Overclock or Stock

Associate
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I've been tinkering with computers for approximately 18 years now. I just wondered if anyone else has found them in a similar situation to me in recent times.

When I was younger all I ever seemed to do was overclocking and benching, again and again and again. I probably used the hardware more to do that than anything else, endlessly changing the settings to get ever last few points.

Somewhere in the Core "i" era I feel I completely lost interest in overclocking. I am far more interested in the stability/performance/efficiency relationship than I am in outright performance. On all my systems now the only overclock I have is actually an underclock on my i5 3570k to allow it to run passively.

So to the question.

Who runs there systems at Stock and who overclocks and why?
 
Don
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I think it's a case of outside of gaming, everything is now "fast enough", whereas during the gigahertz wars (e.g. pentium 3/4, Athlon era) then there was actually more of a need for things to be faster (even for day to day stuff like Microsoft Office and other software).

The relative gains were much more noticeable e.g. an extra 200Mhz on a 800Mhz chip was an extra 25% performance - on a 3.5Ghz+ i5 or similar, then an extra 200Mhz is next to nothing.
 
Associate
OP
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I suppose now with so many bottlenecks being removed - RAM, SSDs and CPUs(in some applications) it all kind of feels a bit pointless.

Now with this new boost stuff for GPUs and CPUs it seems the hardware does the large majority of the work for you. Not sure if that's a bad or good thing.
 
Caporegime
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17 Jul 2010
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For me it's even got to the point where I can't be bothered even opening my case to put in the extra 250GB SSD I bought from the MM. It's still sitting on my desk and my current drive only has 30GB free.
 
Associate
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7 Feb 2015
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I have thought about it but until I feel the need to I don't see any reason to other than possible bragging rights if you get lucky.
 
Associate
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Short answer:
forums.overclockers.co.uk

Long answer:
Overclocked CPU always. This 2600k has done me proud, before that the Q6600, before that Athlon 64 3200, before that Athlon 2500 Barton ..

I pick the platform and get the most from it, switchng out everything else first until I absolutely have to upgrade. The Barton, Q6600 and the 2600k have all been great.

GPU I O/C to bench, usually run at stock for game because it can be difficult to get stability 100% of the time. If you play looong sessions, any hiccup can be infuriating.

If I have time to find that stability, I will do it, but generally I have less and less time for it unfortunately.

I can't remember the last time I really played around with RAM timings though.
 
Soldato
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Earth
Depends on the parts. I do overclock most my parts and quiet abit, partly for fun (yeah sad I know) but also extra performance.

Honestly though I think it depends on parts. Right now for example main build uses X99 CPU. Would be mad not to OC it as for daily use is running at 4.6 Ghz vs 3.0 Ghz of base clock speeds and thats with keeping temps and voltages reasonable. Most X99 CPU's would be in a similar situation I expect. An extra 50% + of extra clock speed does make a tangible benefit in plenty of cases and games, more so with SLI.

But that's not to say I disregard stability / noise etc. The CPU above has its own thick 360 mm rad so stays cool and quiet during use. However GPU's in same rig are 1080's FE so for them I do not OC them heavily and while they can go much higher 2100 mhz region, I leave them running in 1900 region as its a nice balance of power and noise.
 
Associate
OP
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Rugby
I suppose part of my problem is that when I buy a new GPU/CPU they are normally(not always) overpowered for what I am currently doing so I don't really need to OC then. When the OC is really needed I normally just upgrade instead as it makes more sense with what is available now. For example I imagine when my GTX1070 can't handle 1080p the 12XX series will be out and the 1270 will be a far more appealing option!
 
Associate
Joined
12 Feb 2013
Posts
75
Short answer:
forums.overclockers.co.uk

Long answer:
Overclocked CPU always. This 2600k has done me proud, before that the Q6600, before that Athlon 64 3200, before that Athlon 2500 Barton ..

Swap out that 2600k for a 2500k and exactly the same here, I always figure I might as well get something that's going to last long enough for the motherboard to expire!

Still clinging on to the 2500k @ 4.8GHz, isn't bottlenecking my 970s but I feel it might be time to retire it come the next GPU upgrade.
 
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