Has the age of overclocking and chasing numbers ended?

[Gray2233]

Overclocking hasn't been worth it for years for most.

Undervolting actually gets better gains in many scenarios, for enthusiasts there's still ways to play with things but the game has changed heavily. Messing with RAM speeds and timings was popular to get the most out of Zen 2 as an example.

You're never going to get worthy gains out of an overclock regardless, the powers that be realised that there was a lot of power to be had and incorporated that into their designs.

 

[Bito]

Just put together a system for my son - 13600k; MSI Z790 Tomahawk and Kingston DDR5-5600.
Not much to be gained nowadays from the CPU, but a small overclock and undervolt done, then as a hobbyist, had some more 'fun' overclocking the RAM

 

[pre]

Moore's Law persisted long enough that the base level of performance is now at a consumer level more than reasonable - that even enthusiasts don't need to eek out that 5% at exponential increase in power/cooling. So yes.

 

[D-Ranged]

I've had my current system for about 6+ years now, and have never overclocked it, or had the need too, even now it works great.

Back in the day I overclocked everything

 

[CaptainRAVE]

I miss the days of sticking a huge cooler on there, changing a couple of numbers, gaining a sizeable clock and a big performance boost, back in the day when clock was king. Heck, it could make the difference between running and not running a game back in the early pentium/athlon days.

 

[ooStevo]

I miss the days of sticking a huge cooler on there, changing a couple of numbers, gaining a sizeable clock and a big performance boost, back in the day when clock was king. Heck, it could make the difference between running and not running a game back in the early pentium/athlon days.

Back in the day I had a e6300. At stock crysis was pretty unplayable,but at 3.8ghz it was amazing. It was 1280x1024 but it was still badass lol. I was addicted to COD 4 back then as well. To be young again........

 

[SpellowHouse]

Seems to me it has..

Undervolting for the same FPS in games to run cool and fast to save power and heat.

I'm talking about gaming here, not heavy compute stuff...

What I find really funny, is when I first mentioned "saving power" people laughed at me. Amazing how things have changed.

 

[ATIorNvidia]

Overclocking is dead, long live undervolting.

RAM overclocking is still very much worth it, but time consuming.

 

[Personality+]

Just the most basic of overclocks on my GPU these days, and that's purely because the GPU was designed to let me do that in the first place.

 

[ooStevo]

Overclocking is dead, long live undervolting.

RAM overclocking is still very much worth it, but time consuming.

I have 3600 ram (Sig) is it worth bothering with it? Tbh I built the PC ages ago and I haven't even installed windows. But I did boot into the bios once and it read 2333 or 2166 can't quite remember. I'm assuming that's what XMP is for?

 

[ATIorNvidia]

I have 3600 ram (Sig) is it worth bothering with it? Tbh I built the PC ages ago and I haven't even installed windows. But I did boot into the bios once and it read 2333 or 2166 can't quite remember. I'm assuming that's what XMP is for?

You should enable XMP at the very least yeah, that will get your RAM running at advertised speed. Anything more in your case wouldn't be worth it as you have a GT 1030 and RAM tuning is mainly for the purpose increasing FPS when CPU limited.

 

[ooStevo]

You should enable XMP at the very least yeah, that will get your RAM running at advertised speed. Anything more in your case wouldn't be worth it as you have a GT 1030 and RAM tuning is mainly for the purpose increasing FPS when CPU limited.

Yeah that makes sense. I do want a better GPU but I just can't afford it. My 3 kids cleaned me out this Christmas. I'd be happy with a 1050ti or a 1060. But could be worse. I'm not complaining. I love playing emulators for GameCube and Dreamcast etc but upgrading to 4k has the GPU on the redline even just running Sky GO.

 

[AgedIdiot]

Do not overclock anymore - undervolt yes - but overclock no.

It could be argued I expect that undervolting is a type of overclocking but to me it is not - just saving energy.

 

[SamyBoy13]

I don't think you can do much nowadays. Most of it is automated and pretty bang on point when it comes to gpu/cpu overclock. Sure you can tweak it but I don't think it is worth it if you put your time and time to stress test the overclock. I love the fact that I used to do it myself and looked like a IT guys now a 10 year old is cable of pressing oc button. I'm just jealous that I'm no longer needed to fix anyone's computers other than mine

 

[GR63]

Depends if you collect older hardware. I have some GPUs for specific uses and some just to play with. I nearly always OC and UV them and if possible write a modded BIOS to lock those in. Last was a Radeon W4300 and I got over 70% frame boost on the OC only increasing power usage overall by under 5W...

Has to be done. Any true nerd wants those last few % points

 

[ooStevo]

Depends if you collect older hardware. I have some GPUs for specific uses and some just to play with. I nearly always OC and UV them and if possible write a modded BIOS to lock those in. Last was a Radeon W4300 and I got over 70% frame boost on the OC only increasing power usage overall by under 5W...

Has to be done. Any true nerd wants those last few % points

You can write modded bio's? That's impressive.

 

[willhub]

I remember my Radeon 9600 Non Pro if I remember the core overclocked to twice its normal speed, and ran HL2 very well at max settings.

 

[Dreadi]

I do miss the old days have an AMD opteron under phase cooling, but then again the price electricity is now adays..

I loved my old opteron....can't remember the number ( was it 180) ..cabge serial and a serious overclocker. Used to sit with the windows open and the case on a chest of draws Infront of them in winter to gets the temps low


I think, with the introduction of an x3d cpu, the overclocking days are dying for me for sure.
I overclocked my 5800x both pbo and hard overclock and did full manual tuning of the micron e die ram I had and loved it, but now even overclocking the ram on AM5 is pretty pointless...

But it's definitely not fully dead. I'm in a discord with some crazy intel owners who are pushing their stuff to the limits and I love to see it but for me, I think I'm over it... although I did set the highest GPU score for a 4080 on timespy the other day

 

[Neil79]

 

[HeX]

Had a lot of fun over the years over clocking; some bonkers performance gains were to be had. But with modern setups there just doesn't seem to be the need, or the benefit from bothering. Most components now are already set to (or will scale automatically to) their limits, or close enough to that unless you really need that last 5% it's just not worth the effort.

Gone are the days of buying a mid range GPU/CPU, slapping a 50% overclock and a fat cooler and matching a component worth twice the cost.