the sacred letters, set the numbers, say them slow A-two-twenty, IRQ five, DMA one Jumper caps and ribbon cables, kneeling at the tower Praying to the setup gods the melody would come

MIDI nights and wavetable, cathedrals in the roar The AWE and all its strings inside a bedroom’s midnight glow Doom was rolling thunder, Monkey Island wrote the score Every saved-up dollar for the card that ran the show And when the title screen came up and music filled the wall We heard sixteen bits of soul

Onboard came for free, and the golden age went still Cards slipped out of towers into boxes in the roof But dig one out and seat it, feel the click, you know the drill Old capacitors still hum the truth

So here’s to beeping speakers that we finally taught to sing To the FM synth, the DACs, and every crackle in the stream The soundtrack of a thousand nights inside a plastic dream Turn it up and let it ring, and when the memories call I hear sixteen bits of soul

Blow the dust off, seat it true Plug it in.. and press start

Scavenged parts and midnight builds, a tower on the floor Thermal paste and cable ties, a cathedral made of light Thirty years of thunder waiting there behind one door One small button glowing softly in the night Every chip a chapter, every slot a battle won Take a breath, the story’s loaded.. here it comes

Press start, the whole choir’s in the tower tonight Green lightning and the red dawn side by side Clockspeed hearts and underdogs are marching in the light Voodoo ghosts are riding shotgun for the ride Every draw call answered, every speaker’s found its soul Thirty years of thunder in a frame We chased one more forever, now we finally made it whole Press start.. and say their names

Say the fallen pioneers who burned to light the way Say the northern rebels and the desert never-quits Say the giants and garages and the wars they had to wage Say the sacred setup numbers, every blessed bag of bits The LAN table’s filling up, the monitors ignite We were never chasing frame rates.. we were chasing nights like this

Press start, the whole choir’s in the tower tonight Green lightning and the red dawn side by side Clockspeed hearts and underdogs are marching in the light Voodoo ghosts are riding shotgun for the ride Every draw call answered, every speaker’s found its soul Thirty years of thunder in a frame We chased one more forever, now we finally made it whole Press start.. and say their names

From a diner booth.. to a courtroom candle From the snowbound north.. to a garage of eight From a single beep.. to a symphony It was never just the hardware.. it was us, and what we made

They took the desert’s grains and taught the sand itself to dream Poured the lightning through it, gave the lightning all their names We’re the heirs of every megahertz, every ray and beam We are the lightning.. we’re the lightning in the sand

Press start, the whole choir’s in the tower tonight Green lightning and the red dawn side by side Clockspeed hearts and underdogs are marching in the light Voodoo ghosts are riding shotgun for the ride Every draw call answered, every speaker’s found its soul Thirty years of thunder in a frame We chased one more forever, now we finally made it whole Press start.. and say their names

The screen glows, the lobby’s filling up The clock can rest tonight.. we’re home Ready when you are.. Press start