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Is there any need to OC my CPU further for gaming?

D

driedupfish

Member
Hi All,

I have an i5-3570k at 4.0 Ghz. Would I see any significant increase in performance in gaming if I OC any further?

I game at 1080p and have an OC 7950.

I know this is an enthusiast forum and is probably a taboo to say that I didn't really OC this beast of a CPU. But to be honest, I just don't have the time atm to test for stability again.

Thanks.
 
Need? No.
Significant increase? Probably not, but that would vary depending on the game.

Not taboo at all. I stopped overclocking years ago (other than once in a while just out of curiosity but I never leave it oc'd), and still consider myself very much an enthusiast. But in all honesty, I game much less now and my time is more valuable so I'm not willing to spend as much time troubleshooting when something goes wrong.
 
Rio Rebel said:
Need? No.
Significant increase? Probably not, but that would vary depending on the game.

Not taboo at all. I stopped overclocking years ago (other than once in a while just out of curiosity but I never leave it oc'd), and still consider myself very much an enthusiast. But in all honesty, I game much less now and my time is more valuable so I'm not willing to spend as much time troubleshooting when something goes wrong.
Click to expand...

I don't think there are many games that are CPU dependent though. I think in 90% of the cases the bottleneck will be my GPU. Yes?
 
driedupfish said:
I don't think there are many games that are CPU dependent though. I think in 90% of the cases the bottleneck will be my GPU. Yes?
Click to expand...

It really depends on your configuration and game settings. 1080p is HD, but it's a relatively low resolution by PC standards, and the HD 7950 is a strong video card (especially overclocked) so the CPU will have to do more work feeding it.

Best way to find out if you're CPU bottlenecked is to experiment. Overclock your CPU by 400mhz and if you see a significant rise in frame rates and GPU activity, then you were being CPU limited.
 
Games differ in their CPU requirements, some games would certainly benefit, a lot of modern MMOs are great examples of CPU hogs that respond well to increase core speed, games like Planetside 2, and I hear Guild Wars 2.

It also depends on what you believe is a good frame rate, some people think 30fps is ok, some think 60 is ok and some people expect 120, that's a big deciding factor.
 
If you now how to do it, then I say put the v-core to 1.3v an see what it can do. If you can get more than do it, but if you want it to last for along time, keep the voltage rather low.
 
driedupfish said:
I don't think there are many games that are CPU dependent though. I think in 90% of the cases the bottleneck will be my GPU. Yes?
Click to expand...

GTA IV (though not because it is optimized that way)
Skyrim
The entire Battlefield series
As a side note, I think all valve games are heavily optimized for multithreading, I heard up to 6 cores.
 
Try a blind test. Have your friend decide to randomly pick an evening to overclock your computer, when you don't know. Then see if you can actually notice any difference when using your computer. Then, have him randomly undo the overclock, and see if you notice any difference.

Perhaps you could give him access to your computer behind closed doors every afternoon so he could decide to overclock or not overclock in a random way that you don't know about.

But if you can't tell any difference in performance, perhaps you could tell the difference in reduced heat, noise, power bill, and peace of mind knowing you are saving the environment with running lower clocks?
 
driedupfish said:
I don't think there are many games that are CPU dependent though. I think in 90% of the cases the bottleneck will be my GPU. Yes?
Click to expand...

Arma 2 will drop to 20fps at 4.0Ghz.
Starcraft 2 will drop to 20fps at 4.0Ghz.
Every single game, even games like Black Mesa which use the old source engine, will drop their framerate below 60 at least somewhere during the game due to a CPU bottleneck.
A CPU s just as important as the GPU for gaming, if not more.
 
TimberSaw said:
Arma 2 will drop to 20fps at 4.0Ghz.
Starcraft 2 will drop to 20fps at 4.0Ghz.
Every single game, even games like Black Mesa which use the old source engine, will drop their framerate below 60 at least somewhere during the game due to a CPU bottleneck.
A CPU s just as important as the GPU for gaming, if not more.
Click to expand...

😱
 
Face2Face said:
😱
Click to expand...

Dude, you have the same CPU, you should know. How big of jump in performance is it from base to 4.8? I'd imagine alot, but by how much?

Keep in mind I have a 1080p, 60 hz monitor. I'd imagine even with such big increase, it wouldn't be noticeable on my setup.
 
driedupfish said:
Dude, you have the same CPU, you should know. How big of jump in performance is it from base to 4.8? I'd imagine alot, but by how much?
Click to expand...

I haven't tested enough games yet. But with Crysis 3 and Metro LL the avg framerate did not increase much if any. The minimum frame-rate went from 30FPS with a stock 3570K to 50-55 FPS @ 4.8GHz. Which will make your experience a much smoother one - I call BS on the source games dropping below 60 FPS with a 3570K @ 4.0Ghz and a 7950 @ 1080P.
 
Face2Face said:
I haven't tested enough games yet. But with Crysis 3 and Metro LL the avg framerate did not increase much if any. The minimum frame-rate went from 30FPS with a stock 3570K to 50-55 FPS @ 4.8GHz. Which will make your experience a much smoother one - I call BS on the source games dropping below 60 FPS with a 3570K @ 4.0Ghz and a 7950 @ 1080P.
Click to expand...

Have you played Black Mesa? If no then stfu.

You're hardly in a position to tell anyone to be quiet. And thread crapping will not be tolerated
-ViRGE
 
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driedupfish said:
But wouldn't you think part of the performance issue might be due to optimization of the mod? I've never play it so I don't know if it's optimized at all.
Click to expand...

It might be, but I've been also told it is a problem with the updated source engine. Whatever the reason is, the CPU's clock speed is what's keeping it from maintaining 60fps at all times.
 
TimberSaw said:
It might be, but I've been also told it is a problem with the updated source engine. Whatever the reason is, the CPU's clock speed is what's keeping it from maintaining 60fps at all times.
Click to expand...

What? You say the problem is with the updated source engine but it's the cpu keeping it from maintaining 60 FPS?
 
TimberSaw said:
Yes, some bugs in the engine causing high CPU usage, that's what people on other forums said. What did you find illogical?
Click to expand...

So it's a bug in the game engine and not the cpu keeping it from maintaining 60 FPS?

"Your Quote"

Every single game, even games like Black Mesa which use the old source engine, will drop their framerate below 60 at least somewhere during the game due to a CPU bottleneck.

when you say every game, do you mean every game? Remember, we are talking about a 3570K @ 4.0Ghz here..
 
I've been playing Supreme Commander lately and that game pegs Core 0 at 100% and all other cores are basically idle. That means that at 3.4 GHz (stock), my CPU is a huge bottleneck.

It seems like older games would respond better with a nice overclock, whereas games with multi-core support, only need around 2 GHz.
 
Face2Face said:
So it's a bug in the game engine and not the cpu keeping it from maintaining 60 FPS?

"Your Quote"

Every single game, even games like Black Mesa which use the old source engine, will drop their framerate below 60 at least somewhere during the game due to a CPU bottleneck.

when you say every game, do you mean every game? Remember, we are talking about a 3570K @ 4.0Ghz here..
Click to expand...

Obviously not every single game, but if we're talking about modern AAA titles, it's actually surprisingly difficult to keep frame rate above 60fps all of the time, a 60fps min usually requires an average closer to 90-100fps to account for fluctuations and spikes in FPS, for example a large amount of physics objects suddenly spawning into the environment during an explosion, that can cause sub-60fps dips for a small number of frames.
 
TimberSaw said:
Every single game, even games like Black Mesa which use the old source engine, will drop their framerate below 60 at least somewhere during the game due to a CPU bottleneck.
Click to expand...

I didn't get any drops this extreme when I played it....
 
is no one going to ask "How much RAM?" lol, assuming you have 8 gigs (it does make a difference in gameplay from 4 gigs)

you should take back that GPU card as it should be Maxing out any game with a bandwidth of 240.0 GB/s, must be something wrong with it

Excuse me, but the Black Mesa game only has an "Ideal" recommendation of a dual core 2.4ghz, easy to maintain frame rate with this weak game http://wiki.blackmesasource.com/Installation_Manual

nothing wrong with 4ghz quad i5
 
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