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Why should or shouldn't you overclock your GPU? Tell us for $3!

Posted by Rich in Tech

How far will you go for that extra frame per second or to experience UE5 ray tracing in all its glory? GPUs aren't cheap. And while you want to get your money's worth, the last thing you want is for your PC to crash mid-killing spree (or, worse, for it to explode in a fiery mess). But are those risks overstated?

For this bounty, we want you to consider the pros and cons of GPU overclocking. Make your case for if and when it's the right decision. We're looking for at least 70 words.

already paid

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Reward details

This reward closed to entries at 12:57pm on March 22, 2024 but you can still reply, react, and join the conversation below! If you’d like to enter other rewards which are still open, click here.

Created at 3:49pm, 14th March, 2024. Page last updated at 2:44pm, 16th May, 2024.
Deadline at 11:30pm, 21st March, 2024.

Dean 3/20/2024, 10:18:04 AM

Are any games really worth overclocking for? With most being live-service, always online titles it really doesn't make a huge amount of difference any more anyway. You might get a handful of extra frames, but that will be offset against netcode and connection issues anyway.

When you are playing SP titles, and want those juicy frames, then the GPU can probably handle it out of the box anyway, unless you're on a dated GPU, in which case you're probably not going to be fussed with maxing out FPS anyway.

FirestormGamingTeam 3/19/2024, 7:57:05 PM

First and foremost, as a father and the man who pays the bills, my oldest son (before he moved out) would constantly overclock his GPU and I would see that reflected in the smart meter by the electricity being used, it was a joke, he was using £5-£10 a night, this lead to a massive row and me confiscating his PC.

This being said, if you want a more powerful PC then simply upgrade it, because it is not worth the danger of it frying out and the PC catching fire, I deal with this a lot, parents buying kids gaming PCs, them messing around followed by a boom.

At this point, they are too power-hungry to be any good and it's just not worth it because most people forget that monitors are restricted, and overclock all you want, but if the monitor doesn't allow for more than 60hrtz, not much point really is there.

It's deffo pros and cons, but take it from a bill payer, your parents will go nuts if it's too much.

Sturmer 3/19/2024, 11:03:02 AM

From my experience developing custom firmware and memory straps for GPU-mining, I advise against overclocking your GPU for gaming purposes. The reasons are straightforward:

Marginal Performance Gains: Overclocking typically results in only a modest improvement of 2-6% in FPS. This slight increase doesn’t justify the risks and drawbacks involved.
Increased Power Consumption and Heat: Overclocking significantly raises power draw, leading to higher heat production and noise levels. This excess heat can negatively impact other components in your system, like NVMEs, which are prone to throttling under high temperatures.
Boundary Limitations: Overclocking won’t transform the capabilities of your GPU beyond its designed limits. For instance, overclocking an RTX 4060 won’t enable it to handle Ray Tracing at 1440p with decent FPS.

In contrast, while working on mining rigs, I found overclocking more beneficial. Here, small performance gains on each GPU can cumulatively make a significant difference (imagine 10% gain on 12 GPUs within a single rig). However, this often involved undervolting to improve the watt/hashrate ratio and overclocking memory frequencies, with stability being a major concern requiring numerous iterations to optimize.

In summary, the potential minor performance boost in gaming doesn’t outweigh the increased risks and the stress placed on your system. The scale of benefits seen in GPU mining simply doesn't translate to gaming scenarios.

Dave 3/16/2024, 12:01:27 AM

I say don't do it as it's not worth the hassle/time , dealing with all the crashes trying to find out how much you can push it and keep it working under sustained load for a decent amount of time.

These days gpu and cpu just do all this themselves, under and overclocking on demand based on the load and the thermals it can get away with.

If you do find a stable setting, in the age of dlss, frame generation and the high numbers cards already operate at today, I can't really see how it would make a noticeable difference. I guess if you don't have a vrr monitor and are just a frame or two from being able to get a vysncd 30/60fps, maybe it is worth it for this.

avrona 3/14/2024, 11:27:31 PM

There's really no downsides to overclocking them, especially given how little many modern GPUs overclock, especially on the Nvidia side, it's just a few extra frames here or there, and you aren't degrading your card by doing so or anything.

Pretty much the only issue nowadays is finding a good way to do it. MSI Afterburner is fine but has its issues, and of course Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have various overclocking tools built in, though those can be frustrating as well. In fact, ironically I think Intel Arc's overclocking tool is probably the most intuitive and stable, despite them being the new guys on the block in the GPU race.

Damien Mason 3/14/2024, 4:23:16 PM

You'd be silly to overclock your GPU for one simple reason: the electric bill. Especially when energy costs so much these days.

There's a reason we're moving away from pure rasterised performance into a reliance on upscalers like AMD FSR, Nvidia DLSS, and Intel XeSS: it's less demanding and power-hungry than handling it all natively. We've entered an era of undervolting CPUs, so I can't imagine GPUs are too far behind.

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