how much overclock is worth doing

Bolerus

Bolerus

Bolerus

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Ok im bored at work so just making conversation.

I have a E6400 running at stock

My board has "safe overclocking "feature, that will take the stock 2.1 up to 2.5

but to be completely honest, I saw no real time difference in speed watsoever, so i set it back to stock.

My question. Other than geek porn (in other words just getting slightly better benchmark scores)
(heard that phrase yesterday and been hoping to find a use for it :P)

at what point does overclocking become noticable

Or is it better, to wait untill aps / games are struggling on your current rig and then oc it to try to get them workign again.

for example when it gets to the point that my chip is slightly below min spec on agame, OC it back over again.
 
It's so easy to do the real question should be whats the point of not overclocking? Even if overclocking isn't really your thing you should still aim for 3.0ghz then leave it
 
but what is the point if you dont see any real time difference.


if you are into geting better and better 3dmark scores, then go for it.

but i said, at what amount of overclock does it take for it to become noticble, I have only oced by a safe 400 mhz and saw no visible improvement.


have to say, i am surprised bythe lack of response to this thread, is it a case of nobody has seen a visible difference so they dont want to start talking about 2gig oced machines
 
your answer will depend upon what you use your compoter for.

if you only use it for word processing the any OC is pointless, however if you use it for tasks that require more processign power then OC as far as you can without killign anything
 
Im no expert and never tried water cooling. i used to just take mine as high it would go prime stable on stock volts. I dont have my desktop anymore but my e6600 used to hit 3gz no problem.
 
Stock Volts [nearly ;)], Stock Cooling, E6750 = 3.4 gHz :D

And to answer your question, yes you will see a noticable difference around the 3 gHz mark, thats basically nearly added 50% more proccessing power to you rig :D
 
I fold on mine, The more ghz the better. I overclock because I can. Even my server is folding and its from a 3.0 to a 3.15. Its only slight, but the heat is too great to do anything else.
 
Firstly the E6400 is a good workhorse chip at stock for most tasks.
But you also have the advantage that it clocks well both up and down.

If your day to day use is web / word processing / e-mail any C2D chip is over kill.
As such you can underclock it for reducted power consumption, heat output and reduced noise (will run passive with right cpu cooler)

If you work with images or video then even a 'safe overclock' of 400hz could cut minutes off renders or encoding work.

It sounds like underclocking to reduce your electric bill without any significant impact on work productivity is the way forward.
 
N1ghthawk97 said:
Ok but would an extra 1ghz on my e8400 be any more beneficial to me?
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As stated above, it depends on what you use it for. Overclocking gives many advantages such as more frames, better encoding etc etc. You only have to read a decent processor review to see this. I think for the most part though, people do it because they can .. I.e., because it's a challenge.

From my perspective (i'll be overclocking my latest build on the weekend), i just want my PC running at it's best.
 
in my situation.

I do a lot of photoshop / image manipulation and i play games (cod4 runs with no problems on my stock cpu and 8800 gt).

I was askign the question as a general one, not specific to me, simply because i was curious.

And like i said i did do a little overclock, and yeah I saw differinces in so much as improved scores, and a "slightly" faster photoshop horse render (you know the test everybody does in the photography section).

Im not asking if overclocking makes a difference, but rather how far do you have to go before you FEEL a difference (somebody above said 3gig)

I sometimes get the feeling (and to be honest SOME peoples response to this thread reinforces the feeling) that some people overclock their rigs, just because its the 'in' thing to do, and not to gain any kind of gain. Of course that is their perogotive, I just want to know if it is going to be worthwile reading through the 'virtual' reams of info needed to learn to OC or if hours later, im going to be looking at my pc thinking, ok that says my cpu is running 3gig , but so what
 
If your pc is used for F@H or Seti etc a 100hz overclock equals more points so it's noticeable.

If your pc is used for gaming (8800GT) ocing your cpu has little visable effect below a 30-40% oc (where as oc your gpu will - especially with a large screen)

If your pc is used for general tasks, the stock speed is already overkill so a 50% oc (3.15) will be needed to notice any differance.

and a "slightly" faster photoshop horse render (you know the test everybody does in the photography section).
Click to expand...
I don't know this test - does it take over a minute if not you'll not see much differance - I have a 10% OC on my workstation and i notice when preping a flythrough (few minutes less on 30mins of processing) so if video encoding or rendering all day long a 20% oc should be clearly noticable on long tasks
 
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Ha ha 400mhz that made me laugh, I bought when they first came out a p3 450 that had 50mhz more than your overclock.

just to put it into perspective
 
shadowscotland, thanks for that, that is a good answer.

and in complete contrast mattyg , very constructive!!!!
 
for a long time i ran everything at stock, i was a bit scared to overclock anything but gradually i started to pick up the knowledge of how to go about it, im primarily a gamer and ive noticed an improvement in games with my cpu and vid card overclocked. i think any performance increase particularly when its free is no bad thing.
 
Bolerus said:
and in complete contrast mattyg , very constructive!!!!
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Thanks for the sarcasm

My point however was 450mhz seemed very very fast back in the day.
And 450mhz is no slower today
So 400mhz would make a differance surely otherwise. why would(apart from the people who must have the latest) they sell:E2180-E2200
E6550-E6750
E8200-E8400-E8500
Each with less than 400mhz increase.

But to sum up 1mhz is worth it to some hardcore clockers
 
mattyg said:
Thanks for the sarcasm

My point however was 450mhz seemed very very fast back in the day.
And 450mhz is no slower today
So 400mhz would make a differance surely otherwise. why would(apart from the people who must have the latest) they sell:E2180-E2200
E6550-E6750
E8200-E8400-E8500
Each with less than 400mhz increase.

But to sum up 1mhz is worth it to some hardcore clockers
Click to expand...

nice clocks on your rig mattyg, ive found overclocking to be a lot of fun, ive had my dual core e6600 @3740mhz on air cooling, im changing to a quad and a new 780i mobo so that gives me a new combo to play with, might add another 8800gts just t see how things go:)
 
The rig in my sig is my first overclocked machine, and I wacked it up 600mhz straight out of the box without even testing or thinking about it....its never even been run at standard speed apart from the first hour or so of its life when I installed windows aand did a quick temperature check. :D

Thats the beauty of these newer chips, with a bit of reading you quickly get an idea for whats expected and whats starting to push it.
I did do a fair bit of reading, mainly here, and was confident enough as I had an idea of what to do beforehand.

Thats why I have to think twice and bite my tounge when I hear people talking about Vista being a resource-hog, my initial responce is " WTF? its slick as you like, what are you going on about" :p
 
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