Overclocking discussions

[YellowWaff]

So for a while now, I've found some guides to overclocking CPU's, RAM's, and GPU's however every guide I am able to find is either vague or has a different way to do it. So I decided to do my own testing, though it isn't thorough, it at least shows me what is affected in benchmarking and I was a little surprised. The reason for posting this is maybe someone can use this knowledge to do more thorough testing and come up with a better improved guide with results on some of the common used components in game. Like I explained before this isn't solid but these were the numbers I've got when benchmarking in game and may open up more ideas how to overclock systems for jobs or selling pc's.

CPU: i7-6700k on a EVGA Z270 FTW K Motherboard

I usually start with CPU as from seeing this will effect the ram clocks and will tune that later.

I'll start with going to 1.55v as I find going from base to 1.5v has no effect until you clock the next .05 up. Now I haven't checked yet if going any high allows better stability and the reason for that is I haven't yet had the need to get more volts than that "yet" (only at level 13 so may be later).

At this point I increase the ratio clock as high as I can till I thermal throttle on OCCT, If blue screening occurs then I would up the volts to 1.55 if I haven't done already. If its a I7-6600k I can usually push to just under 5Ghz (usually 4900Mhz with a good cooler on). Once I thermal throttled I take note of the throttle setting. I.E. 5000Mhz CPU throttles but 4900Mhz CPU does not.

At this point I play with the Bus frequency but also work with the Ratio. I'll turn down the Ratio by one click (in this case 4900Mhz) and increase the bus till I get as close as I can to 5Ghz without going over or exact (say 4985Mhz is the closest but one more click up puts it at 5008Mhz) then I'll run a OCCT run until it shows yes or no for throttling.

If it shows throttling, I repeat the same step. One back for ratio, up tick bus up to the previous known throttle frequency but not going over or exact. I keep repeating this process until I find the high point for ratio clocking, this usually doesn't take very long to find but on one instance I found a stable point at 4922Mhz with BUS @ 107 / Ratio @ 46 the benchmark for this was 5801.

Before I would call this good, but I decided to fine tune some more. Mathematics can follow this if you care to do it that way and you could fine other stable points to clock at but I'll save the effort here as I found two more clocks sets to be stable at, but what's really interesting is the benchmark score you get on them.

4922Mhz
BUS 107 / R 46
Benchmark 5801

4928Mhz
BUS 112 / R 44
benchmark 5807

4930Mhz
BUS 145 / R 34
Benchmark 5841

Looking at these clocks it appears that the higher the BUS is, the better your benchmark score is. So in essence as your doing this, you'll get an idea of the frequency you'd want to hit which would be BUS x Ratio. With this in mind you'll want to set your CPU clocks for the highest bus to lowest ratio possible for the best benchmark CPU score.

RAM: 2x 16GB 3400MHz G.Skills Ripjaws V (red)

For the ram I haven't dove too much into it as it is pretty straight forward. However since the CPU is overclocked in the previous segment, the ram clocks will be off from the normal default. I change these by increasing the voltage 1.65v and then increasing the ram until I hit a blue screen on benchmark. At that point I turn it back to previous setting and leave it.

As before with the CPU at 4930Mhz overclock settings, I was able to increase a bench mark score from 5841 to 5870 when I increased the RAM clock you to 3770Mhz. Any higher on either clock or voltage and I would run into blue screens.

On other tests I've done, I did find it improves benchmark scores by having at least 2 sticks of ram as opposed to one, however having 3 or 4 sticks does not improve scores much from having 2 sticks. I had also found that it does not matter how many gigs you have, and the base frequencies don't have a dramatic impact on scores but it's still worth to get the fastest ram possible for better scores.

GPU: Shean GeForce GTX970 Gamer
(done on different system from CPU and RAM overclock, but these don't affect GPU overclocking and performance.)

This is particular interesting, as it seems like it be more complicated than the CPU overclocking. Though after a little experiment I've found it a lot (by that I mean A LOT) simpler than the CPU overclocking. When you get the GPU tool and OCCT tool, you don't have to go through any complicated steps to get the best scores and here's why.

These lists shows what the max amounts for over clocking the cores and memory and clocking at different setting to see how benchmark scores differ.

GPU overclock settings
C = Core clock / M = Memory clock

Stock
Bench @ 2783
C 0 / M 0

C > M
Bench @ 3425
C 439 / M 0

C < M
Bench @ 2845
C 0 / M 313

C & M max amounts split equally
Bench @ 3285
C 309 / M 220

C = M
Bench @ 3211
C 253 / M 253

It appears that both the core and the memory clocks affect the GPU's temperature and both have a maximum amount, however when one is maxed out the other cannot increase without reduction in the other's clock rate. Because of this I tried no overclock as a control, max core clock, max memory clock, equal core and memory over clock and I also took the maximum for both core and memory clocks and turned both down maintaining a equal ratio between them till a max stable setting was achieved.

In summary for this I have found that overclocking a GPU's memory is pointless as it does not increase the benchmark as much as the core clock. With that said, over clocking a GPU in game is very easy as you just max out the voltage and increase the core clock until you can't any more. Once you've done that you won't be able to increase the memory at all unless you turn the core clock down, by then your actually lowering your benchmark from it's highest point which makes adjusting the memory clock pointless.

So this has been my little experiment in the game, like I said I've seen some guides that were at least somewhat helpful but had to make a few slight changes to things as some things the guides said to do didn't help as much or didn't go for the best benchmark scores. Granted you most likely wouldn't need to go this detailed into your overclocks in game, as long as you got a decent overclock for the job or to sell it should suffice. Also hoping that someone may be able to look into more of the games aspects to make sure I didn't forget anything but I'm pretty confident that with these results they would shed some knowledge on those that what the max overclocks for the best benchmark scores. If you know of something else to make any process easier for the max score or info that should also be considered let it be known.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Just some comments for you: In-game the voltage of the CPU's does not effect heat. All processors in the game are 100% safe from damage up to I think it is 1.75v for cpu voltage. So just put all cpu's in the game at 1.75v and go with it. There's no ill effects from that. Processors in-game also do not degrade either (unlike real life) so there's literally no reason not to.

I'm not sure what the voltage is on ram, I think it's 1.80v max, but I usually put ram at 1.75v too. Just put it there and then see how far it will clock and go.

Also cpu clocks and memory clocks will only effect the video card's temperatures if the GPU and the CPU are both air cooled. If the CPU and GPU are both in the same custom water loop together then the memory clocks will no longer effect the temperature of either CPU or GPU. If you custom water cool a video card but air cool the processor then the CPU (and system ram) clocks will no longer effect the GPU's temps.

EDIT: I am unsure if we were to water cool the video card and air cool the processor if the memory clocks would effect the cpu's temperature in that scenario. It might.

[YellowWaff]

If the "Safe Maximum" voltage for CPU is 1.75 and RAM is 1.80 then one can just set to those amounts and not ever worry about messing with the voltage further. Though at least it seems like that when setting the voltage the game seems to register the voltage in one of two states either "Normal" or "High" as the difference seems to take ahold at 1.55v for CPU and 1.65v I believe for RAM as I have (at least for the moment) not seen any difference made going higher than these, but if the voltage is set one tick lower then the clocks will max at a certain point. I haven't looked too far into it but with the safe clocks at those max points there's not much of a need to find out as it would just be easier to set it there and be done.

As for clocking the CPU and GPU together that is interesting to know about the temps of them effecting each other. That would be interesting to find out more about the temps in the case once I unlock the custom water cooled, I even now wonder if more case fans will affect the clocks and if so would the type of case fan matter as well as orientation.