Would overclocking this cpu even be worth it?

[spellbinder2050]

My system would be the following:

Asus P5QC
DDR2 4Gb 2X2 corsair Dominator 1066
E8500 Wolfdake 3.16 ghz
Geforce 9800 gx2
barracuda 7200.11 320Gb

Would it even be worth overclocking a Wolfdale to 3.6 - 3.8 Ghz to get better performance with gaming? How much of an increase in frames would I actually get? I'm talking about games like Crysis and whatever other games demand higher cpu clock speeds. If I would only get a 5 fps or so increase, I think it would be pretty dumb to overclock for games. Looking for some real improvement, not just "let me max this baby out to get that edge over the stock value".

So any advice? Any real world personal experience?

 

[calinkula]

If you OC the CPU and GPU you could see a good bump in performance, but if you get good frames in Crysis and the other stuff you play its not really gonna make the game better. The only difference between 70 fps and 80 fps is a high number, your not really going to be able to tell. But if something is running an average of 25 fps, upping that average to 30 will be noticeable. You don't want your bottom fps to be lower than 24~25 because the human eye can really catch the slow down at that point.

 

[Thorbaden]

my advice is find a stable overclock on stock voltage. ive gained 550 mhz on my xeon e3110 (same chip as 8400 but with different name) with stock voltage. havent really compared it to stock settings on benchmarks in a while but i remember getting a good 5~ fps increase or so going from 3ghz to 3.38ghz. i also overclocked my ram from 800 to 1000 and gained another 3-4 fps.

when i tested the difference between 3.6-3.8 ghz (with increasing voltage) there was maybe 1-2 fps difference from my previous oc at 3.38 (stock voltages) but there was a noticeable temp increase when it was at 3.6-3.8

currently testing out 3555mhz on stock voltages (390fsb/1580 rated fsb). max temps in p95 were 56 and 51. at 3.38ghz they were 55 and 50 so little to no increase in temperature.

 

[zodiacfml]

with your video card,every cpu performance can help in crysis.
there is an article in tom's that charts the improvement of overclocking in various games.
with an FPS game, you might want frame rates up to 60, so overclock it all you can.