Gaming OC - Where to begin?

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AlexanderDomin

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Dec 8, 2014
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Hello all,

I have a rig I am planning on overclocking, and I am not sure where to start. My goal is to increase framerates for high-end gaming on a three-monitor surround setup, and don't know which component will have the biggest impact. I presume the GPU would be the place to start, but I do have a weak CPU for gaming. I don't know which metrics I should be looking at to determine my bottleneck.

I have a small amount of experience with CPU overclocking from my last build, but I put a lot of money into my current rig and I am terrified of bricking it. I plan to revive my old rig (needs a new HDD) and practice on that first.

Current build...
CPU: FX-8320 (Corsair H105 heatsink)
MOBO: ASUS M5A99FX Pro R2.0
GFX: ASUS GTX-770 2GB (2x SLI, has OC GUI)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 4x4GB DDR3 1600
PSU: Corsair HX850 (I'll melt my PC before I run out of juice)

Runs ARMA 3 on very high settings at 25-30fps. I would like to get consistently above 30fps and/or increase my draw distances. Most other games I play are a couple years old and run at a buttery 60fps.

Thanks!
Alex
 
Solution
patrick47018
I would start with overclocking GPU's as it is really easy and takes a whole 2 minutes to do. Figuring out exactly how to get your CPU running at a nice OC and maintaining a cool temp will be quite a bit longer of a process. I am using a 360mm radiator(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106241) myself to cool my FX-9590@5.0GHz at idle it is a bit under 30C, under load never goes much above 50C.
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AlexanderDomin

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I was just reading the CPU article, it has a ton of good info and will definitely help me out. Thanks for the other article about the GTX as well, I haven't OC'd a graphics card yet and am anxious to try.
My main question though, was which of those will likely give me the more noticeable performance increase? I don't plan to do both at once because I'd like to be as scientific as possible about analyzing instability.
 
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AlexanderDomin

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A combination of reasons. I play a lot of PhysX games and am admittedly a bit of an Nvidia fanboy, but mainly the GTX 770 was well-reviewed and a lot more affordable at the time I built the rig. The additional GTX 770 and monitors were a recent add-on. I spent a total of $450 on both cards, so I'm pretty satisfied with the performance trade-off.
 
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Mugglensu1984

Mugglensu1984

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Alright, that is a valid point you got there.

 
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patrick47018

patrick47018

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GPU biggest benefit in most games, but some games are more CPU intensive than others(BF4 as an example). But I would go for an OC on both and just watch my temps with something like HWMonitor. A limiting factor for your cards are the 2GB or VRAM which doesn't stack. Two 2GB cards still has 2GB of VRAM and modern day games eat VRAM like no tomorrow. I am running Crossfire R9 290's and it is really nice having 4GB of VRAM, especially since I game at 4K.
 
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AlexanderDomin

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Dec 8, 2014
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Interesting, I did not know VRAM doesn't stack. Would it be wise to do some research and attempt to OC my VRAM or will that likely not make too much of a difference?

Regarding CPU-heavy games, I'm pretty sure ARMA is one of the worst offenders on the market. On the bright side, it is supposedly optimized to utilize eight cores. I use my computer for more than just gaming, otherwise I would have gone with an Intel quad-core in the first place.
 
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patrick47018

patrick47018

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Overclocking your GPU Core Clock and Memory Clock is a good idea to increase performance but still will not 'make more VRAM'. And if you do consider upgrading, consider that the GTX 970 loses performance when going over 3.5GB of VRAM usage.( http://www.pcgamer.com/why-nvidias-gtx-970-slows-down-using-more-than-35gb-vram/ )

And ARMA is one of the worst offenders of being unoptimized in conjunction with needing really beefy specs to play well. And yes modern day games are beginning to utilize 8 cores which is great for those of us who own AMD 8 core CPU's. AMD is great value for your money but if you can afford the really high end Intel processors then for sure the performance will be better. Supposedly AMD is coming out with a 16-Core APU with Hyperthreading here soon, let's hope that is a sign of what is to come in the CPU department as well.
 
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AlexanderDomin

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Dec 8, 2014
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It would also probably solve about 80% of my problems!

So ultimately, is starting with the CPU probably my best bet, or should I start with the GPUs and go from there? Poor optimization aside, my CPU never really seems to max out whereas my GPUs are usually near maxed. I don't have specific usage data on hand, since I'm not actually on my own PC right now.
 
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patrick47018

patrick47018

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Jan 14, 2013
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I would start with overclocking GPU's as it is really easy and takes a whole 2 minutes to do. Figuring out exactly how to get your CPU running at a nice OC and maintaining a cool temp will be quite a bit longer of a process. I am using a 360mm radiator(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106241) myself to cool my FX-9590@5.0GHz at idle it is a bit under 30C, under load never goes much above 50C.
 
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AlexanderDomin

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Dec 8, 2014
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Sounds like a plan; I'll do some research and start dabbling with GPUtweak. I'll also see if I can unbury my old 6400+ X2 rig so I have something to practice on that I won't be afraid to burn up. Thanks for the advice!
 
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