What's wrong with my overclock?

[wuphilly]

System Specs.
3570k
Galaxy GeForce GTX 670
Corsair GS700 PSU
Gigabyte Z77 mobo
Thermaltake Overseer Case
Enermx ETS T40 Air Cooler
Windows 7 64bit
8 Gigs Ram

So, I went into the bios and followed a tutorial on overclocking my cpu by upping each core multiplyer to 45 and I brough the voltage upto 1.3v. Ran prime95 for an hour and core highs were 70, 72, 75 and 66, most of the time they stayed in the mid 60s. I also used precision x to overclock my GPU. I was only able to get a +95 boost to the cpu clock offset and a +80 boost to the memory clock offset.

At stock speeds, I scored 41.9 FPS on Heaven 3.0 with everything maxed out. With those overclocked numbers I'm only gtting 42.0... basically no gain.

What is wrong here?
Also, why after restoring my bios to factory settings does my clock speed stay as high as 3.8ghz instead of dropping down to the stock 3.4? All the multipliers in bios are at 34, I don't understand that.

 

[FinneousPJ]

The problem is the GTX 670 doesn't overclock that well. Was GPU boost still enabled when you ran the overclocked bench?

 

[wuphilly]

Honestly I'm not sure. I'm at work now so I'll have to check and try again when I get home. Should it be enabled? What exactly does it do?

 

[FinneousPJ]

It's a "turbo" that boosts GPU clocks - if you had it on as stock and off with the OC then that would explain the low gain. Your overclock essential replicated the turbo function of the stock settings.

 

[wuphilly]

Oh ok. That makes sense. But why aren't I seeing any gain from my increase in CPU speed? 3.4 stock to 4.5 is a big jump no? Also, can you tell me why after resetting my bios to factory settings that the CPU speed only goes down to 3.8 instead of the stock 3.4? All of the core multipliers were reset to 34 along with the base voltage. It doesn't make sense...

 

[FinneousPJ]

CPU speed is quite irrelevant if you're running graphical benchmarks at maximum settings.

The CPU also has turbo 3.4->3.8 GHz.

 

[wuphilly]

So what's the point of overclocking my cpu? Should I even bother with it if I'm just worried about game performance?

 

[FinneousPJ]

If you're not interested in it as a hobby then no, why bother?

 

[wuphilly]

Well that's disappointing... I'm glad I dropped $60 on a fancy air cooler so that I could overclock my cpu. What if I eventually get a graphics card that would bottleneck on my current CPU. When I go to upgrade, would it then be benefitial to overclock my CPU instead of having to buy a new one?

 

[FinneousPJ]

Possibly.