Overclocking Benefit

[Slªde]

How significant is the jump from overclocking? Also add this to the equation. When you are buying $50 heatsinks or whatever, add that to the total cost. I.E. Don't compare $200 overclocked CPU to $200 non overclocked, compare $200 + 50 heatsink + XX extra fan / controller / etc, to $250 stock CPU.

In that regard, while OC no doubt still wins, how significant is it? Is it that big of a deal not to OC? What kind of gains are we looking at given the same price?

 

[Nenu]

It depends how much you overclock, what you overclock and what would benefit from being overclocked.
If the game you are playing is GPU limited then a 20% gfx card overclock will likely result in somewhere near 20% extra fps.
This assumes your CPU is fast enough to push the gfx card at its new speed.

One of the great things about overclocking is that you can buy a cheap part and make it run as fast as the most expensive parts and even faster!
The money saved can be put towards a heatsink and a night on the town.
You pay as much as you want to/can afford, there are a lot of heatsinks to choose from ranging from very low cost to ridiculous.

Your choice.

ps its also a geek thing, one of my hobbies

 

[Dangman]

ps its also a geek thing, one of my hobbies

QFT.

Let's provide an example. This is a typical recommended setup in General Hardware:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 CPU - $130
Kingwin RVT-12025 120mm Rifle HSF - $30 & Retention Bracket - $7
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$167 Plus tax and shipping.

And the E8400 can be had for $190.

If you OC the E7200 to just 3.0Ghz, which is the stock speed of the E8400, you'll gain about 90 to 95% performance of the E8400 for 87% of the price. OC the E7200 past the E8400's 3.0Ghz stock speed and you can potentially get the performance of the E8400 and higher for 87% of the cost. For many people, saving that extra 13% in price in addition to getting lower temperatures is worth the time and effort to overclock. Not to mention that it is fun overclocking.

Do note that the bracket I included is somewhat unnecessary if you don't mind push-pins and can be dropped. Which means you gain a further 3% in savings.

EDIT: Got another example:

Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 CPU - $70
Xigmatek HDT-S963 92mm Rifle HSF - $25
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Total: $95 plus tax and shipping.

OC the E2180 to just 3.0Ghz and you'll have about 75 to 80% performance of the E8400 for 50% of the cost.

 

[huddy]

Overclocking CPU and RAM gives me a much snappier system within the OS. This will also be a huge boost for things such as rendering, file compression, etc.
GPU overclocking, and CPU overclocking to an extent, will increase FPS in games.

Real life example from Dec. 07:
Xeon X3210 2.13 GHz $240 overclocked to 3.5 GHz
4 GB DDR2-800 $135 overclocked to ~DDR2-1050 (Jun 07 price)
Ultima 90+Scythe 120mm fan $63 held temps around 54-58C in 22C room.
HD 3870 Stock: $230 (@ release) OC'd to 870MHz core, 1250MHz RAM
Total cost: $668

QX9650 3.00 GHz ~$1100? (Intel obviously doesn't produce quads @ 3.5 (65nm) or 3.3ish (45nm))
4 GB DDR2-1066 ~$230
OC'd HD 3870 (@ availability ~$270) clocked around 850MHz Core and ???RAM
Total cost: $1600

I saved $930 in my hardware choices and ended up with a machine that was faster in CPU, almost equal in RAM, and maybe slower GPU (if I had bought an 8800 series card)... OC'ing is worth $930 to me.

 

[rennyf77]

you don't always need a new heatsink to overclock. some of intel's bottom basement priced chips can-but not always-overclock to 3ghz on that crappy pushpin factory cooler.

 

[bholstege]

I went from 1.6 to 2.66 on stock cooling/voltage for my e2140.

 

[BillParrish]

you don't always need a new heatsink to overclock. some of intel's bottom basement priced chips can-but not always-overclock to 3ghz on that crappy pushpin factory cooler.

hurrmp, its actually not all that crappy of a cooler as most published temps are with the EIST enabled to reduce noise and its downward orientation cools the cpu voltage requlator mosfets something expensive tower heatsinks do not do or do very poorly. Well worth spending the $10 over an OEM chip to have a spare cooler in case the fan on the "massively overweight tower of thermal sacrifice to the gods" dies. That said I usually go for an Artic Freezer Pro 7 even on stock configurations as people who run stock seldom, if ever, clean fans or blow dust out.

I easily ran a q6600 at 3.2GHz with the stock cooler forced to 100% in a case with good airflow. NP. Was a tad noisy and ran warmer than most here like with all 4 cores loaded 100% but nothing outrageous.

OC or not OC.

lets see my 6300 cost me $180ish bucks at the time add $150 for the watercooling and it clocks/clocked ( it was bought day one of the C2D launch) higher than the extreme version which was $1100+ bucks at the time and beat that chip (at its stock freq) in every benchmark I ran, by a lot. But thats not the point, the point is what I learned, the fun, and the personal satisfaction of wringing every stable clock cycle I could out of it without compromising relability, stability or life.

Looking at the cost benifit of OCing a cpu without considering the other system components, memory, power suppy, enthusiast board, is a mistake. You should approach OCing as an exercise in overall system design. Or just do it because you like too. (that has value too).