gaming performance and overclocking

B

bernaby

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2012
Messages
175
Gaming is the most intensive application for my rig. I see many people here on the [H] overclocking their Ivy/Sandy CPU'S to 4.8+. I settled on a modest overclock of 4.2. I run a single GPU....how much performance would I gain by going for a higher overclock? I know that there is performance to be gained by people that are doing heavy multitasking and video editing for example. But is there anything to be gained by going to extremes for gaming?

My rig is in the sig
 
With a single 6970 at 1080p I would think your bottleneck would be the video card in most games.. especially new ones. You wouldn't see much improvement overclocking any further.
 
In the future I'll be running either a 680 or a 7970....does that change things regarding my overclock?
 
Thanks for the responses. I had a feeling this was the case and I figured that for my needs there was no reason to push my gear to the limit. It's good to hear the same from people with more experience than mine.
 
It depends on the game your talking about. For most games you wont see much if any improvement overclocking further. On a new game like Crysis3 that is more CPU bound you could get some improvement going up to 4.5-4.6GHz but, the most improvement in gaming you could get with that setup is a newer GPU.
 
I'm already planning on a new GPU, just wanted to be sure I was'nt leaving some performance on the table by going for a modest overclock. Not into benchmarks or bragging rights, just real world, I can see it and feel it improvements.
 
In my experience overclocking the CPU tends to bring up the min frames per second more then anything else... proof in the numbers here (CPU Section): http://www.hobbyware.org/Computer/Gaming Graphics/gaminggraphics.aspx


tacos4me said:
With a single 6970 at 1080p I would think your bottleneck would be the video card in most games.. especially new ones. You wouldn't see much improvement overclocking any further.
Click to expand...

I run a 6970 at 1200p and run Skyrim maxed out with high-res texture pack without any choppyness. Crysis 3 would be a good test no doubt.
 
T3rr0rByte13 said:
In my experience overclocking the CPU tends to bring up the min frames per second more then anything else...

I run a 6970 at 1200p and run Skyrim maxed out with high-res texture pack without any choppyness. Crysis 3 would be a good test no doubt.
Click to expand...

or Far Cry 3 and play around with the various levels of AO, but wait til you upgrade the videocard. BTW I get 4.5 GHz on my 3570K with a minor +.08v with same air cooler. Bringing the min fps up could be crucial for playability with these titles.
 
I know I can overclock this chip higher. I've had it stable at 4.6. I put it back down to 4.2 because I could'nt see any difference in the games and I thought that putting more stress on the chip for no performance gains was kinda silly. Sorta like driving your car in fourth gear instead of fifth. You can drive the car at highway speeds in the lower gear but the higher rpm wastes gas and wears out the engine faster.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top