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Now that Intel is increasing their stock clock speeds, is overclocking as relevant?

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OILFIELDTRASH said:
I'd be happy if I could just get an affordable 300+ gb superfast ssd to run all my games and apps. I notice hard drive lag far more than any speed increases from an overclock.
Click to expand...

This spring I was deciding between a $400 SSD upgrade or a $400 Thuban upgrade (w/mobo)...putting the 160GB G2 in my 4yr old Q6600 rig made it silly snappy...so much so I backed my overclock down from 3.3GHz to 2.4GHz (yes...I am running stock now) and didn't sacrifice any perceptions of performance for my daily usages.

Encoding suffers, to be sure...but that SSD made more of a difference in the other 90% of my computer experience than a much faster CPU had made.

I will upgrade to SB or BD next year, take the next bump up in performance, but I'm loven this SSD.
 
Flipped Gazelle said:
Add 14% to the E8600 scores, and there's your 3.8ghz. Still loses.

And you didn't say "about the same" in your previous post. You used the term "destroys".
Click to expand...

Point being, there is zero additional cost to the OC'd E8600's performance when he already has one. A new i5 + motherboard + memory would cost a few hundred dollars.
 
thedosbox said:
Point being, there is zero additional cost to the OC'd E8600's performance when he already has one. A new i5 + motherboard + memory would cost a few hundred dollars.
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Unfortunately it looks like next year is going to be a veritable bonanza for the mobo guys.

Whether you want Sandy, Llano, Zambezi, or Bobcat you are looking at a mobo upgrade in all cases. If your present rig is still DDR2 (as is mine) then you are looking at a mobo+ram upgrade to go with that cpu upgrade.
 
thedosbox said:
Point being, there is zero additional cost to the OC'd E8600's performance when he already has one. A new i5 + motherboard + memory would cost a few hundred dollars.
Click to expand...

Oh sure, I agree with that. The E8x00 CPUs were, IMO, a special line, given their longevity + performance. It's the spreading of misinformation that does a disservice, that's all. 🙂

Like IDC, I'm on a DDR2 platform. Chances are, unless I get a freebie CPU, I'll probably skip this round.
 
Overclocking lost much of it's relevance years ago as hardware finally caught up with software. Most of what we have now in terms of program speed really is a luxury.
 
Flipped Gazelle said:
Overclocking lost much of it's relevance years ago as hardware finally caught up with software. Most of what we have now in terms of program speed really is a luxury.
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funny, and yet the average gamer can't max out the graphics on his games... We can't emulate PS3 and Xbox360 on the PC yet... heck even emulating PS2 on the PC is very stressful (because PS2 uses wrong implementation of rounding, emulating certain calculations takes 10x more calculations)

encoding still can't be done in real time (in any good quality)

tiny low power computers still have anemic performance, etc etc etc.
 
Lonyo said:
Going forward, overclocking will become less relevant because clockspeed will become less relevant as a differentiator.

Obviously clockspeed will still be there, but when you consider that now Intel has:
6 core/12T
4C/8T triple channel
4C/8T dual channel
4C/4T
2C/4T
2C/2T

While in the past it was typically 2 or 4 cores. So even without different clockspeeds or cache, there are 6 different models which cannot be "upgraded" through clockspeed.

Basically overclocking becomes less relevant because Intel have differentiation in other manners, and clockspeeds are not as variable as in the past.
Clockspeeds range from 2.66GHz (i5 750, IIRC) to 3.6GHz (i5 640? or something), which isn't a massive range, and it's not even top and bottom that have those clocks, because the difference is beyond clockspeeds, it's cores, threads, memory and cache, things overclocking don't change.
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Sure but for the most part we use single threaded apps. It's getting better but I don't think in most situations for the average user that a change from dual channel memory to triple channel memory or going from dual core to quad core makes as much of a difference as a 15% clock speed boost.
 
taltamir said:
funny, and yet the average gamer can't max out the graphics on his games... We can't emulate PS3 and Xbox360 on the PC yet... heck even emulating PS2 on the PC is very stressful (because PS2 uses wrong implementation of rounding, emulating certain calculations takes 10x more calculations)

encoding still can't be done in real time (in any good quality)

tiny low power computers still have anemic performance, etc etc etc.
Click to expand...

I was thinking CPUs moreso than gfx. Most gaming gurus claim the shortcomings in gaming gfx performance is the fault of the video cards.

The other stuff is far more specialized - I was thinking in general terms. Or maybe it's because I'm old, and thinking about how I had to replace my Amiga's Motorola 68000 with a 68010 to sharpen a photo in ImageFX in less than an hour.
 
taltamir said:
funny, and yet the average gamer can't max out the graphics on his games... We can't emulate PS3 and Xbox360 on the PC yet... heck even emulating PS2 on the PC is very stressful
Click to expand...

The first has more reliance on the GPU than CPU at this point, while the other tasks are the very definition of "luxury".

I too am sitting out the current generation, as the cost/benefit of buying into a new platform doesn't make enough sense for my usage model.
 
taltamir said:
funny, and yet the average gamer can't max out the graphics on his games... We can't emulate PS3 and Xbox360 on the PC yet... heck even emulating PS2 on the PC is very stressful (because PS2 uses wrong implementation of rounding, emulating certain calculations takes 10x more calculations)

encoding still can't be done in real time (in any good quality)

tiny low power computers still have anemic performance, etc etc etc.
Click to expand...

Are you referring to this?
http://pcsx2.net/blog.php?p=7
"Nightmare on Floating-Point Street"

If so, LOL!
 
I enjoyed having my i3 running overclocked, but after losing 2 ssd's, I can live without it. Don't know why my patriot ssd dies when overclocked, but I it's more trouble than it's worth. My ssd is stable now.
 
Losing SSDs while overclocking the CPU? That's a new one on me . . . not saying it didn't happen, but it would be interesting to know more about that for future reference.
 
DrMrLordX said:
Losing SSDs while overclocking the CPU? That's a new one on me . . . not saying it didn't happen, but it would be interesting to know more about that for future reference.
Click to expand...

Yeah, sounds like there might be something faulty in the board itself. I can't think of any other reason for this to occur.
 
if you are losing SSDs while overclocking that means your SSD is getting too much voltage...

this means either a defect in the mobo (SATA cable) or the PSU... but one of them is sending too much power and frying it.

The PSU: it is possible the the strain of an oced CPU pushes the PSU, causing to output "dirty" power (aka, fluctuating voltage) which fries your SSDs.
The mobo: it is possible that it is shorting out and frying your SSDs via the SATA port.
 
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