Does a higher CPU overclock = More FPS?

Twirlywoos · 23 Nov 2012 at 12:57

I'm hoping some of the resident gurus can explain the following:

1) Does a higher CPU overclock = More FPS?
2) When do you realize that your CPU is bottle-necking your GPU?

Because I was unhappy with the performance of Hitman Absolution so I decided to run some tests thinking that it was driver related, but to my astonishment after overclocking an i5 3570k to 4.5Ghz I achieved 10FPS more. :eek:

Hitman Benchmark. All Ultra, 4MSAA, 1080P, DOF: High. GTX670 1280OC, i5 3570k @ stock

Driver 306.97

SLI Disabled: 36.96
SLI: 42.29

Driver 310.54

SLI Disabled: 37.07
SLI: 58.80

Driver 310.61

SLI Disabled: 41.81
SLI: 57.20

When overclocking to 4.5Ghz

SLI: 68.45

Would an even higher overclock on the CPU (4.6-4.7Ghz) result in better performance?

hyperst · 23 Nov 2012 at 13:05

Yeah to an extent, I went from 4.5Ghz to 4.6Ghz, I gained 1 fps and more heat on the CPU, just wasn't worth it in BF3, I would imagine though all games will benefit differently, the largest boost I got was overclocking the GPU's by 100Mhz = 10 fps more

Rooster212 · 25 Nov 2012 at 11:30

It generally increases your minimum FPS, not the overall FPS, but there might be a performance boost to be had.

~>Dg<~ · 25 Nov 2012 at 12:14

some games will benefit quite a bit some wont

Jay85 · 25 Nov 2012 at 12:27

i found with my 680 @+150 core and +150 memory and i5 3570K @4.7ghz

Minimum fps was around 59fps
Maximum fps to be around 78fps

That's for the hitman benchmark btw.

joeyjojo · 25 Nov 2012 at 20:02

If it's really bad you might be able to tell by looking at usage. Monitor CPU and GPU usage in a game - if one is maxed out and one has low usage, there's your bottleneck. Not sure if it works like this in reality.