why should i overclock?

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Deus Gladiorum


It really depends on the game. Here's something I didn't know until I observed it through my own CPU overclocking and someone confirmed it for me on here:

When you overclock your CPU, for GPU bound (not to be confused with GPU-bottlenecked) games your graphics card actually receives more leg room to work within so those games will likely perform noticeably faster. For CPU bound games, surprisingly enough, even huge overclocks may not do much at all. You'd think that it'd work the opposite way; CPU bound games would theoretically receive massive increases from huge overclocks but no. From what I understand, it's because CPU bound...
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bigwoofer

bigwoofer

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Aug 14, 2013
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It can improve your frame rates 20% or more which is perceptible when all hell breaks loose in a game. I don't overclock because I don't like to put up with random issues. For instance, I have an Intel Q6600 2.4Ghz stock. It will OC to 3.0Ghz with no problem at all unless I play GTR2, at which time my car teleports all over (lags) the track in multiplayer LAN sessions. Turns out that is a known GTR2 issue, but the performance increase for me isn't worth that and other undiscovered easter eggs :) Others will swear by overclocking though, it's whatever works best for you and it's definitely worth trying for yourself.
 
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Deus Gladiorum

Deus Gladiorum

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It really depends on the game. Here's something I didn't know until I observed it through my own CPU overclocking and someone confirmed it for me on here:

When you overclock your CPU, for GPU bound (not to be confused with GPU-bottlenecked) games your graphics card actually receives more leg room to work within so those games will likely perform noticeably faster. For CPU bound games, surprisingly enough, even huge overclocks may not do much at all. You'd think that it'd work the opposite way; CPU bound games would theoretically receive massive increases from huge overclocks but no. From what I understand, it's because CPU bound games may run slower because of latency issues which, even after overclocking, still remain. Meanwhile, I've had confirmation that on the more GPU bound games that are CPU bottlenecked, there's been performance increases of 13 fps for a 1.0+ GHz Overclock.

So if you're expecting to get a huge increase in performance through overclocking for games like Skyrim or Borderlands 2 which are both CPU bound, I can already confirm through personal experience that it may not do much, assuming your GPU isn't bottlenecking you for said games. However you may get a huge increase from other games.

As for GPU overclocking, I can't comment unfortunately because the one time I tried to OC my GPU I crashed. Guess I wasn't stable. No harmful effects though.

But on to why you should actually overclock: It's fun and it's free and it means a potential performance increase. Don't worry, damaging your equipment is hard unless you severely overvolt, and it's actually pretty easy to stay within the limits of your CPU's voltage. Just take voltage increments up by 0.025 at any one time and you're safe and with any CPU never exceed 1.55V.
 
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lewisaro1

lewisaro1

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with my fx4100 at default clock speed 3.6ghz i get around 80 fps on wow in a not so crowded area, with it overclocked to 4.5ghz it heats up a fair amount more however I can pull off around 120fps (bare in mind wow is a CPU game) Battlefield is a mix of cpu and gpu so overclocking your gpu (based on my personal e xperience with the 660) would give around 5 - 10 frames depending on your gpu
 
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Deus Gladiorum

Deus Gladiorum

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True enough, there are always exceptions to the rule. I think another is DiRT 3. But also remember that like DiRT 3, WoW is a game that may be CPU bound it doesn't mean it's CPU intensive. It's a 2004 game after all, and I remember playing it on a 2005 crappy Acer laptop that my mom and I picked up in store before I knew anything about computers (I was 10 back then) and yet I still remember being able to play WoW at, if I had to estimate, 20 - 30 fps though the settings were at the default since I never even bothered changing them. I specifically remember the same laptop being able to play Age of Empires III at the lowest settings at like 10 - 20 fps.
 
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lewisaro1

lewisaro1

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yeah i started out the same way on a terrible dell desktop that struggled to boot yet somehow ran wow at around 30fps too:) I guess with bf3 if you push the processors clock speed up in small increments and run a stability test then compare frames you will be able to see if it intensive for you or not and then make the decision of upgrading or overclocking
 
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