Is overclocking you graphics card worth it? Do you really see the difference?

Topic.

low end cards? yes. When i had my 8500GT, the OC was amazing! giving me something like 7-10 fps increase. with most midrange and high end cards? No, all you are going to get is lock ups and heat.GazaAli

varies on the gpu and fansink you plan on using. certain gpu's can go for miles while others stop dead.

and it should NEVER be done on a non-gaming gpu like the hd 5450 or 9400gt or something to that effect.

good gpu's are mid rangers like 9800gt, hd 4670, hd 5670, hd 4770, hd 4830, 9600gt, 9600gso, 8800gs/gt

gpu's higher up start seeing the returns drop off single digit gains at best such as the hd 4890 or gtx 275 and to the very extreme cases the hd 5970 has NO ocing headroom (basically after the toxic editions clocks there arent any gains worth discussing)

so there you have it great if your not a bottom feeder and a side act if your at the top but inbetween can yield fruit.

When I had a single 5770, the overclocking did give me a little extra headroom. In JC2 I found there was a noticable slowdown with big explosions (Like Gas storage tanks), but once I cranked the frequency up by 60Mhz the problem went away.

Whether you need it is entirely dependent on how your system is performing.

varies on the gpu and fansink you plan on using. certain gpu's can go for miles while others stop dead.

and it should NEVER be done on a non-gaming gpu like the hd 5450 or 9400gt or something to that effect.

good gpu's are mid rangers like 9800gt, hd 4670, hd 5670, hd 4770, hd 4830, 9600gt, 9600gso, 8800gs/gt

gpu's higher up start seeing the returns drop off single digit gains at best such as the hd 4890 or gtx 275 and to the very extreme cases the hd 5970 has NO ocing headroom (basically after the toxic editions clocks there arent any gains worth discussing)

so there you have it great if your not a bottom feeder and a side act if your at the top but inbetween can yield fruit.

ionusX

varies on the gpu and fansink you plan on using. certain gpu's can go for miles while others stop dead.

and it should NEVER be done on a non-gaming gpu like the hd 5450 or 9400gt or something to that effect.

good gpu's are mid rangers like 9800gt, hd 4670, hd 5670, hd 4770, hd 4830, 9600gt, 9600gso, 8800gs/gt

gpu's higher up start seeing the returns drop off single digit gains at best such as the hd 4890 or gtx 275 and to the very extreme cases the hd 5970 has NO ocing headroom (basically after the toxic editions clocks there arent any gains worth discussing)

so there you have it great if your not a bottom feeder and a side act if your at the top but inbetween can yield fruit.

ionusX

Depends on what you want to achieve, a few more pts in a benchmark then yes, synthetic benchmarks can benefit greatly from a OC.

Many fairly new cards recive gains in pst that compares almoust equal to the percentage of OC you do.

So if you get 32FPS in crysis without an OC you migth get another 10% OC off the memory and GPU, you can roughly exspect another 3FPS to add if you OC 10%. (Sorta, because you have other factors to count in but crysis is a good exsample as it isn't so CPU limmited.)

What it all comes down to is where your bottleneck is, is it the memory or the GPU is it the CPU or even your PCIe port on the motherboard.

But true, the calculating power of your GPU will increase by the clock almoust linear, and your Gddr will also increase almoust liniear to the clock if the latency hasn't changed. (some cards do so to spare memory if given high clocks.)

I don't agree on that midlevel cards OC better than highlevel, that was true for a few years ago but not now, cards are much more enginered today, few years back many cards did use the exsact same stuff and could be upgraded to a better one just by switching to another bios, nowdays each GPU is diffrent and does use a diffrent about of PU's. both HD4890 and gtx275 are bad exsample as they both OC quite well.

You can save a few buck if you get the rigth things and choose wisely because some cards do OC much better than others.

alright thanks guys, ill decide what i wanna do after another 260 arrives. its mainly crysis that i could do with extra fps on, other games are fine.00jcooper

[QUOTE="ionusX"]

varies on the gpu and fansink you plan on using. certain gpu's can go for miles while others stop dead.

and it should NEVER be done on a non-gaming gpu like the hd 5450 or 9400gt or something to that effect.

good gpu's are mid rangers like 9800gt, hd 4670, hd 5670, hd 4770, hd 4830, 9600gt, 9600gso, 8800gs/gt

gpu's higher up start seeing the returns drop off single digit gains at best such as the hd 4890 or gtx 275 and to the very extreme cases the hd 5970 has NO ocing headroom (basically after the toxic editions clocks there arent any gains worth discussing)

so there you have it great if your not a bottom feeder and a side act if your at the top but inbetween can yield fruit.

Bigsteve3570

im not making up the hd 5970 you are.. hexus review and i quote

"Showing that the Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB is on the bleeding edge of AMD's 5000-series architecture, we found that the card had little-to-no overclocking headroom. Adding just an additional 15MHz to the GPU core was enough to cause system instability."

source: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=24278&page=14

and yes its true low end gpu's do have headroom but its impractical. would you oc an hd 4350 just to save the 10 bucks on a 4550 or 9500gt. i think not..

its impractical. though yes you can do it and it may extended its lifespan by a small margin it wont be winning any awards anytime soon for practicality.

as i did say which you canot refute it varies on the gpu in question and the fansink you use.

[QUOTE="Bigsteve3570"]

[QUOTE="ionusX"]

varies on the gpu and fansink you plan on using. certain gpu's can go for miles while others stop dead.

and it should NEVER be done on a non-gaming gpu like the hd 5450 or 9400gt or something to that effect.

good gpu's are mid rangers like 9800gt, hd 4670, hd 5670, hd 4770, hd 4830, 9600gt, 9600gso, 8800gs/gt

gpu's higher up start seeing the returns drop off single digit gains at best such as the hd 4890 or gtx 275 and to the very extreme cases the hd 5970 has NO ocing headroom (basically after the toxic editions clocks there arent any gains worth discussing)

so there you have it great if your not a bottom feeder and a side act if your at the top but inbetween can yield fruit.

ionusX

im not making up the hd 5970 you are.. hexus review and i quote

"Showing that the Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB is on the bleeding edge of AMD's 5000-series architecture, we found that the card had little-to-no overclocking headroom. Adding just an additional 15MHz to the GPU core was enough to cause system instability."

source: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=24278&page=14

and yes its true low end gpu's do have headroom but its impractical. would you oc an hd 4350 just to save the 10 bucks on a 4550 or 9500gt. i think not..

its impractical. though yes you can do it and it may extended its lifespan by a small margin it wont be winning any awards anytime soon for practicality.

as i did say which you canot refute it varies on the gpu in question and the fansink you use.