Is Overclocking Worth It?

[Ethan D.]

I have have a core i5 9400 and a RTX 2060 Super. Would over clocking be worth it if i wanted to play games with ray tracing like control when they come out. Would my system be good enough to get the full extent of ray tracing? (core i59400 16 gb ram rtx 2060 super WD Black SN750 gigabyte H370M-D3H)

[Windows7ge]

Without a K SKU the multiplier is locked and I wouldn't imagine you'd be able to push the base clock high enough to see a measurable improvement without excessive instability.

[Wolly9102]

3 minutes ago, Ethan D. said:

I have have a core i5 9400 and a RTX 2060 Super. Would over clocking be worth it if i wanted to play games with ray tracing like control when they come out. Would my system be good enough to get the full extent of ray tracing? (core i59400 16 gb ram rtx 2060 super WD Black SN750 gigabyte H370M-D3H)

You can play raytracing games without overclocking needed. And for that motherboard you can't because the chipset doesn't supported it and the CPU is locked.

 

You can overclock your gpu but you acutally need to see if it is necessary. 

 

On a side-note: I play BF 5 ray-traced. I don't notice the effects until I search for them. my guess would that with other games it would be kinda the same thing

[goto10]

overclocking on some situations can gove you better high framerates on the gpu, but sometimes we are talking about 5 fps more, often what improves is the minimum fps you get more

 

try usong msi afterburner, there is a autooverclock feature for your gou, will push abit the gpu and allow you to create profiles, play without the overclock, see how it runs, enable overclock and see if improves

 

rtx for the moment is a fps killer, you loose from half to 60% of your possible fps, overclocking might help abit, but not that much, try it and report back results

 

to be honest, ray tracing is, well, half cooked, raw, it might look pretty on the 3 games it supports but is slow, really slow, disabled goes better

 

from that came the joke rtx:off

[FarAwayFromTheSun]

Overclocking is never worth it.

[xAcid9]

Depend if you need that few extra FPS or not. Most of the time i found myself downclocking instead.

[Froody129]

I love overclocking. In some games it's the difference between a slightly choppy experience and a smooth one (on a 980ti). To really make it worth your time on newer cards it's more work than old cards. Frequency curve overclocking is the way to go imo.

10 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Depend if you need that few extra FPS or not. Most of the time i found myself downclocking instead.

Agreed. Although usually I find myself just undervolting at the stock frequency. All of my cards can dramatically lower their power consumption without touching the performance

[xAcid9]

2 hours ago, Froody129 said:

Although usually I find myself just undervolting at the stock frequency.

I'm on Maxwell, i can't directly undervolt without touching power limit. 

[Froody129]

16 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

I'm on Maxwell, i can't directly undervolt without touching power limit. 

I am too, a 980ti. You just lower the power limit, and then increase the frequency offset. Works like a charm for me. I miss the frequency curve on my 1060 though. 

[xAcid9]

1 hour ago, Froody129 said:

I am too, a 980ti. You just lower the power limit, and then increase the frequency offset. Works like a charm for me. I miss the frequency curve on my 1060 though. 

I prefer direct method like my old 290x.

Playing with power limit is kinda iffy for me. I need to lower power limit to 60% to make it use 200w max but in some game the clock simply refuse to go over 1000mhz which i do not understand why and that make some game stutters. It works ok when i set power limit to 65% but by doing that make the card use like 220w-230w which is close to not touching the power limit. 

[Froody129]

15 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

I prefer direct method like my old 290x.

Playing with power limit is kinda iffy for me. I need to lower power limit to 60% to make it use 200w max but in some game the clock simply refuse to go over 1000mhz which i do not understand why and that make some game stutters. It works ok when i set power limit to 65% but by doing that make the card use like 220w-230w which is close to not touching the power limit. 

I haven't played with any AMD cards, unfortunately.

 

My 980ti is top 1% silicon, so maybe that's just why it's so easy for me. The stock voltage is much higher than what I need for my specific GPU

[xAcid9]

8 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

I haven't played with any AMD cards, unfortunately.

 

My 980ti is top 1% silicon, so maybe that's just why it's so easy for me. The stock voltage is much higher than what I need for my specific GPU

I think mine is BIOS related, nowadays i simply cap my games FPS and the voltage will undervolt itself. lol

[Cypher-Jackson]

You get like 5-15% boost in performance, and usually thats not needed. 

But by all means, give it a little boost on your gpu as long as the temps are fine

[jones177]

17 hours ago, Ethan D. said:

I have have a core i5 9400 and a RTX 2060 Super. Would over clocking be worth it if i wanted to play games with ray tracing like control when they come out. Would my system be good enough to get the full extent of ray tracing? (core i59400 16 gb ram rtx 2060 super WD Black SN750 gigabyte H370M-D3H)

First you it is best to see if you are CPU bound in the games that you play. You can do this with MSI Afterburner. What you need to see is if your card is reaching the power limit you have set for it. In games that are not hard on your GPU it won't. You can also use game like bench to do this as well. I use Heaven, FireStrike and TimeSpy.

 

If your CPU is bottlenecking, search to see if you can get substantial gain with your cooling solution if you decide to overclock. 

For example my i7 8086k has substantial gain at 5ghz on all cores but at 5.1 to 5.2ghz there is virtually no gain over 5ghz. The next jump in performance is at 5.3ghz and that is beyond my cooling solution.

 

Ray tracing is hard to do. My 2080 ti is good for 60fps at 3840 X 1600 with RT on with no DLSS. To do that both my CPU and GPU are overclocked with the power limit on the GPU set to max.

With your GPU 1080p 60fps ray tracing is possible but if you play at 1440p you are better off not using it.

 

Here is what to look for in MSI Afterburner.