Why Overclock?

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Thokor

your rant doesn't make much sense....3Dmark is crap for benching CPU's....try PCmark, Sisoft Sandra or Aquamark and then tell me your overclock doesn't make much difference.

I haven't seen many CPU's show a big difference in performance when using the 3Dmark cpu tests...and AXP/P4's will score similar to a single core A64....It's a really bad benchmark for CPU's.

OK I officially give up, its obvious that me constantly stating that " Its not CPU scores I care about, but FPS scores in direct relation to OC the CPU " isn't doing any good. I am starting to sound like a parrot constantly repeating myself. I will withdraw all my statements since its obvious I'll either go insane or get banned when I snap.

Thanks for the ones who offered good responses.

OK, you agree that for non-games, ita a big benefit, and for some games its a big benefit, but just not all games, so why overlcok. That doesn;t make any sense either.

 

[Yellowbeard]

OK I officially give up, its obvious that me constantly stating that " Its not CPU scores I care about, but FPS scores in direct relation to OC the CPU " isn't doing any good. I am starting to sound like a parrot constantly repeating myself. I will withdraw all my statements since its obvious I'll either go insane or get banned when I snap.

Thanks for the ones who offered good responses.

You did qualify your question somewhat but, I think your thread title is what drew so many varying answers. What this thread amounts to for you is that no one gave you any good reason to change your mind based on your usage and your setup. IMO, if you tested and came to this conclusion, that was a very effective test and good job. If you never use your puter for all the other things mentioned here then you are absolutely correct, you stand to gain virtually nothing but bragging rights by OCing.

About the only thing I would question, as a few others did, is why you make note of increased heat and noise. Neither are a requirement for a pretty decent OC. As an example, my 6300 will run 3.1+ on stock Vcore. So, there is almost no measurable heat increase there. As far as fans, stock cooling or good aftermarket cooling will be more quiet and more effective than the stocker. So, it's entirely possible that a person will have a 50%+ OC with no meaningful heat increase and with less noise than stock.

And, one of my businesses is video production and I have done some extensive testing in the past. Another guy here noted that if he only only saved 15 minutes a day that is good. Time = money. If he can do that for 32 work days, that's a full 8 hours of additional productivity or, he can take a day off.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Because not everyone uses their PC exclusively for gaming, and because some games (FEAR, Oblivion, NWN2) have reportedly shown significant speed improvements from CPU overclocks.

QFT...


screw gamers!!!!

I run apps that are cpu limited so the more I give them the faster I go.....

 

[Duvie]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...hreadid=1531414&enterthread=y&arctab=y

I did this a long time ago...It pretty much explains a lot of it...some gaming test further down by others.....Some run CF and SLI and it goes back to cpu's being limited...Ocing is a worthwhile benefit in many apps...

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: Thokor

your rant doesn't make much sense....3Dmark is crap for benching CPU's....try PCmark, Sisoft Sandra or Aquamark and then tell me your overclock doesn't make much difference.

I haven't seen many CPU's show a big difference in performance when using the 3Dmark cpu tests...and AXP/P4's will score similar to a single core A64....It's a really bad benchmark for CPU's.

OK I officially give up, its obvious that me constantly stating that " Its not CPU scores I care about, but FPS scores in direct relation to OC the CPU " isn't doing any good. I am starting to sound like a parrot constantly repeating myself. I will withdraw all my statements since its obvious I'll either go insane or get banned when I snap.

Thanks for the ones who offered good responses.

Well, you keep primarily quoting 3dmark runs, in which the FPS in those runs are not meant to be affected by changes in the CPU. That's what some of us have been trying to say. Benchmark actual games. I know you mentioned Oblivion, but I know many have had good success in increasing their framerate by overclocking in that game. It depends on your settings, where you are when you bench, what is happening during that time of day in the game, etc. etc.

 

[Regalk]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Diogenes2

Originally posted by: Regalk
cmdrdedd - if you took 30 mins to get your DFI lanparty SLI up and running that's fine almost everyone can do that - but that would be at sub optimal settings. Unless if you spent months researching at DFI-street nd Xtremesystems and found the best settings from the get go - otherwise I do not think so. I am still tweaking mine after (4-5 weeks). This board (mine is the Lanparty UT Ultra-D which I got real cheap at Tigerdirect) has some really nice features but overkill and considering the amount of time wasted with the RAM settings was not worth it.

If it wasn't worth it, why waste the time ?

Set the RAM to ' auto ' and forget it ...

I agree...DFI does not cater to people who say "it's not worth it" and I encourage you to not buy DFI products if you're looking for "I'm lazy and I don't understand all these settings..." go buy Asus or another brand.

OK OK I get the point and yes these will probably be my last DFI hurrah (as was ECS before) - its not about being lazy though since I did spend a lot ot time on the DFI more than any other board I have owned in the last 10 years - time costs money (I have my system fully tweaked out now but when I take a step back and look back - what did I really achieve beside getting behind in my work? My C2D took me a lot less time (not 10mins though) and that is as stable as ever. DFI did engineer a good product (kudos to them and a real shame they may be out of the MB business in the near future) don't get me wrong and I learnt a lot about memory timings in the process - Asus and others do not do that for you.
Anyway back to OP's point...

 

[secretanchitman]

back in the day, i overclocked my p4 2.4C all the way up to 3.4Ghz - 3.6Ghz. it definitely helped me in performance and since i do a bit of video editing, the whole process was sped up.

now my 2.4C is just an "old pentium" compared to the C2Ds we have now. ah well, it still serves me well for what i need it to do.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: Duvie

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Because not everyone uses their PC exclusively for gaming, and because some games (FEAR, Oblivion, NWN2) have reportedly shown significant speed improvements from CPU overclocks.

QFT...


screw gamers!!!!

I run apps that are cpu limited so the more I give them the faster I go.....

No, screw you!

I play a lot of games and the games I mostly play (FEAR, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142) gobble up CPU gladly, not just my graphics card .

 

[imported_Lothar]

I overclock because I can't afford to pay $600+ for a CPU.
I've never spent more than $300 on a CPU. Never have and never will.

 

[Noubourne]

He also conveniently limits his topic to CPU overclocking for video games, ignoring completely the possibility of slapping on better cooling and cranking up the video card itself.

If you wanna overclock and get gaming benefit, there is no doubt that cranking up your video card is a great way to do that.

I'm almost 175mhz over stock core clocks on mine with a $35 cooler on it and $10 for conductive paint, and I can still push another .05v (which I will probably do soon).

OC your GPU and then run some 3dMark benchies.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Regalk

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Diogenes2

Originally posted by: Regalk
cmdrdedd - if you took 30 mins to get your DFI lanparty SLI up and running that's fine almost everyone can do that - but that would be at sub optimal settings. Unless if you spent months researching at DFI-street nd Xtremesystems and found the best settings from the get go - otherwise I do not think so. I am still tweaking mine after (4-5 weeks). This board (mine is the Lanparty UT Ultra-D which I got real cheap at Tigerdirect) has some really nice features but overkill and considering the amount of time wasted with the RAM settings was not worth it.

If it wasn't worth it, why waste the time ?

Set the RAM to ' auto ' and forget it ...

I agree...DFI does not cater to people who say "it's not worth it" and I encourage you to not buy DFI products if you're looking for "I'm lazy and I don't understand all these settings..." go buy Asus or another brand.

OK OK I get the point and yes these will probably be my last DFI hurrah (as was ECS before) - its not about being lazy though since I did spend a lot ot time on the DFI more than any other board I have owned in the last 10 years - time costs money (I have my system fully tweaked out now but when I take a step back and look back - what did I really achieve beside getting behind in my work? My C2D took me a lot less time (not 10mins though) and that is as stable as ever. DFI did engineer a good product (kudos to them and a real shame they may be out of the MB business in the near future) don't get me wrong and I learnt a lot about memory timings in the process - Asus and others do not do that for you.
Anyway back to OP's point...

DFI isn't going anywhere...they make profits in other areas becides the consumer desktop market. That being said anyone who understands what each setting does can get any board up and going in about 30min. Yes, it will be fast. If you're worrying about getting 1MB/s better bandwidth because of some random memory tweak...then i suppose I can't help you. The point is, DFI offers huge voltage adjustments so people don't have to mod their board to get them and that's why they were creating WRs for unmodified boards.