performance When people tell you no it’ll only add 1 to 2 fps

[superJayCreezy]

Does anyone else get annoyed seeing so many people telling others not to do an overclock or a particular upgrade, or maybe just a little tweak here and there because it offers minimal performance boost or only 1 to 2 FPS? If we really stop and think about it that 1 to 2 FPS adds up and before you know it you’ve gone from say 54fps to a smooth 60. What I’m saying is those tiny minimal boosts do accumulate to a better experience. I just wanted to put that out there it’s something that’s bugged me for years. 

[Sauron]

Who has ever said you shouldn't overclock?

 

If you're talking about upgrades, buying a new part isn't worth it if you're only gaining a couple of fps. If you're considering an upgrade from your current graphics card to a refresh that's 100MHz faster then don't, it's not worth the money.

[Master Disaster]

10 minutes ago, superJayCreezy said:

Does anyone else get annoyed seeing so many people telling others not to do an overclock or a particular upgrade, or maybe just a little tweak here and there because it offers minimal performance boost or only 1 to 2 FPS? If we really stop and think about it that 1 to 2 FPS adds up and before you know it you’ve gone from say 54fps to a smooth 60. What I’m saying is those tiny minimal boosts do accumulate to a better experience. I just wanted to put that out there it’s something that’s bugged me for years. 

This is false anyway since you can only overclock once so there's nothing to add up. Pushing your hardware for 1FPS is completely pointless, it benefits nobody and only serves to kill the hardware faster.

[minibois]

The overclocking thing I don't have an opinion on for you, as it's basically checking if the performance increase is worth the effort (getting the settings, testing, etc.) and also noise.

But about upgrading.. Usually upgrading involves spending money and most amounts of money are not worth the 1-5 extra fps. At that point you're better off lowering the settings if you want that exact 60fps.

[LloydLynx]

I overclocked my FX 4300 from 3.8ghz to 4.2ghz, it made a decent difference for stutter. I also got about 10-20fps increase in Minecraft.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

Who has ever said you shouldn't overclock?

 

If you're talking about upgrades, buying a new part isn't worth it if you're only gaining a couple of fps. If you're considering an upgrade from your current graphics card to a refresh that's 100MHz faster then don't, it's not worth the money.

I have.  

The issue with overclocking is the gains from it these days are minuscule compared to what used to be the case.  Back in the days of the early intel chips you could rais a cpu clock by an entire gigahertz or more.  It was a big big deal.  These days improvements are a tenth of that.  Small improvements do add up, but there are levels of experience improvement and they can be much less granular than even a 10-15 fps improvement.  If a person for example wants to run 60fps but is dropping into the mid 50’s it may be more effective to overclock than to get a faster cpu. If they’re in the 40s though it really won’t.  Conversely if they’re running 150 fps on a 144hz monitor, overclocking will gain them nothing tangible.

 

To make overclocking even less important there is gsynch/freesynch.  They make those occasional drops much less important.

 

Is it SOMETIMES useful? sure.  It isn’t a significant benefit all or even most of the time though.  Back in the days of massive overclocks it was a benefit all the time.  It’s not anymore.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, TheJooomes said:

I overclocked my FX 4300 from 3.8ghz to 4.2ghz, it made a decent difference for stutter. I also got about 10-20fps increase in Minecraft.

A difference of well over 10%. You could also have reduced that stutter with synch.  If differences are very small, as they are with modern CPUs (and the FX4300 is not one) then it starts to become pointless except in specific situations.

[Letgomyleghoe]

9 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I have.  

The issue with overclocking is the gains from it these days are minuscule compared to what used to be the case.  Back in the days of the early intel chips you could rais a cpu clock by an entire gigahertz or more.  It was a big big deal.  These days improvements are a tenth of that.  Small improvements do add up, but there are levels of experience improvement and they can be much less granular than even a 10-15 fps improvement.  If a person for example wants to run 60fps but is dropping into the mid 50’s it may be more effective to overclock than to get a faster cpu. If they’re in the 40s though it really won’t.  Conversely if they’re running 150 fps on a 144hz monitor, overclocking will gain them nothing tangible.

 

To make overclocking even less important there is gsynch/freesynch.  They make those occasional drops much less important.

 

Is it SOMETIMES useful? sure.  It isn’t a significant benefit all or even most of the time though.  Back in the days of massive overclocks it was a benefit all the time.  It’s not anymore.

thers still massive overclocks out theyre you just need to know what your doing. you can still get almost a gigahertz overclock on intel chips, and it can be usefull for budget gamers who are trying to squeeze that extra little bit of [erformance out of their hardware  

[NineEyeRon]

You should overclock if you can and want to, it’s fun. If you bought the hardware with OCing in mind then go for it.

 

You should not spend lots of money for a small FPS gain. That is not fun. Better to save up and make a big change like to 144hz from 60 or from 1080p to 1440p.

[Sauron]

38 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I have.  

The issue with overclocking is the gains from it these days are minuscule compared to what used to be the case.  Back in the days of the early intel chips you could rais a cpu clock by an entire gigahertz or more.  It was a big big deal.  These days improvements are a tenth of that.  Small improvements do add up, but there are levels of experience improvement and they can be much less granular than even a 10-15 fps improvement.  If a person for example wants to run 60fps but is dropping into the mid 50’s it may be more effective to overclock than to get a faster cpu. If they’re in the 40s though it really won’t.  Conversely if they’re running 150 fps on a 144hz monitor, overclocking will gain them nothing tangible.

 

To make overclocking even less important there is gsynch/freesynch.  They make those occasional drops much less important.

 

Is it SOMETIMES useful? sure.  It isn’t a significant benefit all or even most of the time though.  Back in the days of massive overclocks it was a benefit all the time.  It’s not anymore.

Some overclock is basically free performance (yes, yes, power consumption aside - pretty small difference for a small oc anyway) so... why not? Obviously it won't give you a huge benefit, but aren't we talking about a couple of fps anyway? So long as you're not overheating and you aren't pushing voltage boundaries there are no downsides.

[Zando_]

4 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

This is false anyway since you can only overclock once so there's nothing to add up. Pushing your hardware for 1FPS is completely pointless, it benefits nobody and only serves to kill the hardware faster.

If you're killing your hardware, it's either calculated or you don't know what you're doing and need to stop. 

Pushing a system for a 1fps increase is silly though, but you can usually get much more than that, depends on what your setup is. There's more like a 15+ fps difference when OCing on my setup (rig in signature), running stock struggles to push 60fps, at 4.2GHz it pushes 75fps easily (I game at 75Hz), and is still well within temp and voltage spec. 

[RasmusDC]

i overclocked the snot out of everything when i was young.. my old penitum 75mhz, my 233 mhz pentium II, my 450 Mhz Pentium 3 even had a 300mhz celeron running 450..

 

i think the last chip i really clocked were my Mobil pentium on a socket converter, think it was a 1.6@2.7 and beating the snot out of everything on the marked in superpi, the netburst pentium 4´s sucked at the day..

 

today i don´t really care, i run 4k on an 8700 I7 it does run the multicore enhancement which is a kind of a full turbo on all cores OC. but the main lack of power i have is the GPU which is a 1080TI running stock boosts at over 2000mhz (asus strix oc) ... the gains i could get by upping the powerlimit, is really not worth it.. and the same on the CPU.. so don´t really care anymore.

 

i just remember it being fun when i was young, remember getting the Pentium 3 at launch to an obscene amount of money and being top on leaderboards. and kryo cooling chips to get the most out of them.

[amdorintel]

7 hours ago, superJayCreezy said:

FPS

the fps chase game is an interesting breed of gamer that plays that game, pardon the pun.

 

i never understood the chase for fps

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, scuff gang said:

thers still massive overclocks out theyre you just need to know what your doing. you can still get almost a gigahertz overclock on intel chips, and it can be usefull for budget gamers who are trying to squeeze that extra little bit of [erformance out of their hardware  

True.  The very high end and the very low end.  I think intel k class chips should be clocked as high as they can go and should be considered 150-200w devices.  There are issues at the low end though:  I recently saw a thread from a person who had a 2600 and wanted to put a $200 rgb water cooler on it.  This is ridiculous.  For that kind of money the correct solution is to sell the 2600, take the cash along with some of that money and buy a 3600x.  Or a 3700x for that matter.  After further questioning it turned out that the OP also had an rx 580 which was the actual bottleneck, but did not want to switch out GPUs either.  The water cooler was desirable simply because it was pretty.  This is not an invalid reason, but I wanted to make it clear to them that aesthetics would be all they were getting for their $200

Edited December 12, 2019 by Bombastinator
Ihateautocorrect

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

Some overclock is basically free performance (yes, yes, power consumption aside - pretty small difference for a small oc anyway) so... why not? Obviously it won't give you a huge benefit, but aren't we talking about a couple of fps anyway? So long as you're not overheating and you aren't pushing voltage boundaries there are no downsides.

Also true.  It’s a question of how much extra cooler does one buy, and at what point does it stop being worth it?

[Mark Kaine]

8 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I have.  

The issue with overclocking is the gains from it these days are minuscule compared to what used to be the case.  Back in the days of the early intel chips you could rais a cpu clock by an entire gigahertz or more.  It was a big big deal.  These days improvements are a tenth of that.  Small improvements do add up, but there are levels of experience improvement and they can be much less granular than even a 10-15 fps improvement.  If a person for example wants to run 60fps but is dropping into the mid 50’s it may be more effective to overclock than to get a faster cpu. If they’re in the 40s though it really won’t.  Conversely if they’re running 150 fps on a 144hz monitor, overclocking will gain them nothing tangible.

 

To make overclocking even less important there is gsynch/freesynch.  They make those occasional drops much less important.

 

Is it SOMETIMES useful? sure.  It isn’t a significant benefit all or even most of the time though.  Back in the days of massive overclocks it was a benefit all the time.  It’s not anymore.

Overclocking gives me about 5-10%, it means in many games reaching 60fps or constantly staying slightly under. 

 

Overclocking is only useless when you have the hardware to reach your desired performance,  otherwise you're pretty much forced to overclock (which is the majority btw,  seeing as the majority has the same GPU than I do) 

 

 

Having hardware where overclocking is useless is nice but it's also extremely rare,  most people can't afford buying GPUs for 400 - 500€ and upwards... 

 

(just look at Steam surveys which isn't insignificant by any means) 

 

 

PS: I get what you're saying,  I just wouldn't call overclocking useless,  with some rare exceptions.

[Bombastinator]

58 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Overclocking gives me about 5-10%, it means in many games reaching 60fps or constantly staying slightly under. 

 

Overclocking is only useless when you have the hardware to reach your desired performance,  otherwise you're pretty much forced to overclock (which is the majority btw,  seeing as the majority has the same GPU than I do) 

 

 

Having hardware where overclocking is useless is nice but it's also extremely rare,  most people can't afford buying GPUs for 400 - 500€ and upwards... 

 

(just look at Steam surveys which isn't insignificant by any means) 

 

 

PS: I get what you're saying,  I just wouldn't call overclocking useless,  with some rare exceptions.

Unless when you overclock you STILL can’t reach your desired performance in which case you dropped half the price of your cpu on a cooler and upped its electricity use by 150% and still don’t get anything useful.  Is it useful? Sure.  If it doesn’t cost too much in relation to the price of your system, or you’ve got a top end system and you’re reaching for the stars anyway, or, like it was even 5 years ago, you could get enough from an overclock that you were pretty much guaranteed to reach another level of performance.

 

Thats really the problem.  It’s not guaranteed anymore that one can actually reach that next useful level.  
 

Companies are better at making chips now.  The level of variance in quality between objects is smaller.  Manufacturers don’t have to sell 5ghz CPUs as 3.2ghz ones because they can’t tell the difference.  Now there’s less variation and they can sell that same chip as 4.1ghz.  And the chances that you can even get 5ghz out of it isn’t guaranteed.  Model like 4.3 if you’re lucky because the ones they knew could do 4.5 got sold as 4.5 ones. 

[atxcyclist]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Unless when you overclock you STILL can’t reach your desired performance in which case you dropped half the price of your cpu on a cooler and upped its electricity use by 150% and still don’t get anything useful.  Is it useful? Sure.  If it doesn’t cost too much in relation to the price of your system, or you’ve got a top end system and you’re reaching for the stars anyway, or, like it was even 5 years ago, you could get enough from an overclock that you were pretty much guaranteed to reach another level of performance.

 

Thats really the problem.  It’s not guaranteed anymore that one can actually reach that next useful level.  
 

Companies are better at making chips now.  The level of variance in quality between objects is smaller.  Manufacturers don’t have to sell 5ghz CPUs as 3.2ghz ones because they can’t tell the difference.  Now there’s less variation and they can sell that same chip as 4.1ghz.  And the chances that you can even get 5ghz out of it isn’t guaranteed.  Model like 4.3 if you’re lucky because the ones they knew could do 4.5 got sold as 4.5 ones. 

 

Overclocking is great, but you're right there is now a lot more control put into chip-making. It's not like the old days when AMD would intentionally shut a core off to sell a mid-tier Phenom II, or Intel would sell you something like a 2600k that had an extra gigahertz all-core clockspeed hiding in there if you're brave enough. At least on AMDs side, overclocking Ryzen 2000 and 3000 is somewhat pointless, just letting the chipset run the boost clock up will almost get you there and make a lot less heat doing it. It makes more sense to get a good cooling solution than it does spending a bunch of time on an overclock.

 

Of course, LN2 and phase-change stuff is bonkers, but that's way less than 1% of even the most hardcore computer enthusiasts. 

[Mark Kaine]

31 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Unless when you overclock you STILL can’t reach your desired performance in which case you dropped half the price of your cpu on a cooler and upped its electricity use by 150% and still don’t get anything useful.  Is it useful? Sure.  If it doesn’t cost too much in relation to the price of your system, or you’ve got a top end system and you’re reaching for the stars anyway, or, like it was even 5 years ago, you could get enough from an overclock that you were pretty much guaranteed to reach another level of performance.

 

Thats really the problem.  It’s not guaranteed anymore that one can actually reach that next useful level.  
 

Companies are better at making chips now.  The level of variance in quality between objects is smaller.  Manufacturers don’t have to sell 5ghz CPUs as 3.2ghz ones because they can’t tell the difference.  Now there’s less variation and they can sell that same chip as 4.1ghz.  And the chances that you can even get 5ghz out of it isn’t guaranteed.  Model like 4.3 if you’re lucky because the ones they knew could do 4.5 got sold as 4.5 ones. 

Yeah ok but I was talking about GPUs,  10%  doesn't sound much but it actually is and people buy new GPUs for 10% gains lol.

 

Also when I OC'd my old 2200G I didn't need a special cooler either,  the chip was running a lot cooler with the iGPU turned off anyways. 

 

Oh and I also didn't play on PC mostly in the "good old days",  I had a Intel Pentium 1 without GPU (those things were expensive even back then)  and later I had a Dell with an ATi GPU  (without fan BTW!)  that I could OC exactly 100Hz iirc,  and even that wasnt that bad and what I expected,  NFS at 720p 60fps,  the future!  LOL   

 

 

OCing a GPU is basically free FPS and I'm glad it's as simple as it is,  at least on 1000 cards  (just copy some settings from yt basically) 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

17 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

 

Overclocking is great, but you're right there is now a lot more control put into chip-making. It's not like the old days when AMD would intentionally shut a core off to sell a mid-tier Phenom II, or Intel would sell you something like a 2600k that had an extra gigahertz all-core clockspeed hiding in there if you're brave enough. At least on AMDs side, overclocking Ryzen 2000 and 3000 is somewhat pointless, just letting the chipset run the boost clock up will almost get you there and make a lot less heat doing it. It makes more sense to get a good cooling solution than it does spending a bunch of time on an overclock.

 

Of course, LN2 and phase-change stuff is bonkers, but that's way less than 1% of even the most hardcore computer enthusiasts. 

I could see the core thing happening again.  It might be happening now.  What’s different is they’re better at shutting off that extra core.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if six months from now someone for example finds out that all 3600s are actually 3700s or something, and figures out a way to turn even one of those extra CPUs on.  Then it’s all back on again.  For that chip.

if it wasn’t a duolopoly we were dealing with that sort of stuff wouldn’t happen in the first place.  I understand there was talk here that someone is selling 4 space CPUs in China.  They’re Pretty lousy. They’re based on melding together die shrunk old 1 core xenons rather than a true 4 core, and there are big problems.  Here’s the thing though:  they’re $8.00.  Not $59.00.  8.  I suspect it’s bad.  The problem is those folks selling $8 4 space CPUs managed to do it because they didn’t have to design the CPUs themselves.  Just modify existing designs.  If they did there would be all kinds of R&D costs and they’d have to sell them for a whole lot more.  What if Nvidia got into the am64 game or intel manages to get into the gpu game though?  It doesn’t take IP theft to make healthy competition.  Power5 is as good as am64.  No one writes for it though.  It’s just inertia.

[atxcyclist]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I could see the core thing happening again.  It might be happening now.  What’s different is they’re better at shutting off that extra core.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if six months from now someone for example finds out that all 3600s are actually 3700s or something, and figures out a way to turn even one of those extra CPUs on.  Then it’s all back on again.  For that chip.

if it wasn’t a duolopoly we were dealing with that sort of stuff wouldn’t happen in the first place.  I understand there was talk here that someone is selling 4 space CPUs in China.  They’re Pretty lousy. They’re based on melding together die shrunk old 1 core xenons rather than a true 4 core, and there are big problems.  Here’s the thing though:  they’re $8.00.  Not $59.00.  8.  I suspect it’s bad.  The problem is those folks selling $8 4 space CPUs managed to do it because they didn’t have to design the CPUs themselves.  Just modify existing designs.  If they did there would be all kinds of R&D costs and they’d have to sell them for a whole lot more.  What if Nvidia got into the am64 game or intel manages to get into the gpu game though?  It doesn’t take IP theft to make healthy competition.  Power5 is as good as am64.  No one writes for it though.  It’s just inertia.

I'm getting some Cyrix vibes from that Chinese chip hackery, haha.

[Mark Kaine]

6 hours ago, amdorintel said:

the fps chase game is an interesting breed of gamer that plays that game, pardon the pun.

 

i never understood the chase for fps

Depends on the games your playing.  I play a lot of games where mechanics are tied to frame rate and also often have frame dependent moves or combos, even "just frames" moves, having a stable framerate in those helps tremendously and is less straining also. 

 

Additionally I get motion sick when framerate and refresh rate aren't synchronized. 

 

 

I do envy people who don't care about framerates tho,  but it's out of the question for me personally due to the games I'm playing. 

 

(currently playing almost exclusively Monster Hunter World btw which also has such moves,  and on top of that a frame drop at the wrong moment can mean death,  as some monsters can actually 1 shot you) 

[superJayCreezy]

I understand And do agree with some of the points y’all are making. All I’m saying is in my mind lots of tiny pointless upgrades and tweaks can accumulate into decent gains if you have the budget to do such admittedly money wasting upgrades such as buying that slightly faster ram, adding just a few extra gigs, slightly better ssd upgrade, better cooling to squeeze that extra 100mhz overclock. Not saying I recommend doing it for every scenario but if u got the funds it does add up 

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, superJayCreezy said:

I understand And do agree with some of the points y’all are making. All I’m saying is in my mind lots of tiny pointless upgrades and tweaks can accumulate into decent gains if you have the budget to do such admittedly money wasting upgrades such as buying that slightly faster ram, adding just a few extra gigs, slightly better ssd upgrade, better cooling to squeeze that extra 100mhz overclock. Not saying I recommend doing it for every scenario but if u got the funds it does add up 

It does.  Which is why it’s still a reasonable thing to do at the high end.  It gets harder when the difference between a lower end CPU and a higher one is $50 though.

 

This whole thing will change I think when am5 comes out.  Then the am4 people will start tweaking.

[Jae Tee]

Remember when it comes to over clocking you may end up losing performance due to  instabilities.