Is it worth it for me to overclock...?

gillmanjr

Member
I wanted to run this by the experts on here because I have very little experience overclocking. Here is my system:

-ASRock Z97 1150 mobo
-i5 4670k
-MSI R9 390
-8 GB GDDR3

I am currently playing Far Cry 5, which I have been waiting for for years. Great game by the way. I've got an older Dell 2k IPS monitor and I'm able to run Far Cry at all high settings pretty easily, it doesn't dip below 50 Hz much (monitor is only 60 Hz). If I push it to the ultra settings it'll still run but dips down into the 30s so I keep it on high.

My question for you guys is this: do you think it would make a difference if I OC'd the i5? I was just thinking about taking it up to 4.0 GHz, is it worth it? Its only air cooled but I do have a Zalman CPU cooler, one of the solid copper ones with 2 fans and my case is heavily ventilated so it will handle the heat. The issue is I don't have a lot of experience overclocking and frankly don't really even know how to do it, I would have to read up on it. But if it isn't going to make a difference with gaming I don't want to risk it.

There is one other thing too: I am planning on getting an ultrawide monitor very soon (1440p ultrawide), do you think I will HAVE to overclock and possibly even upgrade my GPU for that?

Thanks for any input...
 

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
Looking at the specs fot your GPU, I think you should be able to handle that new monitor. Overclocking is not necessary.

As to whether you'll get better frames with an overclock in your game, I have my doubts. The game may be more GPU dependent than CPU dependent. It wouldn't hurt to try though. In this day in age it isn't all that hard to overclock. You should be able to simply go into the BIOS and adjust the settings there, but sometimes you have to mess with voltages and that can be risky business. In my motherboard there's just option to increase the clock. You set it and go, that's it. No monkeying around with voltages. If you have to mess with voltages for a stable over clock, I've read you only increase the CPU voltage by .1 to .2 volts at a time. Then you would run something like Prime95 for a while and see if the OC is stable. There is a forum that is dedicated to all this called overclock.net. There is where you'll get better answers.

My primary game on my desktop is Flight Simulator X and this game is largely CPU dependent, and to make matters worse it's only a single threaded game. So to have the best FPS in this game one needs a fast CPU with as fast a single threaded capability as possible. I did over clock my CPU to around 4.5 GHz, but I didn't see much of an improvement at all in New York where I get lower frames due to all of the buildings. Mexico City is the same way. I may get an i7 6700k next just for the hell of it. I seen it has about 20% increase in single threaded capability.

So with that, I think a OC is mostly a brag thing more so than anything. I think the chief variable here on CPU power is the architecture of the CPU.
 

gillmanjr

Member
Thanks for the feedback. My MOBO Bios does offer a single setting for overclocking, its called "Turbo" and I have tried several times to set it at 4.0. It is supposed to be automatic (it automatically adjusts all the voltages, etc) but every time I have tried it won't load Windows. I've never tried manually overclocking because there are so many different settings I have no idea what needs to be changed and what doesn't. Part of the reason for this is that the terminology is different in my BIOS than what you read on overclocking guides. Those guides talk mainly about increasing "Vcore", which I understand is voltage, but there is NO setting in my BIOS for "Vcore" so I'm not sure which voltage needs to be changed, there are several. Its annoying.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Thanks for the feedback. My MOBO Bios does offer a single setting for overclocking, its called "Turbo" and I have tried several times to set it at 4.0. It is supposed to be automatic (it automatically adjusts all the voltages, etc) but every time I have tried it won't load Windows. I've never tried manually overclocking because there are so many different settings I have no idea what needs to be changed and what doesn't. Part of the reason for this is that the terminology is different in my BIOS than what you read on overclocking guides. Those guides talk mainly about increasing "Vcore", which I understand is voltage, but there is NO setting in my BIOS for "Vcore" so I'm not sure which voltage needs to be changed, there are several. Its annoying.
CPU voltage.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Do you have the extreme 4 or extreme 6 motherboard? You don't want to mess with turbo. Change the cpu ratio at the bottom.oc.jpg
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Since you have a decent cooler I'd leave everything on Auto, select XMP for your RAM and use a 40x multi for the CPU. Your BIOS should slightly raise the vcore/"CPU Voltage" to compensate. If it still hangs add a couple +0.1v clicks. 4.0 is trivial for Haswell/Devil's Canyon CPUs. I wouldn't go much past 1.15v, also monitor temps once you overclock. The Intel XTU is useful for stress testing.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-

Auto OC like the 'turbo mode' are notoriously unstable although most boards have a table that will auto pump the relevant voltages anyway.

As far as improvements, you might see better minimum framerates but I think the 390 would prevent you from gaining much more.
 
I'll put in a call to your local computer shop ... telling them to expect a visit from you when your computer needs repair after an overclock-gone-wrong.

On a more serious note ...
If your system is adequate, overclocking with not produce measurable benefit. Leave it be.
If your system is inadequate, you just need a new box.
Overclocking won't get you there.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I'll put in a call to your local computer shop ... telling them to expect a visit from you when your computer needs repair after an overclock-gone-wrong.

On a more serious note ...
If your system is adequate, overclocking with not produce measurable benefit. Leave it be.
If your system is inadequate, you just need a new box.
Overclocking won't get you there.

You uhh, ever overclocked before? Definitely can provide tangible improvements depending on your hardware and uses. And I'm not talking about benchmarks, actually noticeable performance boosts, particularly for CPU bound stuff.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Leave everything else on auto. You only want to jump say 50-100 mhz at a time and test for stability.
 

gillmanjr

Member
Leave everything else on auto. You only want to jump say 50-100 mhz at a time and test for stability.

Thanks a lot for the help. I bumped it up to 3.8 today and so far so good. I didn't run a stress test but I was just playing Far Cry for a while and no issues. Looks like idle temps went up a couple degrees but still only around 30C. I think I'll leave it at 3.8 for a few weeks, use it normally and make sure there are no problems. Then maybe I'll try 4.0.
 

gillmanjr

Member
I ran a benchmark in Far Cry 5 yesterday with my CPU OC'd and I don't think it made much of a difference with frames. The minimum framerate did go up by 1 or 2 Hz but I think the average was the same, if I remember correctly.

I do have to say though, for general use, and particularly for recording (which is one of my main uses for this computer), there is a noticeable difference with it OC'd to 3.8 GHz. Recording is a CPU intensive activity, in fact there is a CPU usage meter built into the recording software I use (Ableton) and when I am running a lot of plugins I can get the meter up into the 80% range for CPU load. The extra clock speed helps for sure.
 

gillmanjr

Member
I have another question for you guys, figured I would just keep it in this thread:

I am the kind of person who likes to use a computer for as long as I can, provided it will continue doing what I need it to. I don't see myself building a new system for at least another 2 years, at which point it will be a totally new build, from the ground up, including case. But for now there is one upgrade I NEED to make to my current build, and that has to do with hard drives:

I currently have a 250 GB Samsung SSD (used for Windows/software), a 500 GB 10k RPM raptor HDD for gaming (which is now completely full), and a 1 TB 7.2k HDD for storage. I am going to keep the 1 TB storage drive but now that SSD prices have dropped so much I want to replace my current SSD and the 10k drive with two 1 TB SSDs in RAID 0. I'll then use that 2 TB for all software and gaming installations. Two questions: does anyone know if my MOBO has built in RAID 0 support? Also, do you think this upgrade will make a noticeable performance difference?

I will also probably add another 8 GB RAM at some point though RAM hasn't really been an issue for me, I'm not usually doing more than one thing at a time on my home computer. If there are any other cost effective upgrades you guys think would be worth it for me to make, PLEASE recommend...
 

_Kyle_

Well-Known Member
Yes, it supports RAID 0.

However, I am not sure if RAID actually is noticeable, I have never used it.

The GPU is pretty good, I would keep it. May wanna check out the GTX 11/20 series when they come out.
 

gillmanjr

Member
Yes, it supports RAID 0.

However, I am not sure if RAID actually is noticeable, I have never used it.

The GPU is pretty good, I would keep it. May wanna check out the GTX 11/20 series when they come out.

I just read an article recently about running SSDs in RAID 0. Their benchmarking showed that running SSDs in RAID offer even more performance gains than running regular HDDs in RAID. Here is the article...

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2365767/feed-your-greed-for-speed-by-installing-ssds-in-raid-0.html
 

_Kyle_

Well-Known Member
I just read an article recently about running SSDs in RAID 0. Their benchmarking showed that running SSDs in RAID offer even more performance gains than running regular HDDs in RAID. Here is the article...

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2365767/feed-your-greed-for-speed-by-installing-ssds-in-raid-0.html
Now I'm gonna have to buy another m.2 NVME SSD and run RAID 0 for the ultimate speeds... quit making spend money! :p

EDIT: As soon as I get a new MOBO that has 2 m.2 slots...
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
What budget were you thinking?

Your board has a 2x M.2 slot, you could just throw a NVMe drive in there and bump your sequential read speed to ~1.2 GB/sec.

RAID0 does a lot for sequential data rates but things like 4k operations will be less drastic.
 

gillmanjr

Member
I don't want to spend a ton of money but I NEED more SSD storage space for gaming. I want to get about 2 TB of SSD storage for as little money as possible and have it be as fast as possible. Seems to me like 2x 1 TB Samsung 860 SSDs in RAID is the way to go for that. That would run me about $600. A lot of money for storage, I know, but if they last I'm sure I'd use them in my next build anyway.
 

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
You will notice very little difference with a RAID 0 and a normal SATA III SSD unless hard drive speed is a major factor. In games you won't see much of any improvement. Perhaps loading the game, but that's about it. It's not worth it and RAID 0 has no redundancy.

I ran a benchmark in Far Cry 5 yesterday with my CPU OC'd and I don't think it made much of a difference with frames.


Didn't I tell you this?
 

gillmanjr

Member
You will notice very little difference with a RAID 0 and a normal SATA III SSD unless hard drive speed is a major factor. In games you won't see much of any improvement. Perhaps loading the game, but that's about it. It's not worth it and RAID 0 has no redundancy.

What about load times WITHIN the game?

The only reason I am planning this setup is because the 2 TB samsung SSD is more than three times the price of the 1 TB. So it is actually significantly cheaper to go with 2x 1 TB drives, rather than a single 2 TB. And I want 2 TB of storage, that number isn't arbitrary, it is based on the rate at which I filled my 500 GB 10k drive with games. Then again I could just uninstall the older games that I don't play anymore. Maybe I'll consider just a single 1 TB drive...
 
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