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Overclocking over rated?

Bassist-X said:
From personal experiences I can say that OCing my GPU hasn't been really that beneficial. But you'll sure as hell notice a big difference boosting a 2.2Ghz A64 3500+ to 2.7Ghz. Note that an FX-55 runs at 2.6Ghz and an FX-57 runs at 2.8Ghz. Yeah there's a difference.
Click to expand...

hey there bassman, iff you are talkin about that there 7800 in your sig then it really is pointless in Oc'ing it and you would be the one to not see a difference on a vid card OC simply because.... its the most poweerful thing in your mahcine. just about the only thing NOT bottlenecking its performance is the pci express bus and HTT. but your ram and proc and hdd and all that, they cant keep up with it. so you WONT see a diff Oc'ig it.

now, on the other hand, me and my 6800.... well i see a LARGE frikken difference when i Oc'ed it. whether it be 30mhz on core or the almost 100 mhz extra i put on the core. BIG diff. cuz in my case if i feel my card is tryin to act all powerful n stuff then i just put the resolution to 16x12 and watch it pwn my lil ol 6800 that could. :cool:
 
hahah this is fun. watchin ZZZ vs the world. shit i used a 386 too. then a 486 but i didnt OC nuthin till i learned that my athlon 1600 could go a bit faster which it didnt so i got me a barton 2500 which meant i could superbin it to be a 3200 woowowow
 
el rolio said:
hahah this is fun. watchin ZZZ vs the world. shit i used a 386 too. then a 486 but i didnt OC nuthin till i learned that my athlon 1600 could go a bit faster which it didnt so i got me a barton 2500 which meant i could superbin it to be a 3200 woowowow
Click to expand...

Ya know whats REALLY funny?

I'm the ONLY person @ HardOcp that I'm aware of that has a World Record benchmark at FutureMark & yet I don't think oc'ing is "all that" anymore.

Yea, I still do it. But for different reasons.
 
Autochthon said:
This is a very strange conversation. In regards to speed; If you have 2 processors with the same architecture running at the same clock speed and voltage It doesn't matter if one is "Overclocked" because it has a lower value printed onto it's surface. They are performing the same function. To say Overclocking is pointless is to say buying a faster chip is pointless. To paraphrase an earlier poster It's not like there are seperate manufacturing processes for the 2 chips.
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Overclocking is better then buying a faster chip if you can reach the faster chip's speeds. You get memory bandwidth to go with that :)

Back when you could change the multiplier, you could literally turn your chip into a faster model.
 
ZigZagZeppelin said:
Wanna buy one?

:p
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No thanks, I have a few in my basement :).

Seriously though, age of use doesn't make someone's opinion matter more than someone else with a good knowledge of the topic at hand. I've probably overclocked as long as some as the older overclockers on this forum, but I am definitely not one of the guru's, even compared to some relative newcomers who have knowledge on specific subjects I don't even approach :). I would, and hope others would (my old registration here was back in 2001 I think, maybe earlier, before the purge that I missed keeping my account active on) take anyone's advice as well as anyone else's. So, while I respect your opinion, I simply don't agree with it, and it seems most others don't as well. For awhile, I had the same viewpoint, feeling it just wasn't worth the risk, the time, the effort, etc., and I never was much of a bencher. I overclock now, mainly, to get more performance at a much lower price.
 
You aren't reading my posts, Golden Tiger.

I still oc & oc my friends rigs, I don't play the benchmark game anymore.

I oc to get decent fps as Im a fussy bastard that likes max AA with max AF in my native REZ .

OC'ing is well worth it if u game with max gfx, IMO. But just to say I outscored you, no thanks.
 
ZigZagZeppelin said:
You aren't reading my posts, Golden Tiger.

I still oc & oc my friends rigs, I don't play the benchmark game anymore.

I oc to get decent fps as Im a fussy bastard that likes max AA with max AF in my native REZ .

OC'ing is well worth it if u game with max gfx, IMO. But just to say I outscored you, no thanks.
Click to expand...

i like both of those things. :D Course, I like gaming better more.

el rolio said:
hey there bassman, iff you are talkin about that there 7800 in your sig then it really is pointless in Oc'ing it and you would be the one to not see a difference on a vid card OC simply because.... its the most poweerful thing in your mahcine. just about the only thing NOT bottlenecking its performance is the pci express bus and HTT. but your ram and proc and hdd and all that, they cant keep up with it. so you WONT see a diff Oc'ig it.
Click to expand...
wrong. Even a 7800GTX isn't bottlenecked by a halfway decent proc (i.e. 2.2ghz athlon or so). And there's no way ram bottlenecks anything (at least if it's DDR400+). That's the way I see it, and you can see benchmarks that show this all over the place.
 
ZigZagZeppelin said:
You aren't reading my posts, Golden Tiger.

I still oc & oc my friends rigs, I don't play the benchmark game anymore.

I oc to get decent fps as Im a fussy bastard that likes max AA with max AF in my native REZ .

OC'ing is well worth it if u game with max gfx, IMO. But just to say I outscored you, no thanks.
Click to expand...



That is exactly what I agree with... I don't really like the benchmark game either, and never have. I do like seeing how high I can push things, though. I guess I misunderstood your position :).
 
russ, im not one to state my opinion and stick with it till the death. im definately open to be corrected. but please show me where a 2.2 athlon is gonna NOT limit a 7800. as far as i remember, lookin at all the benches.... a 7800 gtx, 7800 gt and lets say a 6800ultra will all score the more or less the same on a rig where the only part changed was the aforementioned gfx cards at any resolution less than 16x12. regardless if you are no AA and AF or if you are 4xAA and 16xAF (and that was shown on any of the games, hl2, doom3, and the benches)

actually in writing that line i can see where a game like BF2 would help use up some of hte awesome power. but the sheer fact that when all teh reviews of hte 7800 came out, they all tested on resolutions upwards of 1600x1200, using the 1900 setting that i dont even think about since thats a res to be used to fully use hte power of your brnad new $500 7800.

as for the thing you said about ram.... you might have jsut taught me supn new or maybe i was goign with a common misconception. or maybe i shoulda jsut said that the 7800 is cpu limited unless you pushing super high resolutions and leave it at that (which would prolly have been sufficient to get my point across that this guy Oc'ing his 7800 can be percieved a waste of time by him cuz of the other components of his machine)
 
I don't see how overclocking can be over rated. Everyone agrees that overclocking increases performance, correct? I think we can also all agree that overclocking is free, right? Henceforth, overclocking = free performance increase, I don't see how more performance for free can be over rated. :)
 
ZigZagZeppelin said:
I oc out of need these days, basically......
Click to expand...
yeah, benches are a waste of time when comparing different hardware. it's valid for comparing one setting to another for the same rig though.. this is where i find all of the joy in overclocking, finding out what IS the fastest :D :cool:
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
yeah, benches are a waste of time when comparing different hardware. it's valid for comparing one setting to another for the same rig though.. this is where i find all of the joy in overclocking, finding out what IS the fastest :D :cool:
Click to expand...


That, too, I agree with. I use benchmarks almost exclusively to test performance between two nearly-identical rigs, or the same rig testing/checking my overclocks :). Plus, what can beat turning a $380 Athlon 64 X2 3800+ into a CPU faster than the $950ish 4800+ (2.7ghz speed per core, faster even counting the extra cache on the 4800+)?
 
I don't think overclocking is overrated, but I literally have to keep a comp 8 years till i can get a new one, so it ocing reduces life span even one year, that could be a horrible experience :p . Even if my 3500 lasts 50 years i cant stand reducing it's lifetime by one, plus after a while of overclocking (especially overvolting) the scores go down and never come back, eg my friends 2000+ which orgionally got 12K 3d01 w/ti4200 O'Ced and OV'ED 14K and after a year he downlclocked back to stock speeds and his new score was 9K even after installing drivers, he hadn't oc'd the 4200. I won't listen to the arguement that by the time HW fails you will have a new comp, because I won't, not for about another 6-8 years. But i do like overclocking, just not my good stuff, my 9550 got up to 460/525 stable (4.0 ns ram)








Oh, also, el rolio, EVEN A 3000 CAN EXPLOIT A 7800
 
well, on some level, yes it is.

There's a bit of a honeymoon phase with overclocking, like the first time you realize you can have more power for FREE. Then you try it, and it really works, your old system is a little faster. Then you buy a new system, with overclocking in mind. You spend a little extra on a better HSF, research your processors, and end up saving a ton of money, as you just bought a 1.8ghz chip, and took it to 2.4ghz. Sure, you ran into a few snags, but forum members helped you out, and now the snags aren't snags anymore, you've learned how to OC.

Now comes the fun part, you start getting into benchmarking, who has the faster rig? You get "power hungry". You start to overclock everything and anything, dream about better ways to cool something, cook up a few half baked ideas that you post on here.

But by now, you know you can't trust your system to work 100% of the time. A no post beep code is nothing new to you. You've reset the cmos enough times, that you can do it without looking. You're almost like a junky shooting up when it comes to hardware, you buy your stuff, fix it all up, but you have no idea if it'll even work until you here the solid short single "beep", and you learn to love that beep that everyone else takes for granted.

By all means, you consider yourself a pro by now, you aren't 14 years old overclocking an old K6-2 anymore, you've moved up. Your processor doesn't even get a chance to see stock speeds. You know what's safe, you know that 400mhz more on a 3000+ venice is 100% solid, even if you don't have an OS or prime95 to tell you yet. You've already been playing the watercooling game for years now, you've seen stuff like the "bong cooler" come along. Hell, you even remember when companies like dangerden were just getting started, and yes, you even remember way back when peltiers weren't just used with waterblocks, but HSFs too. You've even dabbled in sub ambient cooling, maybe a peltier on the GPU, or ice in your water, maybe even an industrial lab chiller :rolleyes: .

You've spilled 1/2" of water in your computer case, without even breaking a sweat, you know by now all it needs is a blowdryer, and everything'll be cool.

Of course, you'll have days, where you have 3 different threads on 3 different forums, for 2 severe, but entirely different problems. And of course, you've been doing this for a while now, you don't post a thread for help, unless you really need help. Maybe you just got a new game that you like, perfect for your new hardware, which you finally got all tweaked out, and your box just won't work. After the 4th time stripping it down, you figure it's time to surrender, retreating to a different motherboard, stock cooler, little to no overclocking, only leaving behind a "we shall return" sign on the vapochill, not quite the philippines, but it feels like it by now. Not to mention, this current system is the culmination of a lot of research, time and money.

Have fun!

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=955801
http://forum.vapochill.com/showthread.php?p=69311#post69311
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24310
 
mikelz85 said:
well, on some level, yes it is.

There's a bit of a honeymoon phase with overclocking, like the first time you realize you can have more power for FREE. Then you try it, and it really works, your old system is a little faster. Then you buy a new system, with overclocking in mind. You spend a little extra on a better HSF, research your processors, and end up saving a ton of money, as you just bought a 1.8ghz chip, and took it to 2.4ghz. Sure, you ran into a few snags, but forum members helped you out, and now the snags aren't snags anymore, you've learned how to OC.

Now comes the fun part, you start getting into benchmarking, who has the faster rig? You get "power hungry". You start to overclock everything and anything, dream about better ways to cool something, cook up a few half baked ideas that you post on here.

But by now, you know you can't trust your system to work 100% of the time. A no post beep code is nothing new to you. You've reset the cmos enough times, that you can do it without looking. You're almost like a junky shooting up when it comes to hardware, you buy your stuff, fix it all up, but you have no idea if it'll even work until you here the solid short single "beep", and you learn to love that beep that everyone else takes for granted.

By all means, you consider yourself a pro by now, you aren't 14 years old overclocking an old K6-2 anymore, you've moved up. Your processor doesn't even get a chance to see stock speeds. You know what's safe, you know that 400mhz more on a 3000+ venice is 100% solid, even if you don't have an OS or prime95 to tell you yet. You've already been playing the watercooling game for years now, you've seen stuff like the "bong cooler" come along. Hell, you even remember when companies like dangerden were just getting started, and yes, you even remember way back when peltiers weren't just used with waterblocks, but HSFs too. You've even dabbled in sub ambient cooling, maybe a peltier on the GPU, or ice in your water, maybe even an industrial lab chiller :rolleyes: .

You've spilled 1/2" of water in your computer case, without even breaking a sweat, you know by now all it needs is a blowdryer, and everything'll be cool.

Of course, you'll have days, where you have 3 different threads on 3 different forums, for 2 severe, but entirely different problems. And of course, you've been doing this for a while now, you don't post a thread for help, unless you really need help. Maybe you just got a new game that you like, perfect for your new hardware, which you finally got all tweaked out, and your box just won't work. After the 4th time stripping it down, you figure it's time to surrender, retreating to a different motherboard, stock cooler, little to no overclocking, only leaving behind a "we shall return" sign on the vapochill, not quite the philippines, but it feels like it by now. Not to mention, this current system is the culmination of a lot of research, time and money.

Have fun!

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=955801
http://forum.vapochill.com/showthread.php?p=69311#post69311
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24310
Click to expand...


great post, Mike.
:p
 
ZigZagZeppelin said:
great post, Mike.
:p
Click to expand...

I was pretty pissed at the time of the post. Still I'm not too happy. My system is now on an ASUS board with stock cooler, plus my 7800 is having issues running 3d with the peltier on, unless I start the peltier after. I'm pretty sure it's condensation or something, as I might have broken my dialectric grease seal when re-installing it. Regardless, the card works fine otherwise, and has cycled temps without issue, but I'll still have to check it out before using it again.
 
ZigZagZeppelin said:
Sounds like you're ready for the next phase....Vapo
:D

nice clock on air, btw...
Click to expand...
that was 2.9ghz on the vapo, that 3200+ isn't very good.

I haven't had a chance to test my 3000+, which did 2.93 with chilled water (0C coolant). The vapo is an older model, and gets good temps, but not -20C load or anything like that. I'm considering modding the evap to fit a GPU, instead of a CPU. The vapo would probably get an overvolted 7800 core pretty cold, as it doesn't put out that much of a load compared to an OC'd CPU.
 
i would hazard to say that even if you out mhz an FX processor you're not likely to really "beat" it with an older or lower-end model. honestly, mhz aren't everything - and before everyone screams "i know" and points to the P4s, hear me out. newer model processors not only run faster, they come with different instruction sets. also, the actual physical architecture can vary a WHOLE lot from generation to generation. for that reason I don't believe that a venice core at a higher clock than an fx processor is going to actually run better or faster. sometimes instruction sets vary by as much as 50 or more instructions (when youre talking processor functions can be broken down into 8 basic instructions, thats quite a lot. most processors sport at most 250 instructions).

at any rate, the point i'm trying to make is i'm not entirely convinced that an overclock is "worth it"...it may be fun though, i'm not knocking it.

edit: forgot to finish my thought process
 
nice bump ;)

one thing a lot of people forget when they compare their oc'ed cpu's to FX's.. it's an oc'ed cpu to a stock one. the FX always has a good amount of headroom over it's rated speed.

as for the instruction set... :confused:
all a64's are the same base architecture ;)
 
vidor said:
i would hazard to say that even if you out mhz an FX processor you're not likely to really "beat" it with an older or lower-end model. honestly, mhz aren't everything - and before everyone screams "i know" and points to the P4s, hear me out. newer model processors not only run faster, they come with different instruction sets. also, the actual physical architecture can vary a WHOLE lot from generation to generation. for that reason I don't believe that a venice core at a higher clock than an fx processor is going to actually run better or faster. sometimes instruction sets vary by as much as 50 or more instructions (when youre talking processor functions can be broken down into 8 basic instructions, thats quite a lot. most processors sport at most 250 instructions).

at any rate, the point i'm trying to make is i'm not entirely convinced that an overclock is "worth it"...it may be fun though, i'm not knocking it.

edit: forgot to finish my thought process
Click to expand...
The main advantage the San Diego has over the Venice is double the L2 cache! Other than that the San Diegos have a slightly revamped memory controller, and no instruction set differences. A 3.0+ ghz venice ought to beat a 2.8 ghz San Diego by a fair margin.
 
venice and san diego are both revE cpu's, they have very similar memory controllers, if not identical ;)
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
venice and san diego are both revE cpu's, they have very similar memory controllers, if not identical ;)
Click to expand...

They are identical. All Athlon 64/FX S939 Rev E cores are all the same.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
They are identical. All Athlon 64/FX S939 Rev E cores are all the same.
Click to expand...
really now... i couldve sworn that toledo thing had a whole extra core on it...

;)
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
They are identical. All Athlon 64/FX S939 Rev E cores are all the same.
Click to expand...
i think there might be some differences between the E3/E4 cores and E6, but nothing seriously significant.
 
Brusher said:
I've been getting really pumped about learning the art of OC'ing after reading a lot on this site.

However, I know a guy at a local computer shop (he's the techi there). He says that OC'ing is way over rated and that you really won't notice any difference in the way your computer runs, even games. That kinda busted my bubble. I just got through buying a AMD 64 3500 and a couple of nice sticks of Crucial ram, and a mobo that shows that it will OC well.

Is this guy right? I mean if it's all about who can get the best times on a bencmark I could care less. But if I can notice a difference in gaming then yea. I'm going for it.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

He probibly doesnt want to deal with overclockers buying his stuff, breaking it, and trying to return burnt out equipment from newbees venturing into overclocking for the first time. I would if I worked or owned a PC shop.

I have been overclocking since the Intel P2 300 that hid 450 with air cooling. It saved me about $600 at the time. Currently have a mobile athlon overclocked about 600MHz above stock with no problems. As far as performance in games, you probibly wont see as much gain as overclocking the GPU/memory on a video card, but you will see performance gains. And you will learn more about how computers actually work, which is the real benefit IMHO.
 
Long thread. So this might have already been said:

But, a CPU overclocked to a higher speed is indistinguishable in performance from its faster cousin that runs at that faster speed natively/stock.

So, you should just pick out the slowest Core 2 Duo CPU he has, or the slowest AMD CPU he has and say:

"I'll get this one. Since, according to you, clock speed is meaningless. By the way, why do you sell the faster ones, anyways?"

Then watch him squirm.
 
overclocking for me =

saving money buying a slower chip that will run at a faster chips speed easily, this is a big one for most

applications that use %100 cpu power often, rendering / encoding / F@H - these all benefit from the raw ghz speed improvement.

there are benefits for overclocking, as some have said though, most people wont really notice it in everyday usage.
 
Anyone who thinks overclocking a chip to the same speed as a comparative faster brother (IE, same cache)... Doesn't deserve an opinion, or a chance to use the English language.

People that don't know anything, shouldn't say anything, and should go to hell.
 
Anyone who thinks overclocking a chip to the same speed as a comparative faster brother (IE, same cache)... Doesn't deserve an opinion, or a chance to use the English language.
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You uh... might wanna check your english there, cause that sentence didnt make sense.
 
I overclock because I enjoy doing it and I enjoy the extra performance I can sometimes find in games and other applications.

I don't really do it to save money. Most of the time I end up buying higher end CPUs just to be gauranteed higher performance than the lower end CPUs. I never buy a CPU unless I will be happy with it's performance at stock speeds. I do this just in case I get a CPU or motherboard that doesn't overclock worth a damn.
 
First off: I overclock. And i try overclocking the shit out of everything i can get my hands on.

The original question is: Is overclocking worth it?

And here is where i disagree with most of the people in this thread. I think, from a monetary standpoint, it is worth it MOST OF THE TIME, but sometimes not at all. There are certain chips and / or videocards where it really is worth it (and worth it a lot.

The more interesting question really is: Is it worth it to always buy the cheapest chip to overclock?

Let's take a look at my latest purchase: E6400 ($218) with DS3 ($150) mobo and Infinity cooler ($58) plus some nice Teamgroup memory ($225). All prices from back then...

If i would've taken a E6600 ($300) with S3 ($110) board, stock cooler ($0) or cheap aftermarket ($20) plus regular mem ($160) , i would've had the same price with probably the same overclock at the same temps (give or take 2-3C). Was it worth it to buy the E6400 and o/c as compared to buying the E6600 and o/c that one to the same level? Nope. Would i do it again? Sure as hell!!!!

Why? Because i had fun doing it.
 
NordicRX8 said:
Holy Thread Resurrection Batman!!!! :eek:
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Indeed!

Since it has been brought back - - have to say that my system in the signature below, also mentioned in this very same thread here* well over a year ago, is STILL running smoothly (same config) at fairly significant OCed speeds all around.

The trick is moderation, and choosing good quality components of course.. No need to run the system at it's absolute limits to gain those few extra benchmark points. Not for me anyway. :D

- edit
P. S. - wanted to say that I have backed off the FSB speed from 240 to 230 (only setting changed) since the time the post I linked to above was submitted.
Only because of the aforementioned "moderation" parameter.

Also, the same OCZ Booster is still over-volting the same RAM, which affords faster FSB speeds at tighter timings. A good thing with this nForce2 system.
 
Depends on the hardware you have, the money you have, the stability you want etc.

If you for instance cannot afford very fast hardware but you want a fast machine then selecting a chip which is a known good overclocker (like the E6600) then you can yield massive overclocks like 2.4Ghz to ~4ghz closing on 50% increase.

Of course if you pick top end components already because you have loads of money chances are they are the top end of the same technology to cheaper parts and will overclock less (percentage wise)

If you don't want to risk high overclocks or voltmodding, or even running custom cooling, and don't know how to select components that overclock well, then you will never yield a very high overclock and will likely never really see much benefit from doing so.

Besides it makes a good hobby for some, so under the right circumstances it's pretty good to overclock, you need to go back and film this guy and his reasons and then put him on youtube for all of us to take apart ;)
 
I don't like locked multipliers. I don't like them at all.

I have had nothing but bad luck running chipset bus past spec. Back when you could put a celeron meant for 66mhz bus on a board meant to run 100mhz bus chips... that was different as you weren't running any chipset out of spec.

These days, to get a good overclock... you have to run the chipset over 50% or more out of spec... easy... and RAM of course... on an intel system using a divider takes a serious performance hit.

I don't know... I know there are alot of people pushing their core2 systems to the max... but I know there are alot of people with unstable core2 systems out there that crash and crash without obvious reason.

Ever since the kt133... that little via bastard that you had to make peace with to run a k6... ever since then I have considered the chipset quality just as important as the CPU or ram. I don't want to run it past spec if I do not have to... but fucking unlocked chips are so expensive!

grumble grumble.

I have a via chipset s939 system. It is 100% rock stable at stock HTT speeds... and that is how I am leaving it... if I even try to stray over 200 I am in for trouble. I would rather have a stable system that I can leave up for weeks or whatever amount of time between MS patch cycles.
 
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