Overclocking, is it worth it?

[Albuquerque]

Actually, ATI doesn't have nearly the same number of fun overclocking toys (IMO) as NVIDIA does.

I have a full G71 core on my AGP video card, but it comes stock-clocked at 450. It will do all the way to about 585 on stock voltage and cooling, but only if you don't mind the little GPU registering about 90*c So 550 is where I keep it most of the time.

And from 450 -> 550 is more than enough to tell a difference in performance in cases where you're either fillrate or shader limited (STALKER and Oblivion both get an excellent boost)

You know what I really miss? The 9500np days. I had a Sapphire 9500np with the 128mb 256-bit memory interface. A bios flash to unlock the pipes, a big-assed heat sink to keep it cool, and it did better than almost every commercial 9700Pro available at the time. Ahhhh, those were the days

 

[Maintank]

It really depends on what you derive from the overlocking experience. Back in the day, I used to overclock my CPUs. The value I derived from it was knowing I was getting something for free.

However since I got a job, got out of school, have a mortgage payment ect ect. Overclocking and running the risk of burning the thing out as stopped me from doing it. I run everything stock now and make sure it is cooled.

Instead of overclocking, I have been working on getting my machines as quiet as possible.

 

[Albuquerque]

Question: have you ever really burned out a CPU from being overclocked too far? Have you any hard evidence of anyone else doing it?

I've fed 1.8V to a 2.6C for two years without killing it (stock voltage: 1.525, overclocked speed: 3.3ghz). I've fed 3.3v to a 2.8v original Pentium to get it to run at 300mhz over the course of five years. I've fed 1.5375 v to my 1.3825 Prescott now for nine months to get it cruising at 4.2ghz.

The only thing I've ever truly burned out was a video card that I severely voltmodded -- it turned out that my wonky cooling solution dislodged from the GPU and it overheated and died. While it was certainly related to overclocking, it was much more due to overheating; the same failure would have occurred even under stock clocks.

 

[Frank]

An easy way to blow up chips is to use too much termal paste, not covering the whole chip equally with it or not connecting the heatsink properly. Hotspots tend to explode. They can even fracture the chip visibly.

Other than that, a high ambient temperature together with serious voltmods or simply removing the heat spreader can fry a chip pretty fast as well.

But if you take care and turn off the power immediately when you're experimenting and things go wrong, it either works or it doesn't.

Although, if you overclock to the max on air cooling, dust is your enemy. Keep your case clean!

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

I actually was one of the top three for an unlocked 9500np over in the "compare 9500/9600/9700/9800" thread on Overclockers.com for clockspeed on air cooling

I hit 390mhz on my 9500pro on air. I was pretty impressed with that, my memory didn't go very far though.

And overclocking is worth it if you have the hardware to do it. I don't know if I'd spend money on extra cooling jsut for ocing though, unless you're sure that your specific setup will be able to hit high clocks.
In generall I think you'll find that ocing your CPU pays off much much more than ocing your GPU, unless you are completely GPU bound which is rarely the case unless you own a quad core or something. Right now I'm running my X2 3800+ @ 2400mhz and I notice a very large increase (~10-15fps) in the majority of games I play.

 

[Albuquerque]

I hit 390mhz on my 9500pro on air. I was pretty impressed with that, my memory didn't go very far though.

And overclocking is worth it if you have the hardware to do it. I don't know if I'd spend money on extra cooling jsut for ocing though, unless you're sure that your specific setup will be able to hit high clocks.
In generall I think you'll find that ocing your CPU pays off much much more than ocing your GPU, unless you are completely GPU bound which is rarely the case unless you own a quad core or something. Right now I'm running my X2 3800+ @ 2400mhz and I notice a very large increase (~10-15fps) in the majority of games I play.

~445mhz on an aircooled unlocked 9500np It spanked quite a bit of hind-end in it's day, but the ram really didn't budge more than about 340-ish last I recall -- even volt-modding netted like a 7mhz increase.

It seems most modern GPU's are clocked to the hilt, so I guess I'd have to agree -- really only CPUs have enough headroom these days to truly be worth all the effort. Maybe some day we'll see GPU's return to their overclocking heyday...

 

[Davros]

I notice a very large increase (~10-15fps) in the majority of games I play.

Strange when i over clocked i noticed only a moderate increase (~10-15fps) in the majority of games I play

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Wow, you guys can overclock to some amazing numbers. I mean over 70% overclock?! While I'm not an overclocker, I've never seen (mainly reading video card review) anyone make those kinds of crazy overclocks. At best I see something like 5% overclock.

Let say I do get into overclocking and I fry my card, how will the manufacturer know that it's been overclocked? I see warranties don't exactly cover damage with tampering, but all I can really think of is replacing the original cooler, but then I'm no pro so there probably is a way to tell your card's been overclocked.

 

[Skrying]

Your card should throttle itself before OCing does damage, if heat was the true issue then the manufacturer would want to make sure your personal system is built for the card but that's impossible. Therefore they use checks such as temperature probs to make sure when you hit a temperature that is deemed to high that the card will automatically throttle itself in order to prevent damage. Unless you do modifications to the voltage and other areas and those are quickly found out.

 

[Albuquerque]

There's a difference between overclocking and overvolting.

The former is simply turning up the speed until it doesn't go any faster (reliably). Is there a way to determine if you've done this? Probably, but it's likely so expensive that I doubt you'd find such technology in mainstream hardware outside of maybe some really costly CPUs -- and even then, I doubt it.

Overvolting is turning up the voltage to facilitate a bigger overclock. My favorite overclocker, my 1.8A Pentium 4 from probably five years ago, would do 2.4Ghz on stock voltage. That's already a nice 33% bump, which was quite nice in games. However, by applying 1.8v (an increase of around 20%) I was able to get it all the way to 2.85Ghz -- about a 55% bump from stock. With that voltage comes extra heat and exponential wear on the device.

Overvolting a CPU is typically as easy as going into the BIOS and adjusting the voltage settings. Overvolting a GPU is, in most cases, a case of making a physical modification to the board itself in order to fool the voltage regulator into delivering more voltage.

Neither overclocking nor overvolting catastrophes be claimed as a warranty repair for obvious moral reasons. But in terms of "finding out" what you did -- Overvolting runs a much higher risk of being caught for a number of reasons.

So, if you're going to "go pro" and shoot for the big numbers with some uber-voltage, you need to write off your warranty right now. If you're going to overclock within the margins allowed by the manufacturer (example: ATI and NV both give you a decent amount of room in their respective driver overclocking options) then I suppose you're in the gray area of being able to send back a warranty repair item without a huge chunk of guilt. And if you're gonna go nuts on the overclock (outside the boundaries set aside by ATI/NV's drivers) then I really would be writing off the warranty too.

The only time I've killed something in overclocking was when I was also overvolting -- and that was simply my fault. No need to stake a warranty claim when it's sometihng I know I did.

 

[Davros]

we were talking cpu overclocks ninja from 3.0 to 3.6 in my case

 

[swaaye]

Yeah, I try to keep the overvolting in check a bit. It will only get you so far and it raises heat output a heck of a lot, usually.