OCers: Do you notice a difference from stock speed?

[NaughtyusMaximus]

Just a simple question to all the people on here who are overclocking. For everyday use (ie. web/apps/games - not wu times) do you notice a difference between your overclocked CPU and your CPU at stock speed?

I know that obviously benchmarks will show a large performance increase between OC/stock, but I'm curious about people's observations while actually running programs. ( ie. in Q3, if you didn't have the framerate shown, would you be able to say without a doubt that there is a significant difference in gameplay)

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Personally I used to overclock, but then I opted for a stable/quiet rig instead. Other than seti/UD wu times, I can't say that I've noticed a slowdown at all.

 

[Jerboy]

<< Just a simple question to all the people on here who are overclocking. For everyday use (ie. web/apps/games - not wu times) do you notice a difference between your overclocked CPU and your CPU at stock speed?

I know that obviously benchmarks will show a large performance increase between OC/stock, but I'm curious about people's observations while actually running programs. ( ie. in Q3, if you didn't have the framerate shown, would you be able to say without a doubt that there is a significant difference in gameplay)

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Personally I used to overclock, but then I opted for a stable/quiet rig instead. Other than seti/UD wu times, I can't say that I've noticed a slowdown at all. >>




For surfing the web and playing around, my makeshift 600MHz PIII is just as fast as my usual 1.4GHz Athlon machine.

 

[Mitzi]

OCers: Do you notice a difference from stock speed?

With my Athlon 1.4@1.53 - not at all.
With my Athlon 750@1000 - yes, fairly considerable difference especially in games.

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

On the last system i overclocked Cel 300A to 450Mhz yes, windows felt a lot faster when overclocked.

Eventually you get to a point where a modern system will run windows very faster and overclocking a cpu will not show any visible difference, except where the system is bottlenecked by the cpu (such as games , seti etc).

Currently i run a duron 800Mhz at stock speed and fine it fine for everything i do.

 

[Anubis]

i dont think yull notice it on a jump from say 1.5- 1.6 or so but the northwoods from 1.6-2.0 im sure they notice a diff
i notice a slight diff on my XP 1700 1.47- 1.57 not that much tho

 

[MCS]

<< On the last system i overclocked Cel 300A to 450Mhz yes, windows felt a lot faster when overclocked >>



Yep, back then that sort of overclock made an amazing difference but these days I think people just overclock for fun, because they can. Most stock CPUs that you can buy these days are already too fast for most software you are likely to run, so overclocking will just make you system a bit more too fast for it

I do not overclock my XP 1800+. There is no reason to. And as a result I have a very quiet system with absolutely no stability worries. I used to spend most of my PC time looping stability tests but now I am just getting down and using my PC...

 

[Passions]

When I did 333 -> 400, it was an incredible notice. But 1ghz -> 1.33 ghz is almost unnoticeable so I stay at 1ghz.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

750 -> 950 makes windows XP much more responsive.

 

[Nate420]

For the most common tasks, like surfing the net, email, playin music, ect.. you'd probably be perfectly happy with a 500Mhz and not realy notice any difference from a 1Ghz. I just got rid of a P3 1Ghz, not because it was slow, just so I could play with one of these Northwoods

The few things that it makes a very noticable difference in (to me anyway) are things like audio and/or video encoding, windows boot time, and software installation to name a few.

I O/C just for fun realy...because I can

 

[Elledan]

After 900 MHz (except for Cyrix CPUs ), you'll notice very little difference between an OCed and non-OCed CPU.

 

[YBS1]

I used to be able to tell a difference, say p3 450@558, Athlon 800@900, and even a slight difference on my T-bird 1.33@1.53 but I suspect that was as much the fsb effect as the 200mhz. On my current system I can't tell a difference at all without a benchmark, as that is the case I'm not even bothering to OC it anymore, it's running 1600@1600 now. I got a pretty crappy 1900+ IMO, watercooled and still maxes out at about 1752mhz, so I'm not getting much fsb effect either. It's entirely possible if I unlocked my multiplier and dropped it down a bit so I could crank my fsb up I may be able to see some differences....who knows.....

 

[DaejangNim]

when my duron 600 is @ 800 w/ 266 fsb, its faster in everything generally, and is highly noticeable in games, but when I have it @ 1000 w/ 200 fsb, I only really notice it in games

 

[Mavrick007]

For general everyday things like using the internet for the web or email, making an office document, playing music or even older games, you won't notice much difference from stock/OC.

But when you are running more intensive apps such as encoding/decoding music, DVD ripping, new games, then it will help the bottleneck created by the cpu. Anything over 1Ghz should be good for most people for awhile considering what normal everyday projects will require. Once you get above 1Ghz, it is much harder to notice a small (around 100-200Mhz) overclock than it would be under 1Ghz. Some tasks that people are performing now aren't as cpu dependent as the video card is now so it wouldn't give much boost in performance even for a large (300-500+) overclock.

 

[Jgtdragon]

Tell you the truth, I don't notice any difference from stock 1800 or overclcok 2Ghz +. I just run it stock speed now so I won't have to worry about damaging my pci devices, especailly the scsi devices. Only thing I see a difference in are 3dmark2k1.

 

[exp]

For everyday office applications:

Celeron 300A-->464...huge difference
P4-1.6A-->2.1...quite noticeable
2.1-->2.4...barely noticeable

 

[JellyBaby]

I need a 25% of more OC in order to feel a substantial difference. The speed increase is more noticeable in games of course.

Small 10-15% OCs aren't worth it IMO.

 

[UberCaff]

 

[flexy]

<< Just a simple question to all the people on here who are overclocking. For everyday use (ie. web/apps/games - not wu times) do you notice a difference between your overclocked CPU and your CPU at stock speed?
>>



Well...i think there are two kinds of actions which are related:

*) The classic overclock by increasing clockspeeds over specs. (For FSB and or CPU), wither using jumpers or values in the bios.

*) Tweaking (bios) settings faster. Eg. switching RAM timings to values which (usually) would be out of specs already. (Eg. Cas2.5 RAM at Cas2)

I think both of these things are very much related since i can not imagine eg. someone overclocking his machine while leaving his RAM/bios settings at "lamer value"

I know for myself that the ram tweaking ALONE gave me an big boost in performance, eg. RAM interleave to 4, CAS2, CMD1 etc.etc....and in addition to that max. tweaked settings i also OVERCLOCKED my machine...eg. 133FSB to 144.

The overall performance gain is definetly here...it's not only a small percentage of more memory bandwith (compared to stock, not overclocked)...i think it was as much as 60% (maybe even more!) if you take the numbers Sandra Membench gives you.


However, overclocking/tweaking only ONE component (eg. increasing CPU speed from 1.5mhz to 1.6mhz...whatever.)...i dont think that there's something noticeable in real life...its the combination.