The Argument Of Overclocking. Your thoughts and opinions.

Eoinmc97

I've seen it thrown around a lot lately, especially with the Black Friday sales that Overclocking can validate the purchase of a GPU. But, I haven't seen very strong arguments that don't devolve into "Red vs Green" memes.

I will post two of the best arguments I have seen though, but I want to here what everyone here at Boards thinks,
(One reader from WCCFTECH)
"Overclocking should not waver your money. When buying a GPU, (CPU's are a little different, and I don't have all day gentlemen/gentlewomen.) you should look to see who offers the best performance, with minimal human effort. Why? Because Power Saving arguments are made at Stock Speeds, and IMO, the reason the GTX 960 can OC so well is because it's downclocked. Think about it; the biggest reason people like Zotac can get such high clocks on it, is because they throw the power envelope out the window. Suddenly, this card overclocks like a champ...for more power. Zotac don't advertise power savings that Maxwell brought on the 960. Because Maxwell clocked back all of their cards to fit a nice power envelope. Why di you think we can't increase the voltage on our 980TIs?

(Another reader from Hexus)
Overclocking is free performance? Why complain? Some cards can get really good performamce increases, such as the Samsung Memory Gigabyte 970s at launch. Others, like the R9 285 from Asus didn't deliver. Overclocking is not for everyone. You shouldn't overclock your 970 on some Corsair 500w PSU, even though you can run it fine. Overclocking for me was fun, it proved a challenge a few years back, but now......not really. Overclocking is required now to get the best vakue for your money, before it was more of a sport.


So, what do you think? I'd be inclined to agree with both of them really, seeing that Marketing, Power Envelopes and Value all influence the Overclocking srgument.

ED E

As with all PC hardware it depends. When you talk about CPUs similarly performing AMD chips can use hugely more power than their intel counterpart but when you OC a GPU you might only go from 150W to 170W. That 20W for the few hours per month that its actually at full tilt gaming is relatively small. Every hour your electric shower is on is worth 100hrs of overclock'd gaming.

If you're going to spend €800 on a PC to game IMO you may as well push it to the limit for an extra 3 cent per hours gaming.

AlmightyCushion

ED E wrote: »

As with all PC hardware it depends. When you talk about CPUs similarly performing AMD chips can use hugely more power than their intel counterpart but when you OC a GPU you might only go from 150W to 170W. That 20W for the few hours per month that its actually at full tilt gaming is relatively small. Every hour your electric shower is on is worth 100hrs of overclock'd gaming.

If you're going to spend €800 on a PC to game IMO you may as well push it to the limit for an extra 3 cent per hours gaming.

3 cent an hour is about 150 or 200W so in reality an overclock would cost less than that per hour.

With my current PC, noise is a big thing for me.I like it to be pretty quite. I haven't overclocked it but I might try it out. As long as it doesn't increase the noise to much I'll be happy.

magentis

Im looking to build my first gaming pc myself.And i am looking at overclocking the gpu.Do certain cards lend themselves to it?I am looking at that gigabyte gtx970 on amazon.fr for €299 and an as rock z77 extreme3 mobo paired with an i7 3770s.

Is it necessary to overclock both the gpu and cpu or can good results be achieved with just the gpu?

Gumbi

magentis wrote: »

Im looking to build my first gaming pc myself.And i am looking at overclocking the gpu.Do certain cards lend themselves to it?I am looking at that gigabyte gtx970 on amazon.fr for €299 and an as rock z77 extreme3 mobo paired with an i7 3770s.

Is it necessary to overclock both the gpu and cpu or can good results be achieved with just the gpu?

It depends. What CPU do you have? nVidia's GPU Boost does a pretty good job of getting a decent overclock on its own if you want to keep things simple.

I'm pretty sure that 970 will boost to 1350mhz core by itself (might have to max the power limit though, not sure), and would do 1500mhz~ when overclocked manually, so if you like keoing things simple, you're not missing out on much.

papu

I always overclock CPUS, and generally go for the best bang for buck with overclocking taken into consideration. Used to run 1.8ghz dual cores overclocked to 3.0ghz . At the moment I'm running a 2500K 3.3ghz up at 4.4ghz

I wouldn't be as inclined to overclock graphics cards.

BloodBath

It depends on the parts. If I was getting a graphics card I'd get a good 970 gtx. Overclocked it will out perform a stock 980 so why not. It's the only way that card is worth the money over a 390.

Like the older 7970 that I still have. They were originally clocked at 925mhz but a lot of the ones with decent coolers would do at least 1100mhz. That's a huge performance increase.

I don't like pushing voltages anymore though. Whatever the easiest overclock is without pushing it to it's limits.

magentis

Gumbi wrote: »

It depends. What CPU do you have? nVidia's GPU Boost does a pretty good job of getting a decent overclock on its own if you want to keep things simple.

I'm pretty sure that 970 will boost to 1350mhz core by itself (might have to max the power limit though, not sure), and would do 1500mhz~ when overclocked manually, so if you like keoing things simple, you're not missing out on much.

Its an i7 3770s CPU i will be using.I dont think that would lend itself to overclocking.I suppose looking at that gigabyte gpu that was on amazon for 299 would overclocking be worth my while or even possible with that combo?