Overclocking, is it worth it?

[DJ12]

I recently overclocked my newly purchased X1950xt to around 700 mhz (from 621mhz) and the memory to 2000mhz (from 1800mhz) and it made negligible difference (about 5~6 fps in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 with everything whacked up to the maximum levels.)

I was expecting a big difference as it was my first real attempt at any sort of overclocking and was disappointed by the result.

Are the people that swear by overclocking only seeing these minimal gains or is there some overclocking that actually makes a lot of difference?

 

[Albuquerque]

It really depends on how much you overclock, what your current performance state is and what is truly bottlenecking your setup.

If you're on a Pentium 4 1.8A with 512mb of ram and you overclock your x1950Pro AGP card, your framerate isn't likely to get much better. Obviously, of course.

If you're on a Core2Duo QX6800 with 4GB of ram and an 8800GTX, but only overclock your card by 5% (example: 500mhz -> 525mhz) then you're not going to see much either.

My main gaming rig is an aging Socket-478 P4 Prescott 3.0Ghz and it certainly shows its age when playing things like Stalker. But at 4.2Ghz (a 40% overclock) I see some pretty tangable performance benefits. Also, with my 7900GT-on-AGP card, the stock speeds of 450/1300 certainly worked OK for my 1680x1050 display. But at 550/1550 (an overclock of approximately 25% / 20%) I'm able to apply another level of AA on just about every game.

Does any of that answer your question?

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

5 - 6fps isnt that bad. Atleast your getting a increase! I once overclocked my gf4mx, even gave it active memory cooling (it had about 4 pentium1 heatsinks + fans on it) but in the end after I overclocked it went only slower.

I do have a athlon 2500+ @ 3200+. I already have that for years, about 4 now I think. That overclock did make a difference. The cpu only costed me 100 euro's while the 3200+ was over 300 at the time I believe.

 

[AlNom]

I tend to get a lower speed CPU and overclock the snot out of it (C2D E4300 for instance). I'm not really a fan (aw haw haw) of overclocking video cards in the same manner because the lower end cards seem to be so far away from the high end that they'll never pretend to perform anywhere close. At the high-end, I wouldn't even bother overclocking because the heat dissipation requirements are high enough as they are, and I just don't need to deal with the possibility of screwing up the memory chips on the card, to be frank.

 

[Albuquerque]

Alstrong has hit on one point that can make "big" overclocking unfriendly: All that extra heat has to go somewhere. The C2D processors can get pretty far on stock voltage and on stock cooling, but after a certain point you need a bigger/better heatsink and fan. Video cards don't have that same luxury unfortunately; stock cooling often gets overpowered quickly and requires replacement in most cases.

So you go buy a new heatsink / fan combo for your video card and CPU, and now you need the additional case fans to keep air moving through and not stagnating (and thus reducing your cooling abilities). So now you have nine fans in a midtower case all trying to keep air moving.

120mm fans or not, fanbus controller or not, that's going to make some noise.

Watercooling fixes most of that, if you're up to the challenge. You can take all those "hotspots" and move them to a single radiator, which can then have two or three very large but very slow-moving fans to traffic cool air through. Is that kind of expense worth it? Depends on your ears, your wallet, and how "hard core" you wanna be.

I hated the noise, so it was worth it to me. My watercooled rig is FAR quieter than it was while on air cooling, and wasn't using anything like the screamer Delta or Tornado fans either. And since I built it all myself (waterpump from a local aquarium store, hose from Home Depot, used waterblocks purchased on overclocking forums, heatercore from an old Bonneville and a buddy who soldered me the appropriate 1/2" barbs) it wasn't a huge expense.

Anyway, sorry for the off-topic.

 

[Davros]

id say as a very rough guide your fps will increase by 50% of your overclock
eg: overclock 10%, fps go up by 5%

 

[swaaye]

I think it's only worth it if you enjoy overclocking. For me, it's more fun that most of the games that are out there. I try not to fry things (somtimes there are oopsies), but finding those value-priced products that are willing to give you an extra 72% is a worthy way to spend time, for me.

I find myself rather bored with my rig once I've extracted all of the performance I wasn't supposed to have for my $$.

 

[Albuquerque]

I think it's only worth it if you enjoy overclocking. For me, it's more fun that most of the games that are out there. I try not to fry things (somtimes there are oopsies), but finding those value-priced products that are willing to give you an extra 72% is a worthy way to spend time, for me.

I find myself rather bored with my rig once I've extracted all of the performance I wasn't supposed to have for my $$.

LOL! Agreed My best whole-system purchase ever was a P4 1.8A and a ATI 128mb 9500np. That 1.8A did 2.85Ghz on air cooling, and of course the vaunted 9500np was unlocked to all 8 pipes and overclocked WAY beyond what it was ever intended. (Well, the R300 core clocked uber-high, but the ram never quite kept up)

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

 

[Skrying]

There is a lot of issues with how overclocking is presented. For one everything is over stated. From the benefits, to the negatives, to the amount of cooling required, etc. For example. My personal rig contains a Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 overclocked from the stock 1.86Ghz to 2.8Ghz. My cooling? Three 120mm case fans set a 5v and a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro ($30~). My temperatures on the CPU hardly changed, I did not have to change any voltage settings either. It was simply a bump in the FSB and then on my way to noticing a decent benefit in applications that were before CPU limited (such as encoding and decoding). My X1950 Pro has a 50Mhz core overclock and a 200Mhz memory overclock, neither raised the temperatures and I have a Zalman heatsink that more than handles the heat but the main reason I bought it that its much quieter than the stock solutions. To be honest however I'm probably gaining very little from this OC, I did it out of enjoyment and not expecting to gain an extra 10FPS.

A person who has 9 case fans should rethink what it is they are trying to accomplish. First off, if you have more than 5 case fans and need more cooling than its probably a layout issue more than airflow. Second, you should attack closer to the source. A crappy heatsink is a crappy heatsink, increased airflow might help but only marginally and instead you should refocus on a heatsink designed around your cooling needs. Such as silence, overclocking, or both with the advent of popular tower heatsinks.

I personally considered water for a long time. However its simply not need. Consider this. You must have fans somewhere. Typically two 120mm on the radiator, most likely those will then be exposed on the outside of your case and leak more sound than cases with similar fans mounted on the instead. This with cost in the mind and water simply doesn't make much sense to me. However a quality water system will always allow more OCing headroom compared to active and once you actually really start pushing (voltage changes) then performance to noise ratios lean more and more towards water.

In the end I personally look at what I've saved with overclocking. At the time of purchase for my CPU I saved $500~ and achieved the same performance as a stock top end part. That right there tells me that overclocking is the ultimate tool in a budget users arsenal.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I had fun with getting games to run on a voodoo5 then finding the best driver/in-game settings to have them look and run good enough. with so many opengl drivers to choose from (miniGL, wickedGL, 3dfx ICD, Mesa FX)

 

[Davros]

of course you could have water cooling without fans or radiators
connect 1 end of the hose to the tap
and 1 end out the window
then turn on the tap and leave it running
It would rock.................

 

[Cryect]

Well if you have say a running stream/river nearby could instead pump from there and then just dump it back into the stream/river.

 

[swaaye]

I think aftermarket cooling is unnecessary most of the time. Unless you truly need the extra cooling capacity or are looking for silence (stock stuff frequently isn't quiet). If you stick to stock volts, the stock cooling gear is going to be adequate usually.

However, I almost always buy aftermarket cooling because it's usually quieter and happens to be technologically nifty. I have a Scythe Ninja Plus on my E4300. It doesn't even really need a fan at all (even at 3.1 GHz 1.45v), cuz of the case and PSU fan pulling air thru it (quite quiet too), but its 120 mm fan is basically silent anyway so it's on there. Vid card is a 8800GTX with the stock cooler cuz, well, nothing significantly better really exists. Tho that G80 cooler can get loud at times (especially in Oblivion).

Overclocking certainly does not necessarily equate to noisy rigs.

 

[Albuquerque]

Depends on the processor you're overclocking though, and by how much.

There's no way a Prescott is going to do a 40% overclock without some serious airflow, or some non-air cooling methods A C2D surely will though.

 

[swaaye]

There's no way a Prescott is going to do a 40% overclock without some serious airflow, or some non-air cooling methods

LOL How true. I feel that I missed something by not trying to work over a Prescott.

 

[Albuquerque]

LOL How true. I feel that I missed something by not trying to work over a Prescott.

Yeah, you missed something alright. But is it something you truly needed or wanted to experience?

I can't legitemize an upgrade right now because my rig can play most anything I want, but next year I'll be doing the major overhaul effort again. I can't wait to get to a processor that doesn't burp out 140W+ of pure heat into my room... I'd wager a quad core 45nm Penryn or something similar under my water loop should perform quite admirably.

 

[poopypoo]

sorry if i'm iterating... but long story short, cpu overlcoking is definitely worth it. overclockable cpus are cheap, and by the time you ruin them they're just about worthless anyway. the trick IMO is to buy a real overclocking motherboard. read some reviews and you can usually find one for $75-100. currently, an aftermarket cpu heatsink is not usually necessary. GPU overclocking is usually not worth it. GPU heatsinks are a pain in the ass, the parts are comparatively fragile, and also comparatively expensive (and hold their value comparatively well). Also, due to the nature of the graphics industry, most parts are already just about "over"clocked to within an inch of their lives. It's a fair amount of effort to get more than a 10% overclock from a graphics card most of the time. If you're willing to watercool (or better), then all of this changes, however, if you're willing to watercool then you're probably not asking this question, right? ;D

 

[swaaye]

Oh, I think GPU overclocking can be as potentially rewarding as CPU overclocking. I recently got a friend's 8800 GTS from 510 MHz to 620 MHz. That's pretty decent. I used to own a X800GTO2 that would go from 400/500 to about 520/630, and with the full 16 pipes it was faster than a X850 XT PE (great at the time) cuz of the RAM speed it did.

20-30% GPU overclocks do get you something. But, if you are buying high end GPUs, don't expect anything like that of course. That's usually the case with CPUs too.

 

[Albuquerque]

Oh, I think GPU overclocking can be as potentially rewarding as CPU overclocking. I recently got a friend's 8800 GTS from 510 MHz to 620 MHz. That's pretty decent. I used to own a X800GTO2 that would go from 400/500 to about 520/630, and with the full 16 pipes it was faster than a X850 XT PE (great at the time) cuz of the RAM speed it did.

20-30% GPU overclocks do get you something. But, if you are buying high end GPUs, don't expect anything like that of course. That's usually the case with CPUs too.

100% agreed. The best GPU purchases work the same way (IMO) that the best CPU purchases do: get one with the full gammut of features but with lower clocks. Why buy an E6800 when you cna get an E6600 and push it even further with all the same featureset? Why buy an X1950XTX when you could likely get an X1950XT and overclock it past the XTX speeds?

My little AGP video card can do better than a 25% overclock on the core; that's quite a bit of additional rasterizing power that can be used for AA, AF or just more generalized effects.

 

[Fox5]

IMO, overclocking video cards with stock cooling isn't really worth it these days. GPU makers keep pretty strict control over that and usually won't let any sku achieve significantly over its clock speed.

Overclocking cpus however is very very worth it. My e6300 overclocks quite nicely from 1.86ghz to 2.8ghz, and could probably achieve even higher. The difference is that cpus mostly only differ in clock speed from each other, whereas gpus are almost always clocked as high as that particular chip can handle.

Back in the day though, put a fan blowing across a voodoo 3 2000 (which was a passively cooled card normally) and got it all the way from 143mhz to 205mhz. I was pretty happy, even if the actual performance increase wasn't that large.
My 6600gt also got a pretty big overclock, I think near 50%, but it still couldn't hold a candle to a 6800.

Why buy an X1950XTX when you could likely get an X1950XT and overclock it past the XTX speeds?

Problem is, there's not a huge difference in performance between those two to begin with. You're merely looking at a good overclocker (possibly with a better fan) of the normal version.