Hello all, i am building a gaming rig for my "next gen system" come this black friday / cyber monday
Right now im pretty set on getting a i5 3570k/i5 4670k varying on which one is on a better sale.
I am curious if overclocking really has much of a use in solely gaming and if that use justifies paying the slight extra for a "k" CPU and buying aftermarket cooling.
Well if your going for a "k" series processor it is worth it. Even a average 4-4.5ghz overclock would be a nice boost in performance. But if your not interested in overclocking go with a non "k" processor instead.
Well im equally looking at the non k version.
From what i have read you have to buy a decent cooler to get to the 4.4 and beyond range.
I was looking at this cooler: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608040
But then i questioned is the performance boost of say a 4670k at 4.4-4.5 GHZ worth the 70$ for the cooler plus 10$ for the unlocked trait of the CPU.
I hear everyone spouting on about that overclocking is "free performance" when obviosuly that is not the case since everybody recommends to buy aftermarket cooling and whatnot.
I just dont want to pay 80$ if im not going to see 80$ of benifit. I know overclocking has great benifits outside of gaming in different applications but the most system intensive thing im going to be doing is gaming, therefore i dont want to waste money when im already on a tight budget pushing everything i have into it
for gaming cpu overclock doesn't give amazing benifits, a couple extra fps on top and better minimum fps
Not enough to benefit 80$
It really depends on the game. Quite a lot of games with any single GPU will achieve about the same performance with and without overclocking. Once you get to dual SLI or xfire then more games become CPU limited and overclocking starts to help a bit. Some games however are CPU limited from the outset (Arma 3) and hugely benefit from overclocking.
I don't think its as simple as yes or no to overclocking, depends on the GPU, resolutions, game settings and most importantly the game itself.
IMO if there is a cpu bottleneck going on in your system, you could see a minor diffrence tbh.
I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
Min frames are the most important thing to me, anything that can bring them up to acceptable levels when gaming is to be desired.
When playing at ultra settings as little as single digit fps improvements can make the difference between playable and unplayable.
I am one of those crazy people who are horrified when they see stutter/low fps and spend as much as necessary to make it go away :D
OC cpu's are fine for past and current games... but to be honest i am not sure how much of a place overclocking has in the future of gaming (or general computing for that matter).
Most of the initiatives being talked about (dx 11.2, mantle, better multithreading overall) their main points are to remove/lessen the importance of single thread cpu performance in the overall setup for the purposes of gaming and productivity.
It these initiatives work as advertised and do their job then having a supercharged cpu seems kind of redundant.
I've never bothered overclocking and i don't look at "overclocking" as an important viewpoint when i buy new parts.
If im buying new gear i make sure it does what i want at stock, else why bother buying it, all your going to do is buy these nice new parts and then reduce their life expectancy by pumping higher voltage through it.
My view on overclocking is if you've got an older rig that simply doesn't do what you want and you cant afford a new rig use overclocking to gain a little bit more use out of it.
Many will disagree with my view thats fine, i just find whatever advantages you get out of overclocking are completely countered by the costs of cooling it,life span and expense of getting other parts capable of OC'ing.
Better than some of the prices for an increased CPU stock clock :P
(I do see the point of your thread though)
It really depends on the game. I spend money on cooling for silence and stability though also for the fun of custom water cool! Very expensive fun!
Haswell k versions actually lose a lot of interesting features for being a k version chip it's fucked up. Get a 3570k and overclock it or get a 4670 and run it at turbo mode. Also overclocking or not it's always nice to run things cool! Get the phantek ph-tc14pe http://www.amazon.com/Phanteks-Heat-pipes-Premium-Patented-PH-TC14PE_BK/dp/B007ZZE63A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384080881&sr=8-1&keywords=phantek+ph-tc14pe
Unless a non-k part is on a good sale, it really isn't worth it not to buy a K part for a few more dollars.Maybe in a year or two's time, you will want to overclock your cpu and can drop $50-$100 on a cooler (that you can use for a future build) to make your build relevant again. The option to get a cooling system down the road to overclock your cpu to eek out some more system lifetime is good to have, especially since on amazon.com the 4670 and 4670k are the same price.
tl;dr unless the non-k is on sale, get the k part