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i5 2500k - is OC worth it for gaming?

I'm thinking of buying a standard i5 2500k with the intention of clocking at a later date but I did wonder if it's even necessary. Surely 3.3GHz is fast enough for most applications at the moment.
 
I'm thinking of buying a standard i5 2500k with the intention of clocking at a later date but I did wonder if it's even necessary. Surely 3.3GHz is fast enough for most applications at the moment.

It seems to be as far as I'm concerned. It's just fun to see how high the fps can go though.
 
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?

Zotac 480 amp
 
Provided you have a kentsfield or wolfsdale or above, any game will run fine these days provided you have decent GFX setup.

I don;t think 4GHz quads will see a great deal of use in the game world for another 3-5 years.

Also consoles are really slowing down PC game development IMO...though I do love my 360.
 
Get some FSX on the go, you'll notice it then!

Seriously though, BC2 is improved by extra cpu grunt. Higher min fps I noticed
 
Dont get the whole Black-ops is a mega CPU hog thing, been running silky smooth for me [email protected] and 5850. No stuttering no slow downs. Then again im not one of the hummingbird/human hybrids that can tell as soon as a game drops below 100fps, tho I do notice the 30 vs 60 fps difference, and im pretty sure black ops never dipped under 30 and most certainly was hanging around 50/60 most of the time.
 
GTA4 is a very CPU intensive game. I remember when i had a e7400 running at 3.6ghz i was getting an average of 30fps. but now i got my 2500k running at 4.5ghz, im getting over 60fps with the GPU (gtx 275) running at stock. Hope this helps.
 
GTA4 is a very CPU intensive game. I remember when i had a e7400 running at 3.6ghz i was getting an average of 30fps. but now i got my 2500k running at 4.5ghz, im getting over 60fps with the GPU (gtx 275) running at stock. Hope this helps.

Reason enough for me to get GTA4 installed again ta :D

What do you get with the 2500K on stock clocks?

I've got a GTX460 BTW and on the Q9550 at 4GHz would get 30-40fps with al settings up. (1920x1200).
 
If you want to see if a game benefits from CPU power then you sohuld benchmark with RTS and MMORPG games because these can be quite CPU intensive. I recommend trying coh by launching it with the -novsync commandline switch and then max everything out and try doing a FRAPS benchmark off a recorded game. (The inbuilt benchmark isn't reliable as it tests moer of the graphics while in game slowdowns happen mostly cos of CPU).

If you don't mind please do edit your first post with your findings (other people's findings) because I think this is a very useful and relevant topic. Sandybridge on average shows something like a 10FPS boost last gen intel processors (often more. compare anandbench Core i3 540 vs the new sandybridge i3 in games like WoW. FPS gain is huge.) I'd really like to know if these sandybridge processors gain anything at all in games from overclocks. It would be interesting to also figure out if Sandybridge stock clock vs comparable OCed lynnfield/clarkdale etc end up with equal performance.
 
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Metro and Unigine are both GPU intensive so I would try something else first before making a judgement.


Try the arrowhead demo on steam. Very cpu reliant game, can use 6 cores even - lots of AI and high poly dynamic lit models
Set the view distance to 10 kilometers

Reason enough for me to get GTA4 installed again ta

Dual core barely gets me 20fps if I try normal graphics. Also Bad Company saps the cpu

pointless to even try that, something from 2009 at the very least.
I even found the donkey kong of fps, BF2 will sap the cpu when 128 people are on the server with modded higher res models but I think that is mostly single threaded

Its not the max fps that matters, min fps can drop to mid teens at critical times. Not sure if that happens in CSS but with custom maps and a full server maybe


Another thing OC would allow is in game fraps movie recording at full 1080p res. That needs a lot of bandwidth on top.
 
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