Question Why Overclock?

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Sorry, I just don't get it. Why overclock? What does it get one? Thanks
A few reasons, IMO.
Budget limitation. Costs had to be cut somewhere. The user tries to compensate by overclocking a lower cost component.
Challenge. Just like any other "racing", for the thrill and ego of "winning" among your peers.
FOMO. Many users see videos on YouTube with overclocking claims and feel they are "missing out".
Lifespan extension. A hardware combination may have been adequate when purchased, but software complexity has progressed and the performance is no longer adequate.
 

Cpt Snake

Commendable
Jan 20, 2022
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What does performance translate into? Faster og on, better video? I just installed new components.

ASUS TUF Gaming Z590 Plus Gaming Motherboard (ATX, 11th/10th Gen Intel Core, LGA 1200 Socket, DDR4, PCIe 4, CFX, M.2 Slots, USB 3.2 Gen 2, DP/HDMI, Mystic Light
Gigabyte GeForce GTX GV-N1080G1 GAMING-8GD
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin SDRAM (PC4-25600) DDR4 3200
Intel Core i5-10600 (base stroke: 3.30GHz; socket: LGA1200; 65 watt
Monitor: Gigabyte G32QC A 32 " 165 Hz 144oP Curved Gaming monitor 2550 x 144
 
What does performance translate into? Faster og on, better video? I just installed new components.

ASUS TUF Gaming Z590 Plus Gaming Motherboard (ATX, 11th/10th Gen Intel Core, LGA 1200 Socket, DDR4, PCIe 4, CFX, M.2 Slots, USB 3.2 Gen 2, DP/HDMI, Mystic Light
Gigabyte GeForce GTX GV-N1080G1 GAMING-8GD
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin SDRAM (PC4-25600) DDR4 3200
Intel Core i5-10600 (base stroke: 3.30GHz; socket: LGA1200; 65 watt
Monitor: Gigabyte G32QC A 32 " 165 Hz 144oP Curved Gaming monitor 2550 x 144
Even if you could oc.....which you can't with those parts....you might open a can-of-worms problem wise.

Focus on ram speed.....think xmp.
Proper bios and drivers.
Don't run unneeded background stuff.
Enjoy.
 

Cpt Snake

Commendable
Jan 20, 2022
82
4
1,535
How many Frames per second does one need in gaming? It seems to vary by the games and scene in the game. Just ran Bench Marks on Averages listed, Tomb Raider; 164 fps, Return of the Tomb Raider: 92 fps. Seems fine to me. What one one expect to gain in fps? I had or have any intention of overclocking. Seems like a waste of money and stress. Just curious as to the WHY?
 

Zerk2012

Titan
Ambassador
OK, I can understand that point of view. (y)
With that board and processor you should enable XMP profile to run your memory at the rated 3200 speed it defaults to a slower speed without doing that.

For the processor it's not a K model so no overclocking, but a decent aftermarket cooler would be recommended anyhow the stock coolers are not very good.

For a video card I never recommend overclocking since most models are factory overclocked not much to gain for the risks involved especially if you don't know what your doing. EDIT if the scaling was 100% then if you were getting 100 FPS already and could even overclock the card 10% over the current boost speed of the card then you would get a whopping 110 FPS not really worth it.

I buy the K processors and overclock a bit nothing craze just a bit of a boost over stock settings because I can and always have, always run the memory at advertised speeds done by enabling XMP profile I buy the speed of memory I would like to run. EDIT I take this back on the memory I have overclocked my memory on the 2 PC's I had before this one but now I just buy the memory speed that I'm going to use.
 
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punkncat

Champion
Ambassador
At this point and IMO, mostly bragging rights in a lot of ways (excluding XMP).
In years past CPU were made with much more overhead available if you were willing to change the operational parameters and extract it. At this point many of the newer generation CPU have 'boost clocks/pbo' that automatically apply changes that the chip operates within very close to its maximum ability for clocks and thermals alongside power consumption.

The last CPU that I own that IMO was worth the time spent to do so are in the first gen Ryzen.
 
Sorry, I just don't get it. Why overclock? What does it get one? Thanks
Personal enjoyment and slightly higher performance. It also gets you a disproportionate amount of heat and power consumption relative to the performance gain. For that reason I don't overclock personally. Modern chips are already clocked so high that there's very little gain to be had in most instances.
 
Sorry, I just don't get it. Why overclock? What does it get one? Thanks
'cause it's fun! ;) I enjoy figuring things out.

E.g. My motherboard is very picky with memory. If I try different memory or reset my memory timings/speed, I actualy have to go through a multi-BIOS visit, step-by-step process to get it to POST and boot at the frequency and timings I run at. I think it's because of the order the motherboard sets things but that's just a wild guess. I can't just set all the settings in one BIOS visit. If I try it will fail to POST 100% of the time. However, if I make the three changes, in a particular order, in three separate reboots to BIOS, it works perfectly afterwards - Memtest86 pass and all.
 
Depends on how you view the math: with an 11900K cpu, based speed is 35. If you activate the automatic turbo mode, if becomes 51 which can be viewed as 46 percent faster. If you overclock, you can get speeds or 53 or 54 (sometimes only on one core) which is 4 to 6 percent faster than plain turbo. So it boils down to how much more does 4 to 6 percent mean to you. If your gaming and getting 80 fps, then you could be getting 84 fps. Would you notice that if there wasn't a fps counter on the screen; probably not. If you're running software that takes 5 minutes to perform a task, and it could take 4 minutes 48 seconds or 4:43 seconds, would you notice that if you weren't watching the clock, and would it matter?
 

Cpt Snake

Commendable
Jan 20, 2022
82
4
1,535
Depends on how you view the math: with an 11900K cpu, based speed is 35. If you activate the automatic turbo mode, if becomes 51 which can be viewed as 46 percent faster. If you overclock, you can get speeds or 53 or 54 (sometimes only on one core) which is 4 to 6 percent faster than plain turbo. So it boils down to how much more does 4 to 6 percent mean to you. If your gaming and getting 80 fps, then you could be getting 84 fps. Would you notice that if there wasn't a fps counter on the screen; probably not. If you're running software that takes 5 minutes to perform a task, and it could take 4 minutes 48 seconds or 4:43 seconds, would you notice that if you weren't watching the clock, and would it matter?

How many Frames per second does one need in gaming? It seems to vary by the games and scene in the game. Just ran Bench Marks on Averages listed, Tomb Raider; 164 fps, Return of the Tomb Raider: 92 fps. Seems fine to me. What one one expect to gain in fps? I had or have any intention of overclocking. Seems like a waste of money and stress. Just curious as to the WHY?
ASUS TUF Gaming Z590 Plus Gaming Motherboard (ATX, 11th/10th Gen Intel Core, LGA 1200 Socket, DDR4, PCIe 4, CFX, M.2 Slots, USB 3.2 Gen 2, DP/HDMI, Mystic Light
Gigabyte GeForce GTX GV-N1080G1 GAMING-8GD
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin SDRAM (PC4-25600) DDR4 3200
Intel Core i5-10600 (base stroke: 3.30GHz; socket: LGA1200; 65 watt
Monitor: Gigabyte G32QC A 32 " 165 Hz 1440P Curved Gaming monitor 2550 x 144
 
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How many Frames per second does one need in gaming? It seems to vary by the games and scene in the game. Just ran Bench Marks on Averages listed, Tomb Raider; 164 fps, Return of the Tomb Raider: 92 fps. Seems fine to me. What one one expect to gain in fps? I had or have any intention of overclocking. Seems like a waste of money and stress. Just curious as to the WHY?
I did try to research this once by searching for valid scientific studies about human reaction times as they relate to video games but I never found anything definitive. So the answer to WHY? would be that gamers think they need more FPS and that they think they have the reaction time to use more FPS to game better.

We could also veer off into the wild world of social commentary: we could speculate that people overclock because they have way too much idle time and need to relieve boredom; that they have way too much disposable income; that its the only way they have a sense of achievement; and other things that I can't think of at the moment.
 
There was a guy here recently whose system supposedly gets 600FPS in some cheesy game.
He wanted more, because he can tell the difference between 600fps and 700fps.

Not a typo....actual continued questioning, he maintained that those numbers.
This was probably one of those guys who, when digital music was created, claimed that he could hear the 44,100 individual samples per second.
 
60 fps is enough. Unless your looking at your monitor thru an old video camera your eyes won't notice the difference above 60.
For some, maybe. Totally untrue for me.
I can see tearing in movement with heavily contrasting objects at over 100FPS.

There were some studies done way back in WWII where veteran pilots were shown a black silloute of particular known enemy planes, against a white background, for less than one one-hundredth of a second. Many were able to identify the plane with 100% accuracy.


For me it's not reaction time per se, it's more the jarring unrealism of screen tearing. Yes, I know, v-sync blah, blah. I just don't like the input delay of vsync. (I really do need to get a g-sync or freesync monitor)
 
That is like asking why would you replace the stock 650cfm carburetor on a 429 SCJ engine with a 1150cfm carburetor.
Because you get 150 extra horsepower and 170fp of torque with an extra 4 degrees of timing offset.
That is almost a 43% overclock for very little effort.

My latest rig I haven't figured out yet.
It seems Ryzen 5600x is pretty much maxed out when you get it.
With PBO and all motherboard overclocking OFF
Single /dual core boost I get 4.65 which is great for folding.
But I get 3.9-4.1 all core boost for flight sims.
With PBO override I can get 4.75 single boost and 3.9-4.1 all core boost. but much higher temps.
I can get 4.5 all core boost @1.28v But loose the higher single/dual core boosts.

More tinkering is needed.

Older processors and "Golden samples were different.
My R5 3600 @4.4all core boost was a no brain er. And is close in performance to the R5 5600x performance. Except single thread.
My P3 1.26@1587 with a highly overclocked Ti4200 held the Mad onion 3D Mark record for about 6 months, and destroyed P4s and Athlons for a while.
My P3 550E @869 was another monster in its day
It is free performance and a fun hobby for some.

With FSB over clocking on the Intel 12 series a 12400 can match a 12900k in lightly threaded games and sometimes beat it with air/ AIO cooling.
Big difference in processor price if all you are doing is gaming.
 
With many years of overclocking and tinkering , I have only had one accident. That way cracking an exposed die processor. A P3 600. Never fried or killed anything overclocking/ overvolting.
Also my computers run 24/7/365 near full load folding so they are 100% stable and overclocked.

Still have the P3 1.26@1587 in the basement.
Still boots and runs.