Any point in overclocking for gaming?

A

Armpit

Gawd
Joined
Sep 1, 2002
Messages
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Seeing as most games these days are severely GPU limited (esp. with higher visual fidelity and resolutions most gamers use these days), is there any point in overclocking modern CPUs (say i5/i7 etc.) when largely gaming?
 
A stock 2500 would bottleneck 3 580s? My friend has a 990X oced to like 4.6ghz and he still thinks it bottlenecks his gpus.
 
OCing will gain you some FPS. Like Aus10 said, if you're using multiple GPUs, the CPU will bottleneck them.
 
I'm asking because I never saw an improvement greater than maybe 1-2fps at 2560x1440 with 2x GTX 580s at 4.8GHz vs. the stock 3.4GHz. Will you see a benefit at those kinds of resolutions with maximum in-game settings, high AA and AF with multiple GPUs?
 
All depends on the game. Some rely on both gpu and CPU. Like skyrim, there are points where I'm at 99% gpu, and others times I'm at 65% gpu and have liw fps (60-70). Yet other times with full gpu I break 120fps. So yes oc it.
 
That is the simple test - if your gpu utilization is less than 99% then your cpu is bottlenecking. Every game will be different, eg. bf3 is heavily bottlenecked by cpu in multiplayer but not in singleplayer.
 
The answer will depend on the particular game which you are playing.
 
Really depends on the game.
Overclocking is kinda what we do here, so it doesn't matter to me if I gain 2fps or 20, lol.
 
Skyrim is bottlenecked to hell by the CPU once you start adding cells. IB can't get here fast enough.
 
Mr. K6 said:
Skyrim is bottlenecked to hell by the CPU once you start adding cells. IB can't get here fast enough.
Click to expand...


Is this true? I load 9 cells and I don't really get that much a performance hit till 13 cells.

How many are you running?
 
Keep in mind this is Bethesda you're talking about. They wouldn't know a good graphics engine if it landed on their face and started to gyrate. I love the Elder Scrolls, but even after 10(?) years Morrowind still has limitations. And from what I've heard - please correct me if I'm wrong - things haven't changed that much.

But OCing has benefits for your other stuff, so why not if you can?
 
OC'ing will give older systems a boost to run current games better. This I've experienced myself.
 
With ugridstoload at 9, and a bunch of other .ini tweaks and mods, I was getting 23-30 FPS in Skyrim at some places in Markarth (coming out of understone keep and looking down on the rest of the town on either the right or left side) with a i7 965 at stock (3.2Ghz, 3.3Ghz turbo). On my i7 3930k @ 4.0Ghz I get 40-45 FPS in those same places with the same GTX 580. So a faster/overclocked CPU can make an appreciable difference in certain games. That said, I cannot wait for the 600 series, as some places in the wilderness south of riftend I get ~30 FPS even on the new rig.
 
yes.. some games, especially games that are ported over are extremely dependent on cpu.. overclocking will significantly improve performance in these games.

Also, when it comes to multiple gpu configurations.. having a higher clock speed will help alleviate any bottleneck issues.
 
I know a 3.3ghz i7 920 bottlenecks a 6970 in crysis 2 but 3.6ghz doesn't. Some games need more cpu than others, if you aren't playing games that do then you don't need to overclock as much.
 
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