Does 'extreme' o'clocking serve a major purpose at this point?

[aigomorla]

How many people even game on the PC anymore? It isn't even a good experience outside of Steam/Blizzard games. Most of the games these days are just poorly done console ports. If you want to stretch your gaming dollar, you can find an Xbox 360 for $150. Unless you have multiple monitors, the graphics on the XBOX are going to be about as good as what you get on the PC anyway, seeing as how developers rarely even bother to make games which actually take advantage of high end graphics chips. EPIC right now is more interested in developing for the iPad than in the PC. I stuck to my PC guns and skipped this generation of consoles, but now I feel that when the PS4/Xbox 720 come out, I would probably just buy one of them instead of a new video card.


OT taltamir, but on what OS do you have ZFS running?

Uhh... and you what do you think people usually buy a 980X with 580GTX in SLI for?

And no, Console games only have 30fps display.
And if you gamed on high settings with AA blown up, there is no contest on quality of a pure raw gaming PC.

 

[grimpr]

Uhh... and you what do you think people usually buy a 980X with 580GTX in SLI for?

And no, Console games only have 30fps display.
And if you gamed on high settings with AA blown up, there is no contest on quality of a pure raw gaming PC.

With that sad console textures and artistic homogenization filtered to the console crowd and demographics, its a lost cause and money, we need a revolution in PC gaming.

 

[Tsavo]

So, what's your take on this?

It's a hobby for many, and that alone is explanation enough.

 

[MustangSVT]

well, I do think that most overclock is probably for games and bragging.

However, its not always for games and the gains in 3d rendering are quite substantial.

 

[martixy]

Overclocking doesn't help in games, basically. Buy a new video card if you aren't getting good performance.

A fast CPU will help you in Starcraft and Civilization, but thats about it. Just about any shooter game at 1080p will be bottlenecked by the video card.

Indeed.
Same 2 titles immediately popped up when I saw CPU and games in one sentence. SC2's pathing is a marvel to behold and the complexity of Civ5 big enough.
And games like this rarely find home on a console of any kind.
With that in mind I remain forever I die-hard PC gamer.

 

[drizek]

Uhh... and you what do you think people usually buy a 980X with 580GTX in SLI for?

And no, Console games only have 30fps display.
And if you gamed on high settings with AA blown up, there is no contest on quality of a pure raw gaming PC.

I think people buy a system like that for bragging rights and not much else. Why do you think AMD is introducing EyeFinity? Because their cards are several times as powerful as the games actually require for a single monitor. My HD 4830 is relatively ancient, but there is no way I can justify spending $200 on a new card that gives me little more than better FPS at the same maxed out quality settings.

There was a time when having the best actually meant something. Games like Half Life 2 were a revolution and having the best card meant you could experience them in all their glory.

Nowadays all you get when you buy newer stuff is 1080p instead of 720p, 4xAA instead of none and not much else. The Playstation 3 has what is essentially a glorified 7800GTX in it. How many PC games are there that look appreciably better on the PC than on the PS3/Xbox? The higher res is great, but it isn't that big of a difference. Look at hte difference between HL1 and HL2, its a lot more than just resolution, AA and FPS.

Don't get me wrong, there are some great PC-targeted games out there, but most stuff is built to work on a 7800gtx and then you can buy a 580GTX SLI if you want to play it on 6 different screens simultaneously.

 

[endlessmike133]

crysis and metro 2033 blow every console game out the water

and even console to pc ports are always gonna be looking significantly better on pc so youre argument is moot

 

[taltamir]

OT taltamir, but on what OS do you have ZFS running?

Updated my signature.

How many people even game on the PC anymore? It isn't even a good experience outside of Steam/Blizzard games. Most of the games these days are just poorly done console ports. If you want to stretch your gaming dollar, you can find an Xbox 360 for $150. Unless you have multiple monitors, the graphics on the XBOX are going to be about as good as what you get on the PC anyway, seeing as how developers rarely even bother to make games which actually take advantage of high end graphics chips. EPIC right now is more interested in developing for the iPad than in the PC. I stuck to my PC guns and skipped this generation of consoles, but now I feel that when the PS4/Xbox 720 come out, I would probably just buy one of them instead of a new video card.

We repeat this discussion about 3 times a week.

1. More people game on PC than any other platform.
2. It is a great experience outside of Steam/Blizzard... higher quality graphics, smoother FPS, and mouse and keyboard support (While still allowing you to use a controller should you wish). Not to mention save anywhere and other such wonderful features.
3. an Xbox360 costs way more than 150$. 199$ for "crippled edition", 299$ for usable edition (aka, have a HDD); and don't forget the live subscription. Amusingly, a fully capable PS3 is actually cheaper than a fully capable xbox360. The only reason to buy an arcade edition xbox for 199$ is if yours RRODed out of warranty and you need a replacement.
4. tons of developers still make PC games, or multiplatform games that look better on PC.
5. the xbox360 and PS3 are both vastly inferior to any DX10+ card on the market. They are limited to 720p and 30fps and their GPU's and CPUs are pathetically weak in comparison to modern PCs... The xbox360 has 512MB of ram... which is the same or LESS then top of the line cell phones!
6. EPIC is irrelevant.
7. Feel free to buy whatever you want.

Consoles have their place and their use, and there is certainly reason to buy them. A well rounded gamer would likely have a gaming PC and several consoles.
If you really wish to discuss this, see this (most recent) thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2131829

 

[smakme7757]

I overclock purely for the enjoyment of it. I even go on hwbot.org and post up my greatest results . It's my hobby and that's that! I mean you can compare it to people who tune a car to drive at insanely fast speeds when driving at those speeds isn't even legal. No real value in it, but it's fun and gives gratification.

A stock 2600K @ stock is an awesome so you would net more gains overclocking an older Core 2 Quad or Phenom II.

Updated my signature.


We repeat this discussion about 3 times a week.

1. More people game on PC than any other platform.
2. It is a great experience outside of Steam/Blizzard... higher quality graphics, smoother FPS, and mouse and keyboard support (While still allowing you to use a controller should you wish). Not to mention save anywhere and other such wonderful features.
3. an Xbox360 costs way more than 150$. 199$ for "crippled edition", 299$ for usable edition (aka, have a HDD); and don't forget the live subscription. Amusingly, a fully capable PS3 is actually cheaper than a fully capable xbox360. The only reason to buy an arcade edition xbox for 199$ is if yours RRODed out of warranty and you need a replacement.
4. tons of developers still make PC games, or multiplatform games that look better on PC.
5. the xbox360 and PS3 are both vastly inferior to any DX10+ card on the market. They are limited to 720p and 30fps and their GPU's and CPUs are pathetically weak in comparison to modern PCs... The xbox360 has 512MB of ram... which is the same or LESS then top of the line cell phones!
6. EPIC is irrelevant.
7. Feel free to buy whatever you want.

Consoles have their place and their use, and there is certainly reason to buy them. A well rounded gamer would likely have a gaming PC and several consoles.
If you really wish to discuss this, see this (most recent) thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2131829

Also keep in mind that for most families it's more cost effective to buy a console. My family will always have PCs in the house capable of gaming, because i'm very much into technology. But a lot of people i know just buy a console as it's as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Turn it on and play your games. No need to worry about driver issues or 'Can i play it on my PC'. So i really do understand why most non technical families just buy an Xbox, Wii, or Playstation 3.

Most of my mates have jumped to Xbox/PS3 as they really didn't have the patience to worry about keeping their PC gaming viable.

 

[Edrick]

With my setup below, I have no issues at all playing BFBC2, SC2, LOTRO @ 1920x1080 with at least 60fps. Even running a SB @ stock got me where I wanted to be. Sure I could have paid $40 more for a 2600k. But if I wanted more FPS, I would have bought a GTX580 instead.

And going from an i5 750@3.3 to a SB 2600@3.9 only had a minimal impact on gaming. Huge impact on other applications however.

 

[steve wilson]

I overclocked my c2d e6600 from 2.4 to 3.1GHZ and it breathed new life into my PC and enabled me to hold off on my upgrade until SB came out. It made a huge difference to me. Now I do have a 2500k, which I haven't OC'd yet because I'm going to let the real enthusiasts work out what's best and then use a guide to do it. Otherwise I'll probably blow it up and after 5 years of waiting to upgrade, I don't wanna risk it.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I'd be happy with no overclock in all honestly. At the resolution I play, the difference between stock and ~4.5 ghz is 1-2 fps on my 2500k and HD 6870 on most games. I do see a pretty decent improvement in my video encoding times, but just upgrading to SB already broke the barrier for same-day encode vs overnight encode. I wish like hell I could use quick sync.

 

[nOOky]

Farmville looks so much better after I overclocked my cpu and gpu, it isn't funny ; )
I could probably live with the stock clocks on everything, but it's more of a hobby than an actual need.
I am playing through Crysis a second time with my recently upgraded system, and sitting there with everything cranked for a change looking beautiful and fluid is a nice experience.

I remember Quake 2 being the game where fps really seemed to matter, and it got me and a lot of friends into the upgrade cycle. Quake 3 was another one that drove people to maintain 120 fps and it took a lot of hardware at the time, and I remember each cpu/gpu upgrade as a fond memory.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So if you send back incorrect WUs, they will know? I always thought that you shouldn't do it because they would actually use the bad WUs during their research.

Most DC projects use a "quorum" system. That means that they actually issue WUs twice or even three times, to different people/systems, and if the results coming back to them match, then the result is deemed good.

It may seem inefficient to have to compute everything twice, but that redundancy is needed to ensure correctness of results with a distributed system.

 

[VirtualLarry]

And then, once you've done all that, you have a system with terrible performance/watt compared to a stock system.

This much is indeed true.

 

[taltamir]

Most DC projects use a "quorum" system. That means that they actually issue WUs twice or even three times, to different people/systems, and if the results coming back to them match, then the result is deemed good.

It may seem inefficient to have to compute everything twice, but that redundancy is needed to ensure correctness of results with a distributed system.

to be honest, it would be a good idea to do so on a single system too.

 

[drizek]

Updated my signature.


We repeat this discussion about 3 times a week.

1. More people game on PC than any other platform.
2. It is a great experience outside of Steam/Blizzard... higher quality graphics, smoother FPS, and mouse and keyboard support (While still allowing you to use a controller should you wish). Not to mention save anywhere and other such wonderful features.
3. an Xbox360 costs way more than 150$. 199$ for "crippled edition", 299$ for usable edition (aka, have a HDD); and don't forget the live subscription. Amusingly, a fully capable PS3 is actually cheaper than a fully capable xbox360. The only reason to buy an arcade edition xbox for 199$ is if yours RRODed out of warranty and you need a replacement.
4. tons of developers still make PC games, or multiplatform games that look better on PC.
5. the xbox360 and PS3 are both vastly inferior to any DX10+ card on the market. They are limited to 720p and 30fps and their GPU's and CPUs are pathetically weak in comparison to modern PCs... The xbox360 has 512MB of ram... which is the same or LESS then top of the line cell phones!
6. EPIC is irrelevant.
7. Feel free to buy whatever you want.

Consoles have their place and their use, and there is certainly reason to buy them. A well rounded gamer would likely have a gaming PC and several consoles.
If you really wish to discuss this, see this (most recent) thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2131829

2. Games For Windows Live. SecURom. "Please insert CD", etc. etc. I refuse to purchase games outside of Steam/Blizzard at this point, and GFWL still manages to mess up a lot of Steam games as well.

3. I've seen deals/bundles where it comes out to about$150. My point is that they are really cheap now.

4. Better, sure, but,

5. are they enough better to justify consuming several times as much resources on a PC? In almost all cases, no. Games like GT4 for example performed horribly on the PC, despite their mediocre graphics. The fact is that developers just aren't interested in the platform anymore. They don't optimize the games and they let MS put their Windows Live garbage all over it. There aren't many games out there that actually justify owning a 6970 (which probably explains why AMD seems to have not bothered much with the 6000 series as a whole).You can stress a card all you like by running at really high AA and resolution, but that isn't making the textures and models any better.

6. EPIC absolutely does matter. They used to push the graphics boundary on the PC, but they don't care anymore. Now they are working on the iPad, as is iD and so are the Crysis people. I'll be honest, I spend more time gaming on my iPad these days than I do on my PC.

I think PC gaming will get better in about 2 years, when the next generation of consoles are released and developers actually start building games designed to run at 1080p and to use modern graphics card features.

 

[Throckmorton]

What amazes me is how many people still don't test their overclocks with Prime/Orthos/Memtest. They have no idea if their processors are doing bad calculations. They think "stable" is good enough.

So not only is overclocking useless for most applications, but it has a big downside for a lot of apps, especially ones that do use processing power like F@H.

I'd like to see a game that is bottlenecked by a mid-high range i7 quad core at stock clocks!

 

[deimos3428]

I overclock because I like watching the computer suddenly lockup and/or reboot. Teaches the little ah heck not to get cocky.

 

[jimhsu]

Indeed.
Same 2 titles immediately popped up when I saw CPU and games in one sentence. SC2's pathing is a marvel to behold and the complexity of Civ5 big enough.
And games like this rarely find home on a console of any kind.
With that in mind I remain forever I die-hard PC gamer.

A relatively extreme example would be something like Distant Worlds, which uses literally no GPU power but is STILL bottlenecked by an overclocked quad core 2500K. (I'm sure taltamir can relate). It's simply an immense amount of work trying to simulate thousands of planets with thousands of elements each, tens of thousands of ships, and having it somehow fit on the screen in real time. Many RTSes and wargames in general are CPU bottlenecked; usually single core, but some games are starting to be bottlenecked by dual cores also. And if we really want better AI in games, prepare to see quad cores and octo cores get bottlenecked as well; I think most aspects of AI and physics can be parallelizable fairly easily as long as you maintain a fixed time step on one core.

 

[Markfw]

What amazes me is how many people still don't test their overclocks with Prime/Orthos/Memtest. They have no idea if their processors are doing bad calculations. They think "stable" is good enough.

So not only is overclocking useless for most applications, but it has a big downside for a lot of apps, especially ones that do use processing power like F@H.

I'd like to see a game that is bottlenecked by a mid-high range i7 quad core at stock clocks!

I think most people DO test their overclocks.

As for F@H, if your box is not stable, the unit will "abend" (EUE for us F@H folks), and you don't get any credit for the unit. I doubt anybody who kept getting those would not fix their computer, since they waste sometimes DAYs of electricity for nothing. It doesn't hurt the project, since the units never complete, just a little resending of the unit to someone else overhead.

 

[jimhsu]

I think most people DO test their overclocks.

As for F@H, if your box is not stable, the unit will "abend" (EUE for us F@H folks), and you don't get any credit for the unit. I doubt anybody who kept getting those would not fix their computer, since they waste sometimes DAYs of electricity for nothing. It doesn't hurt the project, since the units never complete, just a little resending of the unit to someone else overhead.

Basically, it is significantly more probable (for a typical well-designed algorithm) that the code throws an exceptions or fails an assert cause and terminates early, as opposed to completing and returning a valid, but incorrect result. In fact, one of the tenets of good algorithm design is robustness; that's why people do fuzz testing, or better, formal testing, on most production-quality code.

 

[Markfw]

Basically, it is significantly more probable (for a typical well-designed algorithm) that the code throws an exceptions or fails an assert cause and terminates early, as opposed to completing and returning a valid, but incorrect result. In fact, one of the tenets of good algorithm design is robustness; that's why people do fuzz testing, or better, formal testing, on most production-quality code.

Well, if you are saying that they wrote F@H to abends when you box is not stable, I certainly agree. Coming from one who has done more work that all but 11 usernames in the world for F@H (me, see here http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=Mark_F_Williams) and having had between 6 and 18 boxes running it, all overclocked for the last 10 years, if I forget to do my OCCT before I run F@H, it sure lets me know right away. There is a direct relation to how stable my box is, and F@H. I always run OCCT first, then run F@H.

 

[aigomorla]

I think people buy a system like that for bragging rights and not much else. Why do you think AMD is introducing EyeFinity? Because their cards are several times as powerful as the games actually require for a single monitor. My HD 4830 is relatively ancient, but there is no way I can justify spending $200 on a new card that gives me little more than better FPS at the same maxed out quality settings.

There was a time when having the best actually meant something. Games like Half Life 2 were a revolution and having the best card meant you could experience them in all their glory.

Nowadays all you get when you buy newer stuff is 1080p instead of 720p, 4xAA instead of none and not much else. The Playstation 3 has what is essentially a glorified 7800GTX in it. How many PC games are there that look appreciably better on the PC than on the PS3/Xbox? The higher res is great, but it isn't that big of a difference. Look at hte difference between HL1 and HL2, its a lot more than just resolution, AA and FPS.

Don't get me wrong, there are some great PC-targeted games out there, but most stuff is built to work on a 7800gtx and then you can buy a 580GTX SLI if you want to play it on 6 different screens simultaneously.

no... its because people like me want a higher min fps.

We cant stand shuttering, or hardware lag of any kind. Ultra high end gpu's also show benifit as your clock speed gets higher.

And i run dual 24's 1200p, with the thought of upgrading to a dell 27 inch 1440p with a higher resolution soon.

@ those monitors, can you tell me what gpu i need so i can play any game with max resoultion and still net a 45fps min rate?

u'll see why people have a second 580GTX.

To some, 200 dollars is also worth the full gaming experience..
Hell, ive seen 10,000 dollar gaming setups and its pitch was stereoscopic 3d.

 

[drizek]

For me, 20-30fps is decent. I never really understood the desire people had to get ultra high fps.