• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

i5 2500k - is OC worth it for gaming?

Nubins

Nubins

Nubins

Associate
Joined
11 Mar 2011
Posts
15
Hi all,

I got a new rig built earlier in the week, I've been playing around and experimenting a lot, I've just been doing some comparisons in gaming between stock speeds (3.3ghz) and my OC speeds (4.6ghz)

Here's my setup:

Asus P67 Sabertooth Intel P67 B3 Revision
2x Asus ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC 2048MB Crossfire
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz
Corsair HX 850W
8GB Corsair Vengeance Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz
Corsair H70

Basically I ran a few gaming benchmarks:

Metro 2033 Benchmark - 1920x1200 DX11, Very High, AAA, 4x AF (3 passes)

Differential of 1fps between 3.3ghz and 4.6ghz

Unigine Heaven Benchmark - 1920x1200 DX11, High, Extreme Tessellation, 16xAF 8xAA

3.3ghz - 856
4.6ghz - 864

On the Metro benchmark as you can the difference is essentially non existant, however roughly 10% points increase in the unigine score.

Just thinking is it really worth OC'ing my CPU if I'm only getting these kind of results? Even though I'm yet to flash my 6950's this rig is still pretty much flattening any game that I throw at it currently.

Has anyone else looked into this at all?
 
lol yes I do mean less than 1%! :P

Any ideas on what other games might be worth trying? Only other games I really play are Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Starcraft 2

Gonna do some testing on Crysis 2 when it drops

In fairness though I would have thought that most games are gonna be GPU intensive, from benchmarks I've seen running the same cards on different processors the difference does seem to be marginal.

Might just leave it at standard clock speeds for now until I get to a point where I feel like I need that extra CPU power
 
Nubins said:
lol yes I do mean less than 1%! :P

Any ideas on what other games might be worth trying? Only other games I really play are Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Starcraft 2

Gonna do some testing on Crysis 2 when it drops

In fairness though I would have thought that most games are gonna be GPU intensive, from benchmarks I've seen running the same cards on different processors the difference does seem to be marginal.

Might just leave it at standard clock speeds for now until I get to a point where I feel like I need that extra CPU power
Click to expand...

Try the Total War games. Bad Company 2 is supposed to be quite cpu intensive as well.

To be honest Metro 2033 and Uniengine at those settings are probably the most GPU bound tests you could try :p.

I mean Metro is just a linear shooter so not much cpu work there and uniengine is essentially a static world rendered by your graphics card!
 
Interesting. I may be wrong but the new Call of Duty Black Ops is, I believe, very cpu dependant. Maybe there is a demo you could download to conduct tests..
 
I can't see the point in overclocking the new i5 and i7 chips either.
Both the 2500k and 2600k perform fantastically at stock speeds (for gaming)
The main reason to go for the 'k' version is so that an overclock will be possible in the future.
 
That's why for a lot of people who already have something like a Core i5 750 it's not worth upgrading to anything faster if gaming is the main use.

I'm still finding this Core i3 540 which I run at 3.8Ghz copes very well with every game I play with my HD 6870.
 
Try different benchmarks - those two are two of the most GPU intensive benchmarks around.
 
Try something like ARM:II or GTA 4 both CPU intensive games.

Overclocking is free and you have to think of the other benefits of it. Like general system perfomance.
Obivously when it comes to games overclock your gpu will bring better results.
 
Not really, as you know most games are console ports that can be run on a modest 3 core cpu, your Sandybridge (like the 9 series I7s) is total overkill for a gaming build, people always bring out the 4 games that benefit from a fast CPU but to be honest any modern quad can play them ok.
But it would be a crime not to clock it.
 
Plenty of games benefit from faster CPUs, especially strategy - Civ V, Total War etc. In all but the most GPU-bound games, the latest processors with a zippy OC will also help minimum frame rates too.
 
2x 6950 and a 2500k at stock will destroy any game these days.

Resolution is a big one too, try adding a second or third monitor and get eyefinity going and you'll see the difference because it has to throw around so much more data.
 
lol

@ stock the game will run at like 600fps, pointless to even try that, something from 2009 at the very least.
Click to expand...

Its ok to laugh but maybe you should try it first then " IF"!! if your right laugh. It has a benchmark test that is limited to 300fps but if in console you put the code fps_max 999 taking it to a max fps of 999fps you will find a good cpu will make a world of difference.

I'll try it on my 2600k today later as well from stock to 4.8 and recored the increase in fps.
 
Last edited:
Call of Duty BlackOps would be a good one to try. Due to the coding error that uses all the CPU and very little of the graphics card, this will give you a good idea.

When I o/c'd my Q6600 from 2.4 to 3, BlackOps still used close to 100%, but just made the game run better.
 
mr griffin said:
Its ok to laugh but maybe you should try it first then " IF"!! if your right laugh. It has a benchmark test that is limited to 300fps but if in console you put the code fps_max 999 taking it to a max fps of 999fps you will find a good cpu will make a world of difference.

I'll try it on my 2600k today later as well from stock to 4.8 and recored the increase in fps.
Click to expand...

dude i play the game, with a 2500K @ stock and a 4850, it runs at full settings, on a Full HD monitor at 600fps.

on a 2600K with 2 much more powerful graphics cards than mine, i think @ stock would easily beat the games limit.

it is a pointless test for him, what graphics card are you running?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom