Over Clocking CPU -- Worth the effort?

[Catamer]

I've never been able to OC anything and still have it stable for all of time.
I never can find anything that says how to do it with my motherboard, etc.
The current Asus P6X58D says it auto-overclocks only to say it failed. I'm currently using Corsair Dominators and using the XMP profile seems to work fine but my main CPU is only at 3.34G when it was really rated for 3.2G ( not much of an increase ).

I think my raid-0 of some SSD drives got me more performance than any over clocking would.
It's kind of a balancing act between CPU+Memory/Video/Disk. improve the slowest if you can afford it.

[Sajuuk]

I've never been able to OC anything and still have it stable for all of time.
I never can find anything that says how to do it with my motherboard, etc.
The current Asus P6X58D says it auto-overclocks only to say it failed. I'm currently using Corsair Dominators and using the XMP profile seems to work fine but my main CPU is only at 3.34G when it was really rated for 3.2G ( not much of an increase ).

I think my raid-0 of some SSD drives got me more performance than any over clocking would.
It's kind of a balancing act between CPU+Memory/Video/Disk. improve the slowest if you can afford it.

Define stable for all of time, and you're doing it wrong.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I say no.

If you want a faster processor go buy a faster processor ......

Imho you want a faster clock speed regardless of number of cores. I run 2 cores at 3.2Ghz (amd), I think thats better then say 4 cores at 2.8 Ghz, for wow, not 100percent sure though.

[Sajuuk]

I say no.

If you want a faster processor go buy a faster processor ......

Imho you want a faster clock speed regardless of number of cores. I run 2 cores at 3.2Ghz (amd), I think thats better then say 4 cores at 2.8 Ghz, for wow, not 100percent sure though.

Sooooo. I take it you don't like free performance? What's the deal with taking a 2.66Ghz CPU and then making it run at 3.8 for absolutely free (well, aside from slightly higher power draw, depending on your voltage). a 920/930 is the best bang for the buck currently available from intel. I think the 950 is the same price as a 930, and I've heard at times (not often, haven't payed much attention to it) that it doesn't overclock nearly as well as a 920/930. And then there's the huge bump in price for any processors over that for MINIMAL (.16Ghz) bumps in speed.

I took my i7-920 from 2.66Ghz to 3.8Ghz for almost a year before I decided to switch form factors and cooling solutions. My computer ran like a champ during that time. I just haven't taken the time to OC it recently.

Sooo. Above i7-960/970/975/965 performance for the price of a 920? Hell yeah.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Sooooo. I take it you don't like free performance? What's the deal with taking a 2.66Ghz CPU and then making it run at 3.8 for absolutely free (well, aside from slightly higher power draw, depending on your voltage). a 920/930 is the best bang for the buck currently available from intel. I think the 950 is the same price as a 930, and I've heard at times (not often, haven't payed much attention to it) that it doesn't overclock nearly as well as a 920/930. And then there's the huge bump in price for any processors over that for MINIMAL (.16Ghz) bumps in speed.

I took my i7-920 from 2.66Ghz to 3.8Ghz for almost a year before I decided to switch form factors and cooling solutions. My computer ran like a champ during that time. I just haven't taken the time to OC it recently.

Sooo. Above i7-960/970/975/965 performance for the price of a 920? Hell yeah.

/agree

For some processors and back before the Intel Core2 series CPUs became available, I would have said no, definitely not worth the pain. Nowadays, the Core2 CPUs overclock so easy and with so little additional heat generation, it's almost a no brainer. Caveat is that if you're buying bargain brands for your motherboard and RAM, you may have issues.