PRIME1 said:First go look up logic in the dictionary.
Look up 'fallacy' in the dictionary.
Now if you want to know how well your card will play games then LOGICALLY you will use games to test your card. And (as you pointed out) every game IS different that's why no synthetic benchmark will be very accurate in judging true game performance (especially with many games using OpenGL instead of DirectX)
See the fallacy right here. Every game is different. So how can you speak of 'true game performance' in the first place? Which game is the 'true game'?
Another fallacy there is that OpenGL vs DirectX would make a large difference. They're both running on the same computer system with the same 3d acceleration hardware. Well-written code will not be limited by API/drivers, but by the GPU or CPU.
The differences between OpenGL and DirectX are often far smaller than the differences in game engine design, so they are basically irrelevant.
However changes in your 3dmark score may not actually mean changes in real world game performance.
Luckily there is more to 3DMark than just the overall score. You can get statistics on the various benchmarks, which allow you to draw some conclusions about what the overclocking affected exactly. From there you can extrapolate that real world game performance will change accordingly in similar situations (which DO exist).