What does an unstable OC mean for performance?

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Deus Gladiorum

Deus Gladiorum

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Hey guys, I'm in my 7th hour of a prime95 small FFT for a 1 GHz OC, and I'd like to know what an unstable overclock means with regards to performance. I know what the symptoms are and such, i.e. potential BSODs and all that, but let's say I have a PC that's really just for gaming and not really going to be doing any intensive work:

Would a PC perform better in games and applications if it were to crash after 26 hours in Prime95 than it would if it crashed after 2 hours in Prime95? I don't mean if BSODs would be less frequent, I mean would there actually be a performance difference? For example, if you had a 1 GHz OC that crashed after 2 hours, would it potentially provide a lower frame rate than would another 1 GHz OC that crashed after 26 hours?
 
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Deus Gladiorum

Deus Gladiorum

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So then why didn't you say that the first time? Instead, you just answered the wrong question and then referred to it as asinine, when the question is far from it since the answer is not at all obvious. In fact, I doubt what you're saying.

I did a little more research and found that apparently, it's possible that with an unstable OC when calculation errors are made, depending on the circumstances instead of applications crashing they may end up repeating the calculation. This ends up requiring more time for the thread to complete. I don't know how valid this allegation is, but can someone else perhaps elaborate on this?
 
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4Ryan6

4Ryan6

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Unstable means a possibility of corrupted, hardware drivers, operating system, corrupted HDD data, and can result leaving you with such a damaged system it would require reinstalling everything from scratch.

If you are overclocking by just raising the CPU multiplier then extremely long running of Prime95 is a complete waste of time.

The first step towards stability of course is to run a CPU stress test, but that only tests the CPU, CPU cache, and system Memory working together, stress testing does not test graphic and sound load on the system, that's why you can run P95 for 24 hours and crash 2 minutes into your favorite game.

IBT (Intel Burn Test) will save you some serious time in arriving at your first step of stability, (and can be run on AMD CPUs), it reveals in minutes what P95 takes hours to make you aware of, once IBT says you are stable then run some kind of benchmarking program like the FutureMarks, or Uningine, then game to fully bring the sound into the operating systems stress.

With a raised CPU multiplier overclock you're after a balance of increased CPU voltage to stabilize the increased multiplier you're running, so each failed IBT run requires another bump up in the CPU voltage supplied, to reach a point that the CPU voltage supplied is adequate to support the multiplier level you intend to run at.

Normally when IBT says you're stable it takes another bump up in voltage to be stable in a Benchmark, and possibly another bump up in gaming, but you do this one step at a time to arrive at 100% stability.

I hope this helps you!
 
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Deus Gladiorum

Deus Gladiorum

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I've never heard of someone running Prime95 for 24 hours and then crashing immediately. Ironically enough though, after running a small FTT for 10 hours followed by a Blend test for 13 hours today, I considered myself stable at 4.5 GHz and then while trying to configure something in a Logitech Game Profiler I had just installed I got a BSOD. I want to say that the matter is unrelated because within the span of a couple hours I've grown to be incredibly distrustful of anything to do with Logitech and gaming in the first the place, but I have no idea. I'd assume that a game which puts far more load on a system then a game profiler anyway.

[strike]Also, call me paranoid but I wouldn't trust using Intel Burn Test on an AMD system. Intel isn't exactly a stranger to rigging things, including programs, in order to make things look more unfavorable for AMD.[/strike] But if I did decide to use IBT, how long would it take?

EDIT: Woops, looks like I made too quick an assumption. Intel Burn Test, contrary to the name, wasn't developed by Intel haha
 
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4Ryan6

4Ryan6

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I've given you the best advice I can, what you choose to do with that information is up to you, and FYI IBT was not designed by Intel anyway, but can now be run on AMD CPUs.

Best to You in this new Year!

Goodbye! :)

 
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