CPU Overclock Help

h3llfire741 · Oct 16, 2014

I'm pretty much completely new to the idea of overclocking. Just bought a GTX 970 and the bottleneck is really really bad. Getting scores way below what I should be getting with a decent CPU.

So I have two choices, buy a new CPU (I have AMD and would preferably just buy a new mobo + cpu intel combo) or overclock the CPU.
Now there aren't any really good deals that I know of (if someone knows of one, please link it) so my only choice is to overclock atm.
Can anyone give a detailed guide on how to overclock the CPU?

Also how safe is overclocking? Will it reduce the life of the CPU in any way?

Side note: I have a corsair h105 cooling my CPU if that is at all important.

i7Baby · Oct 16, 2014

Post your build. Have you posted this before?

h3llfire741 · Oct 16, 2014

i7Baby :

No I haven't. For the specs, check the CPU-Z validator sig attached for the to my posts. I just updated right now with my current specs.

Also, here is my Unigine Valley Benchmark scores.

I comared them with a review of this card and they are getting a score of about ~4200 with this card.
I benchmarked with another computer (i5-4670 + EVGA GTX 770 OC) and it got a score of ~3500.

ShadyHamster · Oct 16, 2014

ignore the score, what about fps, are they different and by how much?

i7Baby · Oct 16, 2014

Hmmmm - no power supply! No wonder you don't get good performance.

You won't have to OC a FX8150 to get the gtx970 to run flat out.

From Task Manager, what's the max CPU %usage?

h3llfire741 · Oct 16, 2014

i7Baby :

Here is my power supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151095

i7Baby · Oct 16, 2014

Seasonic M12II 620 - nice one!

From Task Manager, what's the max CPU %usage?

From bios/uefi, what the CPU temp - at idle and while gaming?

h3llfire741 · Oct 16, 2014

i7Baby :

Idle temp is about 19C and gaming temp goes to 41C max but usually stays around 34C.

on Dead Rising 3 I saw about 54% usage and on Shadow of Mordor it was around 45%

i7Baby · Oct 16, 2014

So your CPU isn't the problem. Its not bottlenecking your PC performance. And it won't need overclocking.

What %usage is your 970 running at from Afterburner?
What voltage is it running at?
gpu clock speed?
memory clock speed?

h3llfire741 · Oct 16, 2014

Used heavily modded Skyrim to test this one.

GPU-z and MSI afterburner gave same results so I just used GPUZ results since it's all in there.

Here they are:

i7Baby · Oct 16, 2014

OK - so your 970 is running flat out. And at 70C. At good clock speeds.

What fps are you getting? At 1080p?

h3llfire741 · Oct 16, 2014

i7Baby :

I'm using the Natural Lighting and Atmospherics ENB with various texture mods. I get pretty low fps in Riften but average would be around 45-50 at 1080p.

i7Baby · Oct 16, 2014

Well that's OK for heavily modded Skyrim. You don't seem to have a problem.

h3llfire741 · Oct 16, 2014

i7Baby :

Do you know what might of caused the low scores on Valley?

i7Baby · Oct 17, 2014

No - I don't use it. There's probably a forum for Valley that you can put your results on.

nikoli707 · Oct 17, 2014

please run the unigine valley benchmark on the extreme hd preset. unigine valley has virtually no cpu load that will expose a bottleneck.

skryim is notoriously cpu intensive, it wants 2 threads going really fast.

h3llfire741 · Oct 17, 2014

nikoli707 :

Here is Valley Extreme:

nikoli707 · Oct 17, 2014

h3llfire741 :

yeah something isn't right. 2000 is about the score of a 680/770/7970/280x. my highest valley score with my 780 was 3389 with a rather high 1375mhz core clock. you should be very close or higher than my 780.

what graphics card did you have before?

http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/downloads.html
download ddu. let it run the safe mode clean restart recommended for nvidia. if you had an amd gpu in there before you should run it for amd too. then reinstall the latest nvidia drivers and retry the benchmark. at least we can rule out driver conflicts.

h3llfire741 · Oct 17, 2014

nikoli707 :

h3llfire741 :

yeah something isn't right. 2000 is about the score of a 680/770/7970/280x. my highest valley score with my 780 was 3389 with a rather high 1375mhz core clock. you should be very close or higher than my 780.

what graphics card did you have before?

http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/downloads.html
download ddu. let it run the safe mode clean restart recommended for nvidia. if you had an amd gpu in there before you should run it for amd too. then reinstall the latest nvidia drivers and retry the benchmark. at least we can rule out driver conflicts.

AMD 7870 Black Edition Double Dissipation.

Could it be that I am running it on a 2.0 pcie instead of a 3.0?

nikoli707 · Oct 17, 2014

no. pcie lane speed has nothing to do with it. run display driver uninstaller to make sure there are no video driver conflicts.

h3llfire741 · Oct 17, 2014

nikoli707 :

Ran the display driver uninstaller twice in safe mode. Once to clean up AMD, then again to clean up the NVIDIA one. Then restarted in normal mode and installed fresh NVIDIA ones. Re-ran Valley at the same settings and the score is approximately the same.

nikoli707 · Oct 17, 2014

well you did get a gain, but something still isn't right. here is one of my scores...

h3llfire741 · Oct 17, 2014

nikoli707 :

Could it actually be the 8150 bottlenecking me? But you said this bench would not expose CPU bottleneck right?
The other computer in the house has a 3670 + 770 and scores about 3500. So I'm assuming it is, but then again could be something else.

nikoli707 · Oct 18, 2014

h3llfire741 :

the 770 will not score above a 2400, and thats a very very high overclock. the bench shouldn't be cpu limited since many use dual core i3s and titans and achieve similar results. im not too familiar with amd overclocking but the basics of getting a modest overclock are fairly simple. you have a great cpu cooler too so you should be more than fine with a decent overclock.

h3llfire741 · Oct 18, 2014

nikoli707 :

h3llfire741 :

the 770 will not score above a 2400, and thats a very very high overclock. the bench shouldn't be cpu limited since many use dual core i3s and titans and achieve similar results. im not too familiar with amd overclocking but the basics of getting a modest overclock are fairly simple. you have a great cpu cooler too so you should be more than fine with a decent overclock.

Do you think you can teach me or know of any good tutorials on how to overclock properly?

CPU Overclock Help

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