Why do you overclock?

[PPB]

Wouldn't it be safe to assume that debating over pennies in electricity in a CPU/Overclocking forum is silly? This is an enthusiast board, not Greenpeace.

Besides, you can't ignore the fact you can still OC and leave Speedstep and other power-saving features enabled, so that you are not clocked higher when not using your machine.....

There is nothing wrong with wanting an efficient machine, but you shouldn't be buying i7 or 4+ GHZ AMD chips if that is the case.

You can have both, it just requires patience and the correct knowledge of the chip you are pushing.

Having from 40W to 60W idle power consumption is a given on a desktop scenario, we cant really change that. But what we can change is the power consumption on our real case scenarios, adapting the Pstates and voltages to our needs.

That's why I emphasize so much on developers making software to change Pstates in real time. Being able to load a profile suited for your particular needs, either aiming at more performance at same power envelope or pushing the power consumption down at the same performance, is really what tweaking your CPU is all about. I'm a fan of the rule "max OC on stock voltage/max UV under stock clocks", because there's where you will be closer to the overused phrase "free performance" or "less electricity bill" in this thread.

Say I want to render, ok that's fine, if I'm not time constrainted I would just load a 3.0ghz/1.0v profile (like some user did to their FX83xx) on all modules. If I want speed, I would load a 4.3 one (I think that's the point before Piledrivers start going whack with voltages/power consumption). If I want to play an Emulator and it wont scale past 2 cores, just crank up that first module to 4.5 while the rest are power gated and be done with it.

Either be efficiency, maximum performance or a compromise of both (like in my case), they are all valid when you decide to tweak your CPU. There are so many different needs in a CPU as many users, sadly we have to deal with a limited repertoire of CPU choices, and if our particular use doesnt fit in a certain CPU decision, tweaking it comes handy, no doubt about it.

PS: And that is the fun in buying an overkill machine for your current needs. Being able to downscale in performance is never a bad thing, specially if it can yield you more efficiency in the long run. The problem is when you are forced to OC your machine to reach your performance target, you are forced to deal with higher power consumption, higher temps, less effciency overall, etc.

 

[Assimilator1]

monkeydel

Rosetta@H isn't an environmental project .

I have a Core i7 920 CPU, I been using it since it was new in 2008 and to this day I never felt I needed more power out of any game.

I see many threads in this forum about overclocking new CPU such as the 4770 and etc and I think whats the point of overclocking these CPU?

So I ask each one of you, why do you overclock the CPU? Can you say the reason you do it?

I run distributed computing projects (see sig), generally speaking the % gain in overclock is the % gain in output. And yea it does mean I have to do long stability tests, I find if it passes a 24hr OCCT run then I won't get any errors in DC, so far anyway .

Not read the rest of the thread, so sorry if I've missed anything relevant.

 

[Shmee]

Overclocking is fun, as a hobby, and that should be enough for those who like it. Some need to do it or find it dramatically helps them (mining, encoding, gaming etc)

I personally enjoy overclocking and try to do so at acceptable voltages and temps, for stability. I am not so much worried about power; usually I find the highest stable clock for a safe vcore/temp combo and back off slightly from there.

Keep in mind, and I think that this is something some people may be missing here, is that voltage and clocks don't scale linearly, and sometimes they aren't even near directly proportional. Now I am not an expert on this, but in my time OCing and reading about it and computers, I have learned that there are things called "holes" or "gaps" and even "walls" in computer voltage/frequency settings. For example, there is a minimum vcore required to get chips to work, but they may still OC slightly. The argument that you can lower the voltage more doesn't work here, you can't. And remember, every chip is different, and while raising vcore generally helps with increased frequencies to a point, even this is not always true, depending on say, FSB/frequency "holes" in chip, and other factors.

And lastly, for the record I think mark knows what he is talking about. And I would encourage everyone to encourage him to give this thread a second chance, people could learn some great things from his input. And while this forum is not my jurisdiction, I recommend we try to be a bit more civil and less argumentative about our OC discussions, and know when to drop an escalating disagreement.

Thanks, and remember tweaking to find an optimal setting is a good idea, but also, optimal has different meanings to different people.

 

[bleucharm28]

it's pure fun, is that simple. and if you add water, thats 10x better.

 

[bradly1101]

I have a Core i7 920 CPU, I been using it since it was new in 2008 and to this day I never felt I needed more power out of any game.

I see many threads in this forum about overclocking new CPU such as the 4770 and etc and I think whats the point of overclocking these CPU?

So I ask each one of you, why do you overclock the CPU? Can you say the reason you do it?

I recently brought my 920 back to stock after having it at 3.2 for most of its life. I'll admit it was for the psychological thrill of being over 3GHZ.

I now just need it to be reliable, since it will be moving over to do HTPC (Media Center) duties after I upgrade this desktop.

I put a lot of years between my upgrades (the 920's been plenty enough for all my needs). That way I can save up for something big. Broadwell-E? Give me cores!

 

[tolis626]

it's pure fun, is that simple. and if you add water, thats 10x better.

It's not even about water.To me,it's a choice between having "a PC" and having "your own PC".You know,the kind that you spent a lot of time on,tuning every parameter to suit your (sometimes stupid) wants and needs.I don't think any part,no matter how good or bad,will be enough to take that away from me.

 

[pandaga]

I like overclocking, its fun and how can you resist a free performance boost.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It's not even about water.To me,it's a choice between having "a PC" and having "your own PC".You know,the kind that you spent a lot of time on,tuning every parameter to suit your (sometimes stupid) wants and needs.I don't think any part,no matter how good or bad,will be enough to take that away from me.

I won't speak for all the other "minions of Max Mhz," but I think that describes my own behavior . . . .

 

[XiandreX]

it's not free when you have to pay more for specific "K" models and chipsets,
it used to be kind of free back in the pre Sandy Bridge days, but not exactly.

The premium from non K to K chips is not that much.
Also its free performance and these chips can handle the overclock for a long time as long as you cool them properly and dont use tons of voltage. Gaming and multithreaded applications scale well (in most cases) with a CPU Oc.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

The premium from non K to K chips is not that much.
Also its free performance and these chips can handle the overclock for a long time as long as you cool them properly and dont use tons of voltage. Gaming and multithreaded applications scale well (in most cases) with a CPU Oc.

+1 to that . . I think we're talking about $10 to $20 price differential.

The real price differential is that between the mid-range chips and the flagship or its second best. Take the Ivy Bridge 4960X. I can buy two OEM computers for the price of that processor.

The K chips seem more like a gift and a nod to the enthusiast community. If you weren't planning to overclock, you'd never need a K chip.

 

[2is]

locked vs unlocked isn't much of a price difference... That said, you can only buy unlocked i5's and i7's and the price difference between an i3, i5, and i7 isn't necessarily small.

 

[Assimilator1]

it's pure fun, is that simple. and if you add water, thats 10x better.

I instantly (& briefly) had a vision of you literally pouring water on your rig & watching the steam & sparks! lol

 

[Ken g6]

To win place better in PrimeGrid races. (See my sig.)

 

[boondocks]

I never thought about "why", never felt like I ever had to justify any of my hobbies to myself or anyone else, I guess.
To me it's like asking "why do you like the color blue?" I don't know-I just do.

 

[tolis626]

I never thought about "why", never felt like I ever had to justify any of my hobbies to myself or anyone else, I guess.
To me it's like asking "why do you like the color blue?" I don't know-I just do.

You like the color blue?Ewwww!Weird!This is the internet!

But seriously,blue's awesome. :thumbsup:

 

[XiandreX]

Overclocking is something I have been doing for a long time considering my age.
I remember running K6II-233 above spec using a Peltier cooler. Those were the days. I remember their integer was decent but floating point (if I remember correctly ) was not as good as intels.
Bottom line is for the small premium for an unlocked CPU + decent cooler most of us can get a tangible increase in performance and considering most of our love for Tech and all that, its a FUN hobbie to enjoy.

Oh lest I forget its mostly Easy!!!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Overclocking is something I have been doing for a long time considering my age.
I remember running K6II-233 above spec using a Peltier cooler. Those were the days. I remember their integer was decent but floating point (if I remember correctly ) was not as good as intels.
Bottom line is for the small premium for an unlocked CPU + decent cooler most of us can get a tangible increase in performance and considering most of our love for Tech and all that, its a FUN hobbie to enjoy.

Oh lest I forget its mostly Easy!!!

Easier than some might imagine, but your ease or trouble changes with practice. I had one friend whose enthusiasm blossomed in 2003. He even bought "bong" parts for an external bong cooler, and a water-pump. Maybe he thought we were in some sort of competition. But he just put the parts aside and invested in enough fans that made me pine for a PA system and microphone when we had conversations in that room.

Of course, he also had in mind some "over-clocking." I don't think he ever mastered the details, and he never had any 24/7 overclock settings. Every time I visited, the machine was running at stock CPU speed.

Reading the on-line guides posted by others, you can come up to speed pretty fast. But it takes patience. I built my first OC'd system in 2004. Invariably, there were some difficulties arising from my attempt to OC the graphics card. There were intermittent instabilities I struggled with until I realized that I had not changed the gfx back to stock with the software we'd used on the NVidia. I won't go into detail about that, but it was a lesson in doing one thing at a time so you can quarantine "causes."

So, here it was 2011, and I built my Sandy Bridge system -- a whole new set of BIOS features and computer architecture to learn. And the results were stellar -- until I doubled the RAM and tried to keep the OC settings for it. Another "intermittent" problem -- finally solved.

The benefits: When I need it (here and there), the (now old) or "old Sandy Bridge" ramps up to 4.7 Ghz. I could've done it crudely, and the processor would've had a more toasty run under LinX testing or other full-load situations (not too many, though). But I took a lot of notes in 2011, and I know how to tweak the voltages and other features.

There's a general learning curve -- mine started in early 2004. There's a specific learning curve for each new CPU and motherboard.

You're either going to submit to your own masochism, pay someone else to do it (and who does that?), or avoid it entirely.

Hardly needs repeating, because you find it in all the sticky posts at all the forums -- Anandtech only one of them. If you don't research the processor specs and other factors, you can damage your parts and double the expense. Two words come to mind: caution, and patience.