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GTX680 to arrive at the end of February!

Soldato
Joined
23 Apr 2010
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West Sussex
I see my confusion.

I wrote and was quoted - "Believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of CPU owners never overclock."

ALXAndy's first line reply was - "I don't."

I misunderstood the use of "I don't" as a direct response to my "believe it or not" statement, rather than the way ALXAndy really intended.

I apologise to ALXAndy for my mistake. English is not my first language (German is), and sometimes I take things in the wrong context. I must take more time before responding, and read comments fully. My English is not so good as I sometimes believe it to be

No worries man :)
 
Man of Honour
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Surrey
I like buying the maximum I can afford and then overclocking it, sometimes it means I buy mid range, sometimes its means I buy high end :D Buying midrange and overclocking to high end is very satisfying, but buying high end and overclocking it out of sight of anything else is just as much fun :)

Sometimes people forget this is a forum for hardware junkies. And thats who is often referenced when someone says "most people"

In fact drunkemasters original post said just that, it specified this forum of hardware junkies on the overclockers site.

Reminder:
I would expect 95% of people buying a 7970 from here to overclock it, I would expect the same percentage of people buying 560ti's, and 5850's, and 6970's and 580gtx's.

Who buys a 2500k to run at 3.3Ghz, who buys a Phenom quad to run at 3Ghz. Oh I get it, Nvidia users have a problem with how fast the 7970 is, so now overclocking doesn't count...... cry me a river.

I agree wholeheartedly that the vast majority of computer purchasers don't overclock, most of them buy HP or Dells where they can't overclock even if they wanted to.

And guess what, the vast majority of people never buy extra or replacement parts for their computers including graphics cards, the discreet "aftermarket" gfx card business is tiny and restricted to us junkies especially at the mid to high end. Joe Public PC isn't going to spend more on a gfx card than his entire PC probably cost, he'd probably rather buy a PS3 or Xbox360.
 
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Soldato
Joined
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5,949
What exactly do we mean by overclocked?
I would have thought some of those here stating that they don't overclock have memory with extended profiles (XMP is it?) that will automatically and safely overclock your system by a set amount, without any fiddling. Likewise for prebuilt machines where many will probably use such memory.

I can't be bothered to manually overclock either but I purchase memory with XMP profiles. On my i5 750 system that means an automatic overclock to 3.2mhz I think from 2.66. So I don't overclock either but consider that an overclocked processor albeit using memory profiles
 
Soldato
Joined
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Purley - Croydon
What exactly do we mean by overclocked?
I would have thought some of those here stating that they don't overclock have memory with extended profiles (XMP is it?) that will automatically and safely overclock your system by a set amount, without any fiddling. Likewise for prebuilt machines where many will probably use such memory.

I can't be bothered to manually overclock either but I purchase memory with XMP profiles. On my i5 750 system that means an automatic overclock to 3.2mhz I think from 2.66. So I don't overclock either but consider that an overclocked processor albeit using memory profiles

yes, but they don't give you a proper overclock!

I OC'd my system and realised i didn't notice a difference so got rid of it!
 
Associate
Joined
25 Jan 2012
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16
Overclocking can help get that extra boost needed to keep the fps up, but that is all, i overclocked my gtx560Ti SLi setup so that the core clocks were at 1ghz along with overclocking the memory clock aswell, while the increase in fps was ok (were talking an extra 11-13 fps in battlefield 3) it wasnt worth the risk to try and run this setting permanently, as the standard 900mhz core setting played the game well above a minimum of 80fps anyway. I do agree with CPU overclocking though and you can get decent results and a stable system for example my PhenomII X4 980 BE runs a 3.7ghz factory, but oc'd to 4.2 or 4.3ghz is constantly stable with aircooling, while hitting 4.5ghz with watercooling :D
 
Soldato
Joined
10 Feb 2007
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3,430
For >95% of the time my existing Sugo SFF with stock 2500K and stock GTX580 is just as fast as my old HAF-X 2600K @ 4.6GHz with slightly overclocked GTX580 SLI. Infact, the only time I ever noticed a real-world difference is when encoding 1080P video. Benchmarks tell a different story, but I don't play them too often. I do only have a single monitor @ 1920x1200, but that is honnestly all I want or need.

I probably don't need the GTX580, but I like to have the best, and it was for sure the best card of it's generation. It also runs extremely cool and quiet for a reference design (has there ever been an alternative top-dog that runs as quietly?) The downgrade from 2600K to 2500K was an easy choice becase the latter runs cooler and quieter inside my restricted case, yet still provides very similar performance.

IMHO, overclocking CPU's can provide worthwhile real-world benefits (1hour vs 90mins to encode a full movie @ 1080P), but overclocking a GPU is only good for benchmarks and e-peen. Typically, good CPU's overclock by much much more than good GPU's, making the difference much more noticeable. It is also much easier fitting silent cooling to an overclocked CPU than to a graphics card, and it does not void the warranty to do so.
 
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Soldato
Joined
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There are peeps out there who can afford, & would get such a set up.

Most peeps now consider a 24"monitor as a minimum size of choice, but 27" & 30" monitors gaining popularity very quickly, & AMD are quick to realise this.

The point is that +2GB of ram is not required for most games at 2560x1600.
 
Soldato
Joined
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London, Ealing
The point is that +2GB of ram is not required for most games at 2560x1600.

But what about the games that do benefit from 2GB, if a person is never going to play such games then fine.

I personally don't want to come across a single game where my performance is hampered because of Vram.
But more than 2GB for most is not necessary.
 
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Soldato
Joined
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Los Angeles
But what about the games that do benefit from 2GB, if a person is never going to play such games then fine.

I personally don't want to come across a single game where my performance is hampered because of Vram.
But more than 2GB for most is not necessary.

Such as? Are we talking about Metro or something else??
 
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