Is overclocking still worth it?

[clv101]

I've overclocked all my desktops in the past, on air without anything too fancy:

Pentium 60 - @66MHz +10%
Pentium 150 - @187.5MHz +25%
Celeron 300A - @450MHz +50%
Thunderbird 1GHz - @1.4GHz +40%
E4200 (1.8GHz) - @3.2GHz +78%

In many of these cases the overclock matched the performance of a CPU significantly more powerful, and more than twice the price.

These days however, with all the automatic variation of clock speeds boost frequencies etc there doesn't seem anything like as much potential for improvement. Do many people still bother to routinely overclock the CPUs? What sort of improvements are seen?

Is overclocking the GPU a thing these days?

 

[clv101]

This a very old question, and my answer has always been: we don't do it because it is worth it, we do it because it is fun.

Historically, I certainly overclocked because it was worth it, my P150 at 187MHz on a 75MHz FSB outperformed the then top end 200MHz Pentium in most applications. The ~£50 Celeron 300A was close to the £250 Pentium II 450 etc.

I'm not seeing those sorts of gains from overclocking say a Ryzen 5 3600?

 

[clv101]

My point is I'm part of your 'we', and for me it was about it being worth it.