Is Overclocking worth it?

[VIAN]

Maybe you can help me. See the work that I have to do.

Finding the maximum:
I have to test the RAM. - 24 hours for P95.
Then I have to test the CPU. - 24 hours for P95.

Finding the equilibrium:
Then I have to test them together to see if they can live with each other's extra heat. This will not be the case and I will have to lower the Clockspeeds. - 24hours for P95.

Finding the maximum: I would like to run both of these tests for 8x3 hours so that I know it's stable and not have to find out in the game and inturrupt me, it has happened before.
Then I have to test the VRAM.
Then I have to test the VPU.

Finding the equilibrium:
Then I have to test them together to see if they can live with each other's extra heat. This will not be the case and I will have to lower the Clockspeeds.

Finding a system equilibrium:
Then I have to make sure that the CPU/RAM OC can live with the VPU/VRAM OC. - 24hours for P95.

To be safe you would have to test your VPU/VRAM, everytime they release a new driver. So that the 9800 Pro incident won't happen again. Although, I always wondered how your VPU can overheat, because it will probably crash the game if it does that. So I don't see how people missed it.

If I test the video card like I test the CPU/RAM, then a total of 56 nights would have to pass by and more may actually pass when unexpected errors show up. So about 70 nights we'll say. That is a crap load of time.

If anyone has a better way of testing that is as ensuring as this system, then please tell me.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: VIAN
If anyone has a better way of testing that is as ensuring as this system, then please tell me.

Well, for one thing, atitool will find your maximum core and memory speeds w/o artifacts for an ATi card, and it will only require about 30 seconds of user input if that. Unless you're making over $3,000/hour and are overclocking during business hours, I would say that overclocking a graphics card is "worth it".

As for a CPU, I'll put it to you this way. I have an Athlon XP-M that runs as a 2500+ at default. After overclocking I reach something like a 3800+ rating. My CPU cost me around $90. A 3800+ CPU costs in excess of $500. I would say that it took me maybe 2 hours of actual time input to hit those speeds. That's a generous estimate, too. So, again, unless you make in excess of $200/hour, overclocking is "worth it". Maybe you're a brain surgeon, I dunno.

 

[howdyduty]

Worth it? Hell Ya! Just do it

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: VIAN
If I test the video card like I test the CPU/RAM, then a total of 56 nights would have to pass by and more may actually pass when unexpected errors show up. So about 70 nights we'll say. That is a crap load of time. If anyone has a better way of testing that is as ensuring as this system, then please tell me.

LOL. Please don't take this too personally, but I guess overclocking just isn't for you.

If you want something to be completely, absolutely, unequivocally, able to run at a certain speed, guaranteed stable under a wide range of "normal" conditions, then you want to pay more money up-front and buy products that have higher "stock" clock-speeds.

Overclocking does not come without a certain amount of risk, no matter how much testing time you put into it. It just isn't possible for an end-user to fully-test modern electronics components the way that the mfgs are able to. At least not unless you happen to have a multi-million-dollar chip- and assembly-testing lab in your basement.

If you can't or don't want to live with that risk, then don't overclock. Simple as that. To attempt to claim that to get a "provably stable" overclock takes 70 nights worth of time, is just facetious.

Now, I'm not the type of person that is willing to accept a "fast, but only a tad bit unstable" overclock. Stability first, speed second. But there is still an element of risk there, as unlikely as it seems, that the overclock might be "too much", and cause errors under certain conditions, even though it "tested stable" under other conditions. Ambient temps rising in the summertime is a good example. I actually underclock my machine if I'm not going to be playing games, as it is excessively fast just to browse the web, etc. (AMD XP2000, underclocked down to 1Ghz).

So yes, if you get your overclock "completely stable", and new Cats get released, and something crashes or goes haywire, then yes, you should probably re-test, or back off the OC a bit. But I don't think, under normal circumstances, once you get a reasonably stable OC, that you need to endure 70 nights of testing every time. That's just... nuts.

Anyone who tweaks with their overclocks day after day, is either just moronically stubborn (if they can't get a "stable overclock", and yet refuse to give up and run at stock speeds), or obsessive-compulsive (if they do reach a reasonably beneficial "stable overclock", and yet, they continue to "push the envelope" day after day, in search of an additional miniscule gain of neglible benefit).

For example: I used to have a PII-300 (SL2W8) running at 450Mhz at stock 2.0v, on a BX6-r2. There was a certain number of people that managed to get their chips running stably at 512Mhz, I was never able to get it there, even after trying to up the voltage to insane levels (like 3.0v, for a very brief time - scary!), and introducing performance-sapping settings changes like increasing the L2 cache latency, etc. It just wouldn't "go". So I settled for 450Mhz at stock voltage, and was quite happy that my $150 CPU ran as well as a $600+ CPU did.

Granted, I've always had excellent luck overclocking CPUs (whether Intel *or* AMD), but never video cards. I was able to run my ATI RagePro AGP 2X at a true 100Mhz AGP bus speed though, with sidebanding enabled (crazy bus-speed OC!), and I OCed the memory from 90Mhz to 100Mhz, to match the bus speed. I couldn't quite get the GPU to 100Mhz though, stock was 75Mhz, and I OCed it to ~90Mhz, IIRC. But overall system performance was amazing with the increased AGP bus speed. 3D games played *almost* as fast as a non-SLI'ed PCI Voodoo2 card. Which wasn't great, but not too shabby back then either. Since then though, I've not had much luck. (Although I was able to run a Diamond SpeedStar 24X ISA video card on a 14Mhz ISA bus, that was pretty nice too, back in the days of DOS.)

My current ATI Radeon 9200 seemingly handled a reasonable OC, the first few days that I had it, now it gets unstable if I OC either the core or mem not more than 5-10Mhz more, and it starts flaking out. That doesn't make any sense to me, I wonder if possibly I damaged it. Who knows. It still works reasonably well at stock though, so I'm going to leave it alone for now. (Not actively cooled, so heats up quite a bit.)

So that's my overclocking rant. Stability before speed, always! But don't waste your time forever, in search of miniscule gains.

 

[Acanthus]

If you have a stable overclock, drivers wont cause crashes.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: TStep
I vote Yeah for what I do. My rigs usually fall into "the best of the last gen category". I buy on the cheap, clock the snot out of them, sell 'em and buy the new stuff when the true enthusiast get bored with what they've got.

Currently:
P4 2.4 @ 3.4 >> $400vs$130 >> $270 saved (3.4 wasn't even available at the time to boot)
AI7 vs econoboard >> maybe xtra $40 spent
9800np refurbed @ 400/320 >> spent $70 less at the time than a 9800pro

Spent about an xtra 2 hours jerkin around to find max clocks, prime95 / benchie loops overnight to confirm (cost me no time while I slept), back everything off a hair, totally stable since.

About $300 saved / 2 hours spent = $150 saved per hour. Now if I can only find a job that pays this well.

Nice work

I saved or made almost that much on my video card overclock. $150 5900NU to waay past $450 at the time 5950ultra speeds.

Made about $900 on my processor since I'm faster than a P4EE/A64FX with a $100 moblie XP.

Took me about two hours as well.

Made about $1200 in two hours... granted we must subtract $200 for water cooling equipment.. but still.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: VIAN
Is it really?

You have to test the overclock every time a new driver or some hardware challenging game, such as doom 3, comes out to make sure it's stable. That's a lot of time. If time equals money, then I don't think wasting 8 hours every month or so, if you're an ATI boy/girl is worth it, especial those that have high paying jobs. F-it, just buy the more expensive hardware, you have to admit, convenience-wise, paying the money is a better option.

Sounds like you've already made up your mind.

 

[nRollo]

To me OCing isn't worth it because I couldn't return a card as defective if I damaged it after OCing.

So the "free performance" all of the sudden becomes very costly performance, unless a person wants to lower themselves to the level of welfare scum by RMAing hardware they broke?

 

[sandorski]

In my experience, most of the time it is a waste, but sometimes it is worth it.

My Voodoo 2 was worth overclocking, gave 10-30% performance increase across the board(various games, 3dMark(x)). My Viper 2, Voodoo 5 5500, Radeon 8500LE, and current Radeon 9600 Pro all gave increases when overclocked to their max, but those increases have been <5% across the board, definitely not worth the risk to me.

Keep in mind that with Overclocking you are trading some extra Perfomance right now with the ability for your card to continuing function at some point in time in the Future. So if Longevitiy of Use is an issue, don't overclock.

 

[imported_Onizuka]

Some of you take way too long on overclocking. It takes me less than 2 minutes. I just hit the auto overclock, once I get it, I turn it down 10mhz. It has always been stable whenever I do this. Never once crash on any game that I played.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Rollo
To me OCing isn't worth it because I couldn't return a card as defective if I damaged it after OCing.

So the "free performance" all of the sudden becomes very costly performance, unless a person wants to lower themselves to the level of welfare scum by RMAing hardware they broke?

What difference does it make if you damage a card after overclocking it? Whether you damaged it with the card overclocked or at stock speed, or damaged it by overclocking improperly it's YOUR fault. Why is it any more ethical to RMA hardware that you damaged by dropping it than to RMA hardware that you damaged by overclocking improperly? Sure, when you overclock you are (or should be) aware that you're running it out of spec and the manufacturer doesn't guarantee it won't burst into flames and kill everyone in the room... but, if you're careless enough to drop a card or jam a screw driver through your motherboard installing the heatsink or get dirt on a CPU core and chip the core installing the heatsink, it's not the manufacturer's problem and they shouldn't replace it for you.

I've overclocked 8 of my own CPU's... 3 "sets" of RAM... and 6 video cards. Not one has failed. (my FX5900 that I thought failed turned out to be ok... it was actually my PSU that was defective and causing problems during cold boots that I blamed on the video card)

If it's done correctly it doesn't damage anything and doesn't overheat. Yes, I said it. If you overclock properly your hardware WILL NOT overheat. If it's overheating, you've made an error, you didn't take into consideration temperature.

 

[Zebo]

This is a 5900NU which stock speed is...I forget.. but anyway it's clcoked at 520/980

Check out these temps after faccry.... Overclocking does'nt raise temps for me

 

[MichaelZ]

it's not for everyone. sure there is some testing involved but pushing it further and testing to see how much higher it can go is where the fun is at. it doesn't take long if you test it minimalistically, troubleshooting with reduced error factors everytime, if something goes wrong and you need to reset the bios for cpu / ram OC.

testing video card OC is even easier, move a few sliders and click test and apply. done? run a benchmark and repeat. if it takes you 8 hours to OC it's obviously not for you...

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

Originally posted by: Rollo
To me OCing isn't worth it because I couldn't return a card as defective if I damaged it after OCing.

So the "free performance" all of the sudden becomes very costly performance, unless a person wants to lower themselves to the level of welfare scum by RMAing hardware they broke?

What difference does it make if you damage a card after overclocking it? Whether you damaged it with the card overclocked or at stock speed, or damaged it by overclocking improperly it's YOUR fault. Why is it any more ethical to RMA hardware that you damaged by dropping it than to RMA hardware that you damaged by overclocking improperly? Sure, when you overclock you are (or should be) aware that you're running it out of spec and the manufacturer doesn't guarantee it won't burst into flames and kill everyone in the room... but, if you're careless enough to drop a card or jam a screw driver through your motherboard installing the heatsink or get dirt on a CPU core and chip the core installing the heatsink, it's not the manufacturer's problem and they shouldn't replace it for you.

I've overclocked 8 of my own CPU's... 3 "sets" of RAM... and 6 video cards. Not one has failed. (my FX5900 that I thought failed turned out to be ok... it was actually my PSU that was defective and causing problems during cold boots that I blamed on the video card)

If it's done correctly it doesn't damage anything and doesn't overheat. Yes, I said it. If you overclock properly your hardware WILL NOT overheat. If it's overheating, you've made an error, you didn't take into consideration temperature.

The difference is that if you run the card in spec and it stops working, you've used it within the boundaries of your warranty and can honestly return it as a defective product.
Most warranties I've seen don't say "If you're a good OCer and it should have worked, we'll honor the warranty as well".

Like I said, I don't have any problem with people OCing, as long as they don't steal from honest people with by RMAing after failure, and tell people buying the product they may have shortened it's useful life by OCing.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

Originally posted by: Rollo
To me OCing isn't worth it because I couldn't return a card as defective if I damaged it after OCing.

So the "free performance" all of the sudden becomes very costly performance, unless a person wants to lower themselves to the level of welfare scum by RMAing hardware they broke?

What difference does it make if you damage a card after overclocking it? Whether you damaged it with the card overclocked or at stock speed, or damaged it by overclocking improperly it's YOUR fault. Why is it any more ethical to RMA hardware that you damaged by dropping it than to RMA hardware that you damaged by overclocking improperly? Sure, when you overclock you are (or should be) aware that you're running it out of spec and the manufacturer doesn't guarantee it won't burst into flames and kill everyone in the room... but, if you're careless enough to drop a card or jam a screw driver through your motherboard installing the heatsink or get dirt on a CPU core and chip the core installing the heatsink, it's not the manufacturer's problem and they shouldn't replace it for you.

I've overclocked 8 of my own CPU's... 3 "sets" of RAM... and 6 video cards. Not one has failed. (my FX5900 that I thought failed turned out to be ok... it was actually my PSU that was defective and causing problems during cold boots that I blamed on the video card)

If it's done correctly it doesn't damage anything and doesn't overheat. Yes, I said it. If you overclock properly your hardware WILL NOT overheat. If it's overheating, you've made an error, you didn't take into consideration temperature.

The difference is that if you run the card in spec and it stops working, you've used it within the boundaries of your warranty and can honestly return it as a defective product.
Most warranties I've seen don't say "If you're a good OCer and it should have worked, we'll honor the warranty as well".

Like I said, I don't have any problem with people OCing, as long as they don't steal from honest people with by RMAing after failure, and tell people buying the product they may have shortened it's useful life by OCing.

You said it's not worth it because if YOU damage it after overclocking it won't be covered under warranty. If YOU damage it BEFORE overclocking it shouldn't be covered under warranty either because when you say YOU damaged it you're implying it's entirely YOUR fault and has nothing to do with the quality (or lack of) the product.

If you return it after YOU damaged it without overclocking it, it's no different than if you return it after YOU damaged it by overclocking/overvolting/modding/flashing it. In both cases YOU were the cause of the damage... see my point?

*EDIT* I do understand why someone wouldn't want to overclock a $400 or $500 video card... to keep their warranty in tact for a while since these new video cards haven't been around long enough to prove that they're reliable. It's well known that both nVidia and ATI are having yield problems with the higher clocked versions... so it wouldn't be THAT hard to fathom that one or two defective pieces might make it through testing, but could deteriorate as time goes by.

 

[FiLeZz]

I agree and a I disagree.
I see your point.
I have strugled with overclocked PC, I keep telling myself its stable but keep getting crashes at the worst times.

However just know the limits of the hardware. This does take some testing time.
I have a AMD shuttle box with a 2500+ in it running flawless at 3200+ to me It was worth it on 2 fronts. free speed. It was about $70 free and I had fun doing it.


on the other hand I also do not overclock my main rig.
I bought a p4 3.2Ghz long ago. and when I upgrade I will buy high end agian. I will overclock with other PC's in the house.


Not my main PC..