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Practical Benefits of Overclocking

I

imported_X

Senior member
Aside from synthetic benchmarks, how much of a real world difference do you see when overclocking? Do your games play noticeably smoother at higher settings? Is the increased heat, power consumption, and risk of instability really worth it aside from bragging rights?
 
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1531414&enterthread=y


Are some of these test practical enough for you??? The growth in almosty linear to speed increase...I can still drop back to 2.55ghz and run default vcore and have load temps of 46-47c and I would still show 30+% gains in performance....


"and risk of instability really worth it aside from bragging rights?"

If you know what you are doing and not a moron it shouldn't be an issue.....

I for one test stability and put it out there in front of you guys...I dont test on untested speeds just for sake of number. I got screenies that show my prime95 testing, my temps, my voltages, my scores....
 
Originally posted by: X
Is the increased heat, power consumption, and risk of instability really worth it aside from bragging rights?
Click to expand...

if you know what you are doing, thats not an issue.
 
I'm gamer. My fps in some games i play rose by a good 20 after I overclocked my video card and CPU. The video card is now the bottleneck, by a large degree, in my system ... so i ordered a new one, i'm waiting for it now and i'm sure as hell gonna overclock that too .. 🙂
 
well, i am sure that running 125% faster than i was before must be noticeable (but i cant remember how it was before!!)
 
If you do it right it's stable and the increase in performance in real applications is huge. Thats like saying theres no difference between a 3000+ and a 3800+.
 
Besides those artificial benchmark numbers, I haven't noticed any difference... yet. Well it's probably there but hard to notice. Knowing that my 3000+ runs like a 3800+ at less than half the cost definately feels good. I'm sure in a yr i'll be glad I OC my CPU, but right now it's all about feeling good. Besides, my CPU still idles at low 30s and on load at 40-ish.
 
There is a BIG ******* Difference. You can clock a celeron J (I know, i don't really like intel nuch, but this was incredible) 2.53 GHz to 3.5 Ghz, and when you try HL2 and Doom 3 on that, it is like a whole new experience (except for the lack of cache)
 
if you game, OCing is definitely worth it. GPU OCing is the best, bringing nearly 100% performance scaling. my 15% overclocked 6600GT lets me play HL2 at 1 resolution higher, or lets me turn on AA or AF. For a midrange card, memory speed is the most important - since the main limiting factor in a 6600GT is its 128-bit memory bus. If you overclock the memory to, say, 1200MHz (from 1000MHz), then you are relatively close to the bandwidth of a 6800 non-ultra. GPU speed brings gains too, but not as much as memory. On the high end, memory and GPU speed are pretty much equally important.

CPU overclocking doesn't bring quite as much. I OC'ed 41%, but i didn't get anywhere near 41% performance boost. maybe 15-20%, still worth it, but not as much so. For other stuff, though, like media encoding, etc., it's more of a linear scaling.
 
Thanks for the feedback. The reason I ask is that I have been able to play most games at max settings with no noticeable slowdown, so I wonder what the advantage would be to OC'ing in those cases. I guess there will always be games out there like Far Cry, Doom 3, etc. that will push any system enough that OC'ing would have a noticeable performance boost.
 
Hey Nick1985 🙂

I see you run an Epox 9NDA3+. I just built a system w/9NDA3+ A64 3200 90nm 2x512 Ballistix PC3200 Antec 550 2xWD360 Raptor RAID 0 1xWD800JB VXA-1 tape, etc, etc.

As I'm new to OC'ing and the Epox Phoenix BIOS, I'd appreciate knowing what DRAM and POWER settings you employ.
 
Originally posted by: Duvie
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1531414&enterthread=y


Are some of these test practical enough for you??? The growth in almosty linear to speed increase...I can still drop back to 2.55ghz and run default vcore and have load temps of 46-47c and I would still show 30+% gains in performance....


"and risk of instability really worth it aside from bragging rights?"

If you know what you are doing and not a moron it shouldn't be an issue.....

I for one test stability and put it out there in front of you guys...I dont test on untested speeds just for sake of number. I got screenies that show my prime95 testing, my temps, my voltages, my scores....
Click to expand...



I see alot of synthetic benchmarks there and no reasonable game scores (Read: Games that people actually play at reasonable resolutions). I'm not going to say that overclocking doesn't provide real world results. It certainly does. But for the average gamer it isn't going to make any difference whatsoever. Sure it's nice to get a flashy 3dmark score, but it doesn't mean much more than that.
 
It can make a big difference in some case with big overclocks or even small overclocks it can make a significant difference with CPU heavy programs. In some cases you can run software which your machine wouldn't really have the specs to do.


It's partly the feeling of getting something for nothing, beating the system etc.

The manufacturers occasionally do this as well, to push the clock speed of a core beyond it's initial limits. They normally do this by increasing the Vcore. Intel did this with the last few Katamai (spelling?) P3's and I'm sure AMD did it with some of the last K6-2's.

 
"It's partly the feeling of getting something for nothing, beating the system etc. "

I know what you're saying, but I don't really see it as getting something for nothing. To get a good OC, you have to invest in a higher quality HSF or even a cooling system, possibly pay more for a better power supply or motherboard, take time tweaking settings, endure the occasional crash in the process, and risk pushing your CPU/GPU too far (especially if you are inexperienced). That is a real cost, and to me it doesn't make much sense to pay it, unless there is an actual noticeable improvement in your games and other applications.

If you are currently able to play all your games at max settings and with acceptable framerates, I don't think there is any value in overclocking. Once you hit a game that is hampered by your current setup, you could benefit from OCing at that point. Does that make sense?
 

I see alot of synthetic benchmarks there and no reasonable game scores (Read: Games that people actually play at reasonable resolutions). I'm not going to say that overclocking doesn't provide real world results. It certainly does. But for the average gamer it isn't going to make any difference whatsoever. Sure it's nice to get a flashy 3dmark score, but it doesn't mean much more than that.
Click to expand...


Um, you're wrong. To a certain degree OC'ing is irrelevant, because it's not very likely that the OC will allow you to play a game that you could not have played before the OC. Where you will likely see a difference is in being able to play at higher resolutions and/or having smoother framerates at a given resolution. Most of the time in games, the video card is more important-this has been shown many times. However there is not a reasonable person on the earth who can say that guys like Duvie and myself with A64's that are stock @ 1800 MHz and are OC'd to 2.6-2.7 range do not experience any real difference in games.
 
Originally posted by: superkdogg

I see alot of synthetic benchmarks there and no reasonable game scores (Read: Games that people actually play at reasonable resolutions). I'm not going to say that overclocking doesn't provide real world results. It certainly does. But for the average gamer it isn't going to make any difference whatsoever. Sure it's nice to get a flashy 3dmark score, but it doesn't mean much more than that.
Click to expand...


Um, you're wrong. To a certain degree OC'ing is irrelevant, because it's not very likely that the OC will allow you to play a game that you could not have played before the OC. Where you will likely see a difference is in being able to play at higher resolutions and/or having smoother framerates at a given resolution. Most of the time in games, the video card is more important-this has been shown many times. However there is not a reasonable person on the earth who can say that guys like Duvie and myself with A64's that are stock @ 1800 MHz and are OC'd to 2.6-2.7 range do not experience any real difference in games.
Click to expand...

It really depends on what you are doing. If you are an average computer user, just word processing, web browsing, etc., hell a celeron 1.7 (the really crappy ones) is fine. Gaming wise taking a mobile athlon to 2.5ghz will get you a decent boost in minimum framerates, which are far more important than maximum frame rights.

for pure gaming, GPU is probably more important, if you have a decent proc (like anything higher than a barton 3200+ or something). I bought a 9800np (8 pipes, 320/290 256bit, yada yada). threw an arctic silencer, some bga ramsinks, got to 480/365. (yes. a 50% oc on the core) are you going to tell me that I'm not getting a boost?

 
Dude, I didn't attempt to say that a gfx OC is not going to help. I actually said that it's more important for games....

I was just saying that major CPU OC's also do help in games which is contrary to what some have implied in this thread.

🙂
 
Originally posted by: superkdogg
Dude, I didn't attempt to say that a gfx OC is not going to help. I actually said that it's more important for games....

I was just saying that major CPU OC's also do help in games which is contrary to what some have implied in this thread.

🙂
Click to expand...

my bad, I accidentally quoted you. not aimed at you, just the nay-sayers. If you have a weak proc at stock an OC may help you out.
 
Going from 2.4GHz to 2.6Ghz at 1600x1200 4AA/8AF I saw an average increase of 5-8fps in HL2. I'll have to bench with the cpu@stock but I imagine you'd see big gains going from 1.8GHz to 2.6GHz even at a high resolution.
 
Originally posted by: Demonicon
Originally posted by: Duvie
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1531414&enterthread=y


Are some of these test practical enough for you??? The growth in almosty linear to speed increase...I can still drop back to 2.55ghz and run default vcore and have load temps of 46-47c and I would still show 30+% gains in performance....


"and risk of instability really worth it aside from bragging rights?"

If you know what you are doing and not a moron it shouldn't be an issue.....

I for one test stability and put it out there in front of you guys...I dont test on untested speeds just for sake of number. I got screenies that show my prime95 testing, my temps, my voltages, my scores....
Click to expand...



I see alot of synthetic benchmarks there and no reasonable game scores (Read: Games that people actually play at reasonable resolutions). I'm not going to say that overclocking doesn't provide real world results. It certainly does. But for the average gamer it isn't going to make any difference whatsoever. Sure it's nice to get a flashy 3dmark score, but it doesn't mean much more than that.
Click to expand...



Well the world doesn't revolve around games...does for some of you kids!!!!! I alos say in that thread I am not a big gamer and didn't test...

OPen your eyes!!! Go down in the thread and read where Jeff filled in those test for me...It shows good movement there as well...
 
I don't consider buying an 3rd party heatsink + high grade thermal compound an extra expense as I would buy one anyway. The cooler your CPU is the happier it is. (I didn't use the retail heatsink in my parents non-overclocked machine). As far as paying the extra for quality RAM and PSU, I would advise that anyway for a more stable system. I also tend to buy the larger tubes of Arctic Silver as I tend to have to refit quite a few heatsinks so it actually costs very little per processor.

The best analogy I can think is a car: you don't try and run it on white spirit and run it for for years without servicing, using dangerous tyre and expect to have no problems, so why should you treat your computer any different.

As to benefits, yes there will be cases in games where you come across slow downs etc, when even a mildly overclocked system wouldn't.

Depending on the game + settings, sometimes you will be CPU limited, other times GPU limited, so you would change one or the other to improve performance

As for savings - I once bought a 1GHz Athlon from a Second Hand Dealer for £5 sold as seen (i.e. he thought it was dead). Straightened the pins, and it ran at 1433MHz without any problems. Buying a 1433 would have cost me around £80/90-£100+ Looks like a substantial saving to me.

If there was no benefit in increasing clock speeds why don't Intel / AMD etc, just sell one clock speed?

Nobody is forcing you to overclock, if you're not happy doing it don't.
 
I'm asking for input, not making a statement.

I will say again though that I think OCing has a cost attached. You could run with a stock HSF just fine if you don't plan to OC. You could get a cheaper, slightly more stable MSI Nforce 4 board rather than going with the more OC-friendly DFI. You could have rock solid stability with a lower wattage PSU rather than spending extra bucks for more power.

There are other costs besides money, such as time tweaking and dealing with potential crashes, increased strain on your components, potential voiding of warranties, and higher noise level (yes, you could get quieter fans, but then that ties back to money cost).

Obviously, if there was no cost to OCing everyone would do it. It seems to me the real question is whether those costs are justified when you consider real world improvements in your applications as a result of the benefits you get through a good OC.
 
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