First time Overclocker and Asus OC tuner

[Knight Tarkus]

Hey all!

 

I pulled the plug on GPU upgrade and went from EVGA 970 to EVGA 1070. Exciting stuff! I did some testings in Witcher 3 and Rainbow Six Siege and everything looked okay, BUT.....

 

I got some very noticeable drops in Witcher 3 city areas (Novigrad, main squaire). I ran the game at 1080p, hairworks on (0x AA), maxed. Frames jumped around pretty badly, from 45 to 65 in that one area. Walking around countryside I got 70-80fps on same settings so I was happy about that. I asked a friend of mine about what might be causing these drops and he made a very good suggestion: Check CPU usage. So I did. My usage jumped around 90-100% most of the time. I have a habit of keeping a lot of background programs open, my CPU idling around 20% so I closed some of em up and tested again, and sure enough, I got some extra frames, now keeping mostly in 50's.

 

So of course, now I want it to go faster.

 

Now the problem is, I haven't made anything go fast ever before. I know internet is FULL of OC guides and such, but I noticed something interesting while looking at my BIOS:

 

OC Tuner

 

"Sweet, an auto OC tool !"

 

And then I found a whole lot of nothing about how to use it on internet. I have always found the descriptions of stuff in BIOS very cryptic. The tool had 3 options:

 

As is, Ratio first & BCLK first.

 

I have no idea what each of these do (I guess As is the default one as it was selected). I found people saying good and bad things about this tool. Some say its okay, some say to do it manually. I'm not looking for that ultimate 100% performance OC. I just want that extra kick to get few more frames with stable settings.

 

So what i'm asking here: How do I use this tool, what do these settings mean, and is this a good idea for first time OC'er?

 

Of course, specs bellow:

 

Asus Z87-K

EVGA GeForce GTX 1070

Intel i5-4670K 3.40GHz

(CPU cooler which model I forget, but I assure you its very big and bulky and stuff)

Kingston 8GB DDR3 RAM

Samsung 850 EVO 240Gb SSD

Windows 10 64bit

Western Digital Blue 1TB HDD

Seasonic S12 II 520W BRONZE

[Verrierr]

With automatic tools you won't ghet maximum possible overclock. If you wanna go with it pick ratio first since it's the more basic way of overclocking. Bclk often causes games to stutter and that's worse than having simply lower fps.

[Lemonpearl]

OC tuner will make it go a little faster and it's safer than manual overclocking in terms of stability. It also only requires one click to perform. Might as well start from there.

[Knight Tarkus]

Hey,  I pressed some buttons and here are the results and an another question.

 

So I went with the  Ratio first mode, machine rebooted, and voila, my CPU was running at higher clock. Seems like its 4.2Ghz max.

 

Here are the original stats from HW monitor. (Non gaming usage)

 

Here are the post Auto OC stats (Non gaming usage)

 

Looking decent in my opinion. CPU goes up to 4.2 which is a nice number. Also got some extra frames in Witcher 3 which is nice, less drops, CPU usage is lower. HOWEVER...

 

When ever I launch a demanding game, be it Witcher 3, or Rainbow Six, the CPU locks itself to 4006MHz

 

Visual representation.

 

Overwatch and Dark  Souls 3 let the CPU clock move around a bit, but it very often is stuck to that 4006MHz. 

 

Wheres that extra 200MHz hiding and why?

[SpaceGhostC2C]

10 minutes ago, Jaska95 said:

Hey,  I pressed some buttons and here are the results and an another question.

 

So I went with the  Ratio first mode, machine rebooted, and voila, my CPU was running at higher clock. Seems like its 4.2Ghz max.

 

Here are the original stats from HW monitor. (Non gaming usage)

 

Here are the post Auto OC stats (Non gaming usage)

 

Looking decent in my opinion. CPU goes up to 4.2 which is a nice number. Also got some extra frames in Witcher 3 which is nice, less drops, CPU usage is lower. HOWEVER...

 

When ever I launch a demanding game, be it Witcher 3, or Rainbow Six, the CPU locks itself to 4006MHz

 

Visual representation.

 

Overwatch and Dark  Souls 3 let the CPU clock move around a bit, but it very often is stuck to that 4006MHz. 

 

Wheres that extra 200MHz hiding and why?

Turbo clock? Most CPUs have a maximum speed for single core performance, when most cores are idle, but when more cores are used they go back to base speeds (it looks auto OC got you a 4GHz, 4.2 boost CPU). Actually, there is a whole series of steps, below base for power saving, and above base for different boost states.

[Knight Tarkus]

Interesting. So is there a way I can yank out that extra 200Mhz of performance AKA having the boost on whhen gaming?

 

Also, would I be wrong in assuming that if at this point I want higher OC, I need to go do it manually?

 

Also to note: Seems like the core speeds and temperatures are fluctuating a bit, changing every second or so up and down, from about 4000MHz-4200MHz and 38C-43C. Assuming this is normal?

[Lemonpearl]

47 minutes ago, Jaska95 said:

Interesting. So is there a way I can yank out that extra 200Mhz of performance AKA having the boost on whhen gaming?

 

Also, would I be wrong in assuming that if at this point I want higher OC, I need to go do it manually?

 

Also to note: Seems like the core speeds and temperatures are fluctuating a bit, changing every second or so up and down, from about 4000MHz-4200MHz and 38C-43C. Assuming this is normal?

If you're using OC tuner then I think you'll need to overclock manually from there. In BIOS set Ai tuner to Manual mode. Set the CPU voltage to Offset mode to adjust it automatically. Then you can add 100 MHz increments to the clock speed and run a stability test each time.

 

With your temps, I think OC tuner bumps up CPU voltage too causing the CPU temps to increase. As long as these temps are within safe operating range then you should be fine.