how much does O.C. take off the life of a processor

One thing I can say in favor of overclocking is that it is safer than street racing which was what we did when I was a kid. And it's cheaper than performance parts for car engines. From a computing perspective, however, I can't think of anything positive to say about it.
 
overclocking does give a noticable difference, you only have to run a speed test to see the difference, and that is what you get from everything.

For instance, my processor is stock at 2.66GHz. I manage to get it up to 3.8 (was seeing how far i could push it) but 70 degree idle isn't my idea of fun :P so i dropped it to the more suitable 3.1GHz, now it is less than 50 idle and only just gets to 60 when under stress. Now, when at 3.8 i ran superpi and went from on a 1m run it took just under 13 seconds. Compare that to the 21 seconds it takes stock and that is about a 40% increase in performance. Now as i said temperatures were an issue, that is because i am on stock cooling, but if i had better cooling it would stay as that and not lose much life as voltages are still normal and the system was stable.

It isn't just with test that you see it, my boot speeds, game frame rates, loading speeds of applications etc, all were massive reduced in time. Even at only a 3.1GHz overclock it is very stable, very cool and noticably faster.

With an i7 though it is plenty quick enough to do anything now without breaking a sweat so i would say for now atleast keep it stock and as it gets slower as technology advances squeeze a little more out of it.

You can use your old p4 systems for testing/practice/fun, would be nice to see what you could get out of them, make it a little competition for yourself. Whatever it is clocked at, see if you can get double speedes from it without overheating or losing stability. It will give you an idea of how to overclock and the results of overclocking, and how to keep a stable system and the little differences the odd tweak makes. and ofcourse it will give you that fun that you wanted :P
 
Only on this forum would people actually argue the merits of overclocking. *shaking head*

Sure, it's not worth it on an Athlon X2 4600 where you won't get much improvement (they overclock horribly...I know, I had one, and it was slow). But if your processor can easily gain 25%+ in performance with stock or near-stock voltage, WHY NOT? It's free performance.

I consider myself a pretty conservative overclocker, and let me tell you, there is a noticeable difference from my CPU's stock 2.8 at 1.325v and its current setting at 3.4 at 1.4v. I won't ever be in that 1.5v+ crowd because I do care about longevity, but who cares if my CPU's life is shortened from 10 years to 8? It's going to be long gone by then anyway.

Live a little, guys. ;) If you play the game within reason, there's no reason not to do it. I've never had anything fail on me because of overclocking (except maybe a reboot while testing). Then again, I never try to break benchmark/overclocking records either.
 
everyone talks trash about this or that not being safe, but honestly...... who HERE has actually fried a CPU from overclocking (with normal voltages and good heatsinks to keep the temps down)

I have yet to fry a CPU from overclocking. I have, however, fried some motherboards and RAM from overclocking.

I run my i7-920 at 4.0 GHz fully loaded 24/7 (crunching on World Community Grid) and will let you guys know if it ever fries. The temps stay in the mid 70's 24/7 (c0-stepping with 1.35 vcore)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top