Is it worth overclocking any further?

[calistan 0]

I've got an i7 3770K that's stable at 4.4 GHz, which is the maximum I've been able to get it on air cooling.

 

I was wondering, since I'm quite tempted to buy a GTX 1080 to replace my current 2x GTX 670 SLI cards, is there any point in also buying a water cooler and taking the CPU higher?

 

I assume it's a fairly good chip if I've been able to get it that high on air, but if I could get another 300-400 MHz or whatever, would that make any appreciable difference? Water coolers are expensive!

[Harold_Finch 29]

You would around net 1-2 fps.

[jfmitch 33]

Water cooled Titan X here running a 32" Samsung TV on HDMI and a 19" ACE monitor and I have a 1200 watt PSU.  Runs like a charm.  With PSUs you should always buy looking to the future.  I had the 1200 watt with a GTX 770 knowing that with improved graphics comes higher power demand.  Processor is i7 870 @ only 2.93 GHz.  Smooth as a babies bum at 30 FPS.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

I've got an i7 3770K that's stable at 4.4 GHz, which is the maximum I've been able to get it on air cooling.

 

I was wondering, since I'm quite tempted to buy a GTX 1080 to replace my current 2x GTX 670 SLI cards, is there any point in also buying a water cooler and taking the CPU higher?

 

I assume it's a fairly good chip if I've been able to get it that high on air, but if I could get another 300-400 MHz or whatever, would that make any appreciable difference? Water coolers are expensive!

 

Why push it that hard?  You are right, 3770 @ 4.4 is pretty good.. enjoy it!

[z06z33 763]

I've got an i7 3770K that's stable at 4.4 GHz, which is the maximum I've been able to get it on air cooling.

 

I was wondering, since I'm quite tempted to buy a GTX 1080 to replace my current 2x GTX 670 SLI cards, is there any point in also buying a water cooler and taking the CPU higher?

 

I assume it's a fairly good chip if I've been able to get it that high on air, but if I could get another 300-400 MHz or whatever, would that make any appreciable difference? Water coolers are expensive!

4.4 is fine no need to burn up your chip,heat isn't the only issue so is voltage. The lower your voltage the longer it will last my 4790k is a 4.5ghz at 1.15v (which is lower than the default boost clock voltage) and I won't push it past that even though I could probably get into the high 4.x range maybe even 5ghz with more voltage, The small fps boost isn't worth stressing my cpu

[calistan 0]

Thanks chaps, I reckon I'll give the water cooler a miss then. Just need to wait until there are some Mac drivers for the 1080 (this PC is Mac OS for work, Windows for fun).

[TheBoom 31]

This would probably vary from system to system but 4.2ghz to 4.7ghz netted me about 6-8 fps. Which made the difference between smooth and laggy experiences.

 

You will see a bigger difference with higher settings/loads with overclocking. The more stress you put on it the more gains it shows. However if you run low to medium settings then it's not worth the trouble.

[JimmiG 244]

Going from 4.4 to 4.7 GHz is a ~7% higher clock speed, so that's the absolute maximum increase of FPS that you can expect.

 

So if you were getting 25 FPS at 4.4 GHz, under ideal circumstances (no other bottlenecks), 4.7 GHz would give you about 26.7 FPS.