performance difference between 3.7 gig and 4 gig overclocking?

[timmo32]

hi guys just wondering if there is any performance differences between 3.7 gig overclock compared to running a 4 gig overclock?is there much frames gained?,im running dual monitors and im getting a average of 10-20 frames at ymml,and 30 at defalt airports,cheers guys:)

[Maurice_King]

The difference between 3.7 and 4 Ghz probably minimal re performance but I suspect it will increase the heat you will have to dissipate.

Tune the PC and it's hardware before pushing the CPU further, I don't Overclock so I'm possibly not the right person to ask, but I would assume that heat will be the issue not performance.

[timmo32]

i dont think there will much performace difference tho,and yes heat is factor in overclocking,thanks for your help maurice,your very helpful mate

[John Venema]

Absolutely there's a difference. That's 300Mhz which does account for about 7.5% more CPU, which should directly give you better performance. I run my i7 920 at 4.2Ghz, so for me the difference would be 500Mhz, which is nearly 12% more CPU.

If I were to throttle my PC back to 3.7Ghz I would see a noticeable performance hit, no doubt.

[timmo32]

thanks for that john im thinking if to go that extra gig ,im thinking of taken the pc to my pc shop to get it clocked that extra bit,i just want a reliable pc tho ,1 without overheating issues,2no freezing,i use it up to 4-5hours a day of long autopilot flying thanks for the tip 

[Heiko Glatthorn]

Depends on the bottleneck... If your GPU holds back with high resolution and dual monitor, you won't see a difference. Otherwise - every CPU cycle counts for FSX.

[John Dow]

It's an interesting question for sure.  I think increases in fps due to overclocking are very variable and can be held back by mobo shortcomings among a whole range of constraints.

For instance Toms Hardware did an exhaustive series of tests on overclocking the 17 920 all the way up to 4GHz and for most games and tests, the fps went up considerable from 2.67Ghz to 3.6GHz and after that it tailed off, some games showed negligible gains, a couple of benchmarking ones even lost a frame or two from 3.8 to 4.0GHz.

My suggestion?  Save yourself a nice repeatable flight somewhere complex, hovering in the chopper over YMML for instance, and at 3.2 GHz do at least 3 test flights as similar as possible noting fps.  Then overclock to 3.6 and repeat, then 3.8 and repeat and finally at 4.0 GHz and repeat.  If the fps at 4.0 is only 1-2 fps better than 3.6 GHz, say 22 instead of 20, you might be wise to accept the lower setting for longer CPU life and certainly cooler running overall.

According to Toms Hardware the CPU power consumption seems to rise in almost a logarithmic fashion, with the last couple of steps really increasing power requirements much more than the first few steps of increase.

I will be interested to see how you go for sure!

[sylvester243]

i think you will find its because of the 5870 and the way it renders the textures. i also have the 5870 and get the same fps at YMML and the other default airports as you depending on what the scenery is looking at, everyone usually says nvidia is better for fsx systems and i think that is they use a higher memory bandwidth than ati......usually ati is 256bit where nvidia is higher, though ati have the higher clock speeds so its a trade off when you go video card shopping and what it gets used for.

as long as your getting smooth scenery i wouldnt worry with the fps.

i think you should be fine with 3.8 to 4 with the cooler, i use the same cooler for my i7 920 which is at 3.8 with turbo boost still enabled giving me a speed of 3.99......close enough to 4

[timmo32]

thanks for your replys guys i had it clocked to 4.1gigs and saw only 4 frames more in some areas of ymml,and up to 8 frames increast everywhere else,well its fully stable so far set to 3.7gigs so far no freezing of crashing of my system,im running twin monitors so it does suck some power,my average frame rate for flightsim is up too 35 frames at some airports,systems differ from set up too set up,ive up some settings to get clear scenery displays tho and my pc temp is arround 32 degrees at idle and 65-68 ,under full load so im happy so far,thanks peoples for your replys

[TenBlade]

With a rig like that I´d expect a lot more, especially around default airports. Besides switching to a quad core, the best thing that happened to my FSX was a setup according to NickN http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041, some of the latest tweaks revolve around having bufferpools=0 if you have a 1GB gpu. And make sure you install FSX on a separate harddrive.

[timmo32]

a very helpfull link tenblade thanks a million i will read it in full ,cheers.