FYI, there's usually only two reasons to overclock a modern CPU like yours:
1) Transcoding video with a program that uses all threads (in which case I recommend putting the settings back to default after you are done)
2) SLI or Crossfire of high-end Graphics cards (i.e. 2xHD5870, 2xGTX560Ti or higher. *Varies significantly between games. Some won't benefit from a CPU overclock even with 2xHD5870)
If you fall into the video game category, there's a simple way to test (each game) to see where you stand:
1) Open Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL)
2) look at "performance"
3) settings to "View->Update Speed->LOW" and "View->CPU History->One graph per CPU"
4) In general, ignore the Hyperthreads if enabled. For a quad-core, if enabled you'll see 8 graphs. Ignore the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th (Core's start at "0" so that's Core#1,3,5,7)
5)Run a game for at least five minutes of gameplay, close the game, leave TM still running and observe the results:
Analysis of Task Manager and CPU results during gameplay:
*This was much simpler when:
a) there was one core, and
b) there was no hyperthreading.
Basically, when there was a single-core CPU, if the CPU was peaking at 50%, this meant that your system could handle a graphics card that was 2x faster or TWO CARDS (SLI or Crossfire).
It's different now with multithreading because games can rarely use all cores (and many don't ever touch the threads. Again, ignore those.
General analysis of results:
Scenario #1: NONE of the cores (0,2,4,6) ever reach 100%
Analysis: The CPU would provide NO benefit to the game by being overclocked
Scenario #2: Only ONE core reaches 100% out of four physical cores.
Analysis: It is likely that overclocking would provide much benefit, possibly none. If the game has a good benchmarking tool built in, you can try overclocking the CPU (change no other settings) and see if this changes the benchmark results.
Scenario #3: Two or more cores reach 100%.
Analysis: It's quite certain overclocking the CPU would improve performance.
Exceptions to the above:
If you have the game CAPPED by using VSync and it NEVER falls below the capped rate (usually 60FPS) then overclocking the CPU would not benefit anything because the game will not increase the frame rate and therefore needs no additional processing from either the CPU or Graphics card.
SUMMARY:
1. Overclocking a modern CPU is usually only needed for transcoding video, similar tasks, or for playing video game on a system with two or more high-end graphics cards.
2. It is possible using the Task Manager to determine if overclocking your CPU would benefit a particular game.
3. CPU usage in games may vary between 20% and 60% on the same setup (i.e. an HD5870 or GTX560Ti).
4. Ignore hyperthreads for most analysis when observing the CPU performance graphs
5. NEVER use the average CPU usage as an indication of how stressed your CPU is. (You could actually use 100% of all physical cores, but still show only 50% CPU usage even though the game can't even use the Hyperthreads. Not only is it incorrect that you have 50% "left" of your CPU, the Hyperthreads, at best can only add 30% additional processing power but they are averaged as EQUAL to a CPU physical core.
6. Generic BENCHMARK UTILITIES should not be used in this scenario because they ADD UP the graphics and CPU results. Overclocking a CPU would create a higher score in this case. however, the whole issue is that the graphics card can be the bottleneck, so in a game scenario overclocking the CPU may NOT have any positive effect.
7. ****MOST IMPORTANTLY:
If you need to overclock your CPU due to a specific game, or games, only overclock it enough so that no additional overclocking would benefit the game. Overclocking adds heat, fan noise, and wears out the CPU prematurely.
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