Games seem to run smoother with CPU/cache/RAM at stock clocks than OC

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fomoz

Limp Gawd
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Jan 5, 2012
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Hi guys,

My Gigabyte GA-X99-SOC Champion broke and I replaced it with an ASRock X99 OC Formula/3.1.

I used to have my 5960X @ 4400 1.20v, uncore @ 4100 1.20v, RAM @ 2666 1.35v. Now everything is at stock clocks and my games feel like they're running smoother.

I don't mean they are more stable, my OC was stable until my motherboard broke. I mean the games themselves feel like they're smoother, more responsive. I've tried Crysis 3, Dirt Rally, and Portal 2 among others. Even though I may have lost raw FPS from the stock clocks, the gaming experience seems to have improved at the same graphics settings as before.

It sort of reminds me of overclocking a 60Hz LCD display to 80Hz and technically it runs faster, but the motion isn't as smooth as it was before. I don't know if a similar principle could apply here.

Unfortunately I haven't done any frametime logging with my old motherboard, so I can't compare anything objectively. I could OC my current setup and compare frametimes and I probably will, but I wanted to ask this question here first.

Has anyone ever experienced this or is it all in my mind?

Thanks!
 
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I feel the same way you do. I don't think overclocking is worth it most of the time, unless you're trying to get the most out of an old system that you're about to replace. I mean, even if the OC is stable, a lot of ratios and other things are mismatched. You're running various parts of the system out of spec, and that's always going to have a penalty. It will run faster and do certain things better, yes, but overall it might not come together as well in something that stresses your system like gaming. I think it's fun to run benchmarks on an overclocked system just for bragging rights, but actually using an overclocked system... meh, it's not what it's cracked up to be.

The way I see it, it's not going to kill me to lower settings in games a little bit to run at stock speeds. These days, you rarely get the kind of performance increases from it than you used to get. Things are more optimized for low-power, and the inclusion of integrated graphics and onboard memory controllers doesn't help either. Half of the northbridge and southbridge functions are now handled by the CPU itself. Also, there's not as much headroom because the processors that they sell unlocked are basically already close enough to their top speed that it's a waste of time and effort to overclock them. Now, back in the day, when they were just binning chips that could hit a certain speed at a certain temperature, you could usually just buy a cheap processor and run it at the higher speed with a good fan. But I think they push the envelope enough these days with all the extra features and tinier processes that you don't really want to push it.

About the most I would do with a processor is disable SpeedStep, put a decent fan on it, and have it run at the best frequency at all times. Because that top frequency is usually pretty close to the edge of what it can handle... maybe with a few hundred MHz of cushion.
 
You are probably hitting the current limit of the chip.

Download intel's extreme tuning utility (xtu) and disable short term power limits
 
athenian200 said:
I feel the same way you do. I don't think overclocking is worth it most of the time, unless you're trying to get the most out of an old system that you're about to replace. I mean, even if the OC is stable, a lot of ratios and other things are mismatched. You're running various parts of the system out of spec, and that's always going to have a penalty. It will run faster and do certain things better, yes, but overall it might not come together as well in something that stresses your system like gaming. I think it's fun to run benchmarks on an overclocked system just for bragging rights, but actually using an overclocked system... meh, it's not what it's cracked up to be.

The way I see it, it's not going to kill me to lower settings in games a little bit to run at stock speeds. These days, you rarely get the kind of performance increases from it than you used to get. Things are more optimized for low-power, and the inclusion of integrated graphics and onboard memory controllers doesn't help either. Half of the northbridge and southbridge functions are now handled by the CPU itself. Also, there's not as much headroom because the processors that they sell unlocked are basically already close enough to their top speed that it's a waste of time and effort to overclock them. Now, back in the day, when they were just binning chips that could hit a certain speed at a certain temperature, you could usually just buy a cheap processor and run it at the higher speed with a good fan. But I think they push the envelope enough these days with all the extra features and tinier processes that you don't really want to push it.

About the most I would do with a processor is disable SpeedStep, put a decent fan on it, and have it run at the best frequency at all times. Because that top frequency is usually pretty close to the edge of what it can handle... maybe with a few hundred MHz of cushion.
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^he's right you know. A mild 10-15% oc is fine maybe or if you're on a given chip that is well documented to do a big overclock with not much else involved, sure. But other than that, you're pushing stuff out of spec and not really getting much back in terms of performance for the cost of 'games studdering and skipping' etc. I have noticed many of these odd things over the years of running even a stable or prime95'd overclock.
 
topslop1 said:
^he's right you know. A mild 10-15% oc is fine maybe or if you're on a given chip that is well documented to do a big overclock with not much else involved, sure. But other than that, you're pushing stuff out of spec and not really getting much back in terms of performance for the cost of 'games studdering and skipping' etc. I have noticed many of these odd things over the years of running even a stable or prime95'd overclock.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was talking about! Not crazy after all, eh?
 
fomoz said:
That's exactly what I was talking about! Not crazy after all, eh?
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Not crazy. Back in my competitive counter-strike days I think I had a 1.8ghz amd something or other that I used to run at 2.7ghz. Ran everything fine and well at a high juiced voltage. Definitely negatively impacted my counter-strike performance.

There's a reason why some games are meant to be competitively played games, and a reason why some other games are just 'for fun'. You shouldn't have to OC your rig to get stable or good frame rates on a competitive game. A modern game... may require an OC and a lower settings just to get OK frame rates.

Anyhow I'm rambling. What I mean to say is if you are competitively gaming or playing a game that you need stable frames on, don't OC it. If you're playing for fun and juicing up eye candy on a single player game, OC the shit out of it.
 
topslop1 said:
Not crazy. Back in my competitive counter-strike days I think I had a 1.8ghz amd something or other that I used to run at 2.7ghz. Ran everything fine and well at a high juiced voltage. Definitely negatively impacted my counter-strike performance.

There's a reason why some games are meant to be competitively played games, and a reason why some other games are just 'for fun'. You shouldn't have to OC your rig to get stable or good frame rates on a competitive game. A modern game... may require an OC and a lower settings just to get OK frame rates.

Anyhow I'm rambling. What I mean to say is if you are competitively gaming or playing a game that you need stable frames on, don't OC it. If you're playing for fun and juicing up eye candy on a single player game, OC the shit out of it.
Click to expand...

Thing is I'll take smoothness over eye candy any day! Especially with G-Sync, it just feels so much better.
 
i always found overclocking to cause more problems than it was worth. nothing "obvious" in that type of way but there are always more consequences.
 
if you want to overclock, do it! dont let anybody talk you out of it!

a different mobo will give different oc results even with the exact same chip. do you get this issue with any amount of oc? maybe try 4000/4000/100. just keep bclk at 100 so that the pcie bus doesnt get out of wack.
did you do a fresh install of windows? maybe that smoothed it out...
 
OC'ing is a tricky business.

Push it too far and yes, things will run worse.

Hence why I'm stuck at 3.2 instead of 4.0 like some people using my old proc.

It's a fine line....
 
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