QOTW: do you still overclock your PC?

[1Kurgan1]

Poll needs more options, I'm not whipping out the dry ice here, or pushing voltages and limits, just going for a speed increase that I don't have to test the shit out of to find stability, also I'm not a first time OCer, I just am constantly running some sort of OC.

[Frick]

No. The CPU is overkill at stock, why should I push it further? Overclocking is nice but CPU's of today generally are very fast anyway so I think it's a dying thing. The performance gains are often not noticable anyway.

[Black Panther]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

Hardcore clocking can use air too, uh-huh. I'd call your laptop clocking hardcore, BP!

Lol I never oc'd the laptop, must be confusing me with someone else

Originally Posted by Frick

No. The CPU is overkill at stock, why should I push it further? Overclocking is nice but CPU's of today generally are very fast anyway so I think it's a dying thing. The performance gains are often not noticable anyway.

Not really. It depends on which games you play. If you play a game which uses only 2 cores (like Skyrim, ugh..) it'll make little if any difference on whether you're using an i7 at 2.6Ghz or a cheap core 2 duo at 2.6Ghz. In fact, a dual overclocked to 4Ghz will give you a better performance than that i7 at stock.

Now if it's really going to be overkill then I really wouldn't bother (at least for gaming since for video editing and the like I don't think there could be any overkill). I can't find an example with a cpu right now but consider my graphics card, I can overclock it but it'd be pointless to do so on my current system. It'd be like revving my engine all the way up, while the gearbox only goes up to 3rd gear. I'd still be moving at the same speed.

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by Black Panther

Lol I never oc'd the laptop, must be confusing me with someone else

Must be. My apologies.

[INSTG8R]

LOL WUT?

Hellz Yeah I OC. Can't think of a CPU I haven't OC'd in my last 5 rigs. But then again I have been on Water for a long time as well so it's just easy too push it.

GPU OC'ing I don't bother with anymore because really the gains are pretty minimal.

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yes. And not just cause I can and certainly not cause I'm "hardcore" (whatever that really means).

I do it cause I still get a real performance benefit out of it.

[1Kurgan1]

Originally Posted by Frick

No. The CPU is overkill at stock, why should I push it further? Overclocking is nice but CPU's of today generally are very fast anyway so I think it's a dying thing. The performance gains are often not noticable anyway.

An AII 435 is far from overkill, that won't be nearly enough Proc for Skyrim, probably not enough for BF3 or Crysis 2 either. A friend basically had your same comp, except a 5770 and he couldn't run any modern games at high settings, mostly ran things on mediums. Overkill would be pushing some of the highest settings and still having a good amount of head room on FPS.

[3dsage]

Its definately not as fun as before, I dont know if its an age thing for me. But overclocking isnt as challenging as before.. For example , I had my SB 2500K set at 5ghz stable within 2 days of minor tweaking, not to fun or even challenging.

I remember trying to get my Phenom 9850 to overclock 700-800mhz over stock for weeks lol..

Its definately losing its appeal, but im going to continue to do it, indefinitely.

[Easy Rhino]

i think like most folks on tpu, when i get a new cpu or gpu i overclock it to see how i high i can get it. then i usually keep it around 5-10% OC for the rest of its life.

[LagunaX]

For the feel of a ''fast'' system SSD's have pretty much reduced the perceived impact of overclocking or faster ram. For the woman's email/pics/shopping/YouTube rig her i3-2100 paired with a Seagate Hybrid Momentus XT seems plenty fast and just sips electricity.

However, I can go no slower than 4.8ghz and DDR 2133 as in my signature below. Swapping to an OCZ Vertex 3 when I finally get around to it but the 600gb Velociraptor has been a pure pleasure...

[de.das.dude]

whats an AMD system if you dont OC? AMD is fun to OC.

[Altered]

Originally Posted by BarbaricSoul

I voted yes, but I wouldn't consider myself "hardcore".

Originally Posted by jagjitnatt

Overclocking used to be cool when it was tough to do.

Im about the same here. Not seriously hardcore. Years ago my pc would struggle to play the games I wanted to play. OCing was more necessity to have a better experience. Now days CPUs have plenty of power to play great games. Not that I don't like to have fun seeing what it will do. Its sort of fun to see if you got a great chip but I am not buying selling or swapping them in hopes of finding some jewel. I like knowing if I need a little more I can run it up as well. But my 2500K has no problem with 99% of the average uses while good with games at stock settings. I like OCing just not my main hobby and not something I really "need" to do as in the past. But hey I still enjoy the turbo set to hit 4400 at stock volts.

[Solaris17]

I voted no. But not because I dont OC. You see I see this 2 diffirent ways. the black and white my shits at 4Ghz or its stock. And what I consider the real world way. Actual OCing. I dont OC like alot of the members here do. i registered in 2005 that was 6 years ago. I had a socket A 1.2Ghz duron on a VIA chipset radeon 7500 and 768mb of ram.

I then got a soundblaster live soundcard so I could hear footsteps in morrowind. What does all that mean? I do overclock. But I OC in the bios. IMO the magic is gone. you have all these programs with fancy UI and alot of options. Some even have just as much as the cell/genie menu in the bios. But its a dying art. not overclocking but rather the spirit of it. I think manul adjustment is what is dying. It is far to easy for some 16 yr/o to open up MSI easytune and get 3.6ghz. Their is no fun in it. you hit apply the number changes and you feel nothing. When I overclock I adjust PLL IOH VCC adjust LLC PWM and amplitude modulation.

When I hit 4Ghz I feel happy im pumped. I feel like iv done something I can be proud of. I sit for hours play bios get a result and continue to tweak until I find my chips and general system maximum. I can tell my TPU friends. Post some scores and talk about it. It makes me proud. Go ahead i challenge you go ask the young asus control panel kids what VTT PWM switch frequency is. They dont know. Correction they just googled it. See my point? I voted no because I dont overclock the way the majority of the overclockers clock now. I clock the way the old dogs do. and THAT is a dying breed.

[qubit]

@Solaris17

Great post, I know what you mean by the magic is gone. I guess it's a bit like comparing a manual car to an auto - all that fine control and understanding of the engine and car handling goes out the window. All you do is press that accelerator and it goes fasterer. Whoopedo.

DFI were very much of the old guard and you could manually tweak everything just so, but they pulled out of the enthusiast market for some reason. It might take you a month of experimenting with all the hundreds of different settings, but at the end of it you'd end up with a highly tuned PC flying at Mach 4. Abit were like that too, before they went under and they were my manufacturer of choice.

[Paulieg]

Originally Posted by qubit

@Solaris17

Great post, I know what you mean by the magic is gone. I guess it's a bit like comparing a manual car to an auto - all that fine control and understanding of the engine and car handling goes out the window. All you do is press that accelerator and it goes fasterer. Whoopedo.

DFI were very much of the old guard and you could manually tweak everything just so, but they pulled out of the enthusiast market for some reason. It might take you a month of experimenting with all the hundreds of different settings, but at the end of it you'd end up with a highly tuned PC flying at Mach 4. Abit were like that too, before they went under and they were my manufacturer of choice.

Agree completely with the DFI and Abit thing. Miss them Terribly. Oscar Wu was a bios mad scientist.

[Solaris17]

Originally Posted by qubit

@Solaris17

Great post, I know what you mean by the magic is gone. I guess it's a bit like comparing a manual car to an auto - all that fine control and understanding of the engine and car handling goes out the window. All you do is press that accelerator and it goes fasterer. Whoopedo.

DFI were very much of the old guard and you could manually tweak everything just so, but they pulled out of the enthusiast market for some reason. It might take you a month of experimenting with all the hundreds of different settings, but at the end of it you'd end up with a highly tuned PC flying at Mach 4. Abit were like that too, before they went under and they were my manufacturer of choice.

Im just calling it how i see it man. Everyone can drive but only one of them knows how to drive a car. Thats why they hit 3.6 and I hit 4 they dont know why it locks when they move the slider more. I know that i need to adjust the pll scew. I know why it shifts at 2300 but when you get on it it shifts at 5. they dont know what a powerband is.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by Paulieg

Agree completely with the DFI and Abit thing. Miss them Terribly. Oscar Wu was a bios mad scientist.

It might sound a bit sad, but besides the solid Abit design, I really loved that orange colour they applied to most of their boards.

I've got three Abit mobos and they have 'listed' status for me. They all work fine and none of them are going anywhere. They are:

AN7 - Socket A (AMD Athlon XP, AGP)
AI7 - S478 (Intel P4 Northwood, AGP)
AN8 Ultra - S939 (AMD Athlon64 X2, PCI-E)


This one I donated to a friend, who didn't have much cash and it's still running fine to this day:

AV8-3rd Eye - S939 (AMD Athlon64, AGP) Upgraded because I needed PCI-E

Incredibly, the website is still running, although not updated.

[Enmity]

I got hooked on overclocking when I built my first rig which had a Barton 2800+ which i had sitting on 2.5Ghz using some thermalright heatsink which was full copper...TH-97 or something? Pushing this cpu via my good ole trusty A-bit NF7-S mobo...oh i loved that rig - was a shame that the Gigabyte Radeon 9800 XT I had in there wouldn't move even 5Mhz - but geez, those were the days.

Since then I had a AMD 9750 rig which I didn't really clock up since the mobo I was using with it was locked down and I got rid ofthat rig pretty quickly - sold the whole lot inc the 8800GTS when i upgraded to my current platform but had 4850 crossfire originally, before these 5850's. I've got everything in here overclocked

This rig has seen a lot of love but I can't wait to start fresh - and this time i want to go for my first ever intel build

I'm no real enthusiast, but i like getting the most out of what I've got. I'll always be an overclocker.

[Enmity]

Edit:

it was the Thermalright SP97

[qubit]

@Enmity

Oh yeah, those NF7's were legendary! No wonder you loved that board.

On the Intel side, the IC7-MAX3 was the board to have for overclocking feats.

[KieranD]

Originally Posted by Easy Rhino

i think like most folks on tpu, when i get a new cpu or gpu i overclock it to see how i high i can get it. then i usually keep it around 5-10% OC for the rest of its life.

Exactly, 24/7 clocks.

[MasterInvader]

Originally Posted by de.das.dude

whats an AMD system if you dont OC? AMD is fun to OC.

+1

Mine X4 955B runs @ 4.1 since day one [08/2010] 24/7 with a proper WC system.

[LagunaX]

Actually now that there are voltage offset options outside of voiding warranties there isn't such a big concern for not overclocking due to power consumption issues.

[Derek12]

I only overclock the video card, the rest goes mad when trying to do so.

[INSTG8R]

Yep I sure do miss ABit their boards had great, smart BIOS's for OC'ing. I would still be on ABit if they were still around. They were my #1 MoBo and built many a rig around them.