Overclock pointless for Gaming?

[Newbie007]

So me and a buddy of mine are having an argument.

I overclocked my Q6600 to 3.0Gigs, running still pretty cool. 33cpu and 33mobo with a $35 cpu cooler.

The argument is, he says its POINTLESS because its not gona help you any in games. Like TeamFortress2, or even CRYSIS!!!

He argues that the bottleneck on my pc is my video card. Which is an Evga 8800GTS 640mb... therefore i shouldn't even bother to overclock.

He says i will have the same performance as a STOCK q6600 compared to an overclocked q6600.



ALSO....... does monitor size have ANYTHING to do with FPS in games? like would a 17in monitor get better FPS then compared to a 24in or a 30in monitor? I say yes, he says no.

So.... is he the dumbass, or am i?

 

[BMS]

From how I see it, not the most professional opinion but the clock speed of your CPU has a minimal impact on FPS. It does have an effect but not as great as having more RAM/Better GPU etc.

Also, monitor size has nothing to do with FPS but the resolution you play at does. If you play at 1280x1024 on a 24" monitor, you will receive the same FPS as someone playing on a 17" and are frankly, a little silly.

 

[bildo123]

If you have a game with a in-game time demo, or I hate to say it, 3Dmark06 free version, just test before and after. The problem is 3Dmark is synthetic so it's not really what you can expect in games, its just numbers, But I was able to gain a 1000 points by overclocking my E2180 I think it was from 2.66Ghz to 3.2 or so. I just didn't like how hot it would get usually above 60 and in the 70's C when put under heavy load from orthos. So I just stuck with 2.75Ghz @ stock voltages with mem @ 4-4-4-12 and all power savings features enabled, totally stable. But ya just spend some time running tests/time demos and see if theirs a difference, as long as its not putting super stress/heat on your system just leave it OC'd. And GPU/Memory amount makes the bigger decesions.

 

[Torbjorn]

As BMS allready posted, monitor size doesnt matter, its the pixels that count. However lcd screens have a "prefered" resolution that varies with the size of the monitor (usually 1280*1024 for 17-19in 4-3 ratio, and 1680*1050 for 19-22in widescreen)

Why does pixels count, and give lower fps in games you might ask. Well its a matter of how hard the system has to work.
1280*1024 = 1310720 pixels
1680*1050 = 1764000 pixels

imagine that each pixel is a rice-grain and that you have a huge number of piles with either 1310720 or 1764000 grains in each. In any given timeframe you will be able to move more piles or rice if you pick the lower number. The size of each pile matters little, its the number or rice-grains that is important. Your computer functions much the same when its displaying pixels on the screen.

If this is oversimplifying things, you can atleast take pride in that this level is beyond many people =)

Regards
Torbjörn

 

[CompuTronix]

Newbie007, there are no "games" which are 100% GPU bound or 100% CPU bound. As I'm certain your friend is unaware, Microsoft Flight Simulator X represents the CPU bound end of the spectrum. If you were to run this simulation, you would discover that FPS scales at a ratio of approximately 9:10 with CPU clock speed.

If you check out Tom's VGA Charts - http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=706&model2=713&chart=292 - it clearly shows that Flight Simulator X has less than a 2 FPS difference between a 7800GTX and an 8800GTX at ANY resolution.

There are gaming titles which are relatively balanced between CPU and GPU bindings, so there is always some degree of interaction. You are quite correct to overclock, and considering that CPU's are more suited to physics crunching, titles which are threaded for multiple cores will increasingly utilize the CPU horsepower that is available.

Comp

 

[Evilonigiri]

I would also like to add Supreme Commander. This game is more cpu bound than graphics, overclocking my q6600 to 3ghz helped A LOT. Got at least a 5fps boost, which is a lot for a rts game. But games like CS, I didn't notice any boost. I would be inclined to think that overclocking a Q6600 will improve frames a little in Crysis.