GPU overclock scaling on games

[darkstar845]

Does the performance of some Video cards/GPU on games scale linearly when overclocking high?
For example when you overclock HD7870 that has a stock clock of 1000mhz to 1100 mhz you gain an additional 4-6 fps on games but when you overclock it more to 1300mhz, will you gain another 5-8 fps or only about 2-3 fps?

 

[JJ1217]

Nah it doesn't really scale linearly, there are some games where overclocking actually does the opposite of improving performance.

Especially memory overclocking.

 

[Herr_Koos]

It depends on what the performance limitation is of the game in question. If it's pure processing power, clock speed increases will have a noticeable effect, if maybe not a 100% linear one. If however the FPS is being limited by memory bandwidth or available VRAM, the overclock will have no effect.

 

[wanderer11]

I have been trying to OC my 7870 and find that going from 1000 to 1250 core only yields ~5 more fps in game. I find it hardly worth it.

 

[Herr_Koos]

I have been trying to OC my 7870 and find that going from 1000 to 1250 core only yields ~5 more fps in game. I find it hardly worth it.

Maybe core clock isn't you bottleneck then... Have you tried OC'ing the memory? Or maybe you are CPU limited?

 

[wanderer11]

Maybe core clock isn't you bottleneck then... Have you tried OC'ing the memory? Or maybe you are CPU limited?

Not cpu limited, my cpu usage never goes much over 50%. I recently got a 2560x1440 monitor and the single 7870 just isn't up to the task. I need to get another one. Sounds like you know more about this than me so quick question: I notice when I have the lowest fps in borderlands 2 my cpu usage and gpu usage are both well under 100%. Do you think it would be a driver issue or something else?

 

[Herr_Koos]

Are you monitoring CPU usage per core? The average may be 50% but you could have a single core running at 100% because the multi threading support is poor.

 

[wanderer11]

In task manager it looks like all 4 cores are being used. Do you know of a good program to monitor cpu usage?

 

[Herr_Koos]

I generally use Process Explorer.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

If you want to chat further you should maybe start a new thread; don't want to hijack this one.

 

[wanderer11]

I generally use Process Explorer.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

If you want to chat further you should maybe start a new thread; don't want to hijack this one.

Thanks for the help. I looked up some BL2 benchmarks and it looks like 3570ks have a hard time with physx in it. I'll start a thread if turning that off doesn't fix my problem.