Is Overclocking now useless?

you know there's this concept of

overclocking being dead that I sort of

want to talk about um it's partially

true but we we're we're going to talk

about modern CPU components even GPU

components and whether or not like

overclockability is something you should

even care about

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so all overclocking means is pushing an

Asic Beyond its like rated speeds so an

aset could be anything it could be a CPU

it could be a GPU it could be a

Raspberry Pi right it could literally be

anything anything that has a core clock

um so our CPUs as you know have all

sorts of varying clock speeds these days

and there's like single core there's two

core there's like three core six core

eight core and what I mean by that is

that's the amount of cores under load

that determine the speed so that's why

every single CPU that you look at now

says up to 5.5 GHz or up to 5.8 GHz

because there's a very strict set of

criteria that has to be met to be able

to get that clock speed is there thermal

Headroom are you anywhere near your your

TJ Maxx on temperature uh what is your

power limit what is your power draw it's

like power draw would be things like how

many amps is it actually drawing through

the CPU how how much voltage is being

sent to the GPU how hot's the GPU so all

these things play into a factor when it

comes to your clock speeds now the thing

is with modern modern components being

pushed as far as they're being pushed

today like 5 GHz was a pipe dream 5

years ago like 5 years ago sure you

might have you might have had a 9900 K

here and there that could hit like 5 GHz

it's maybe all core maybe and then

really good chips might be able to do

like 5 one single or dual core load now

we're talking like 58 or 14900 K is

doing like 5,800 MHz single core and two

core load and then up to 5.5 gahz all

core that's like completely unheard of

but one of the ways that they've

achieved that is the fact that they have

to push the power limits kind of to an

insane envelopes so for instance the

14900 K which I have installed on my

test bench right here on an Asus

uh board I don't remember which one it

is exactly I really don't remember which

one it is it says up to 5.5 GHz but it

run it's at 253 Watts now what I'm going

to show you here real quickly real quick

and we'll kind of do some demonstrations

here of of how to get the full

advertised performance out of your CPU

because essentially it's almost like an

overclock now to get the advertised

speeds which is really stupid and should

border on marketing legality at this

point um you can see right here we have

a couple cores that are sitting in the

5.8 GHz range there's one right there

there's one right there it's going to

hand off to down there watch see that

went 55 back and so Core 2 and three in

the P core Arrangement tend to be the

preferred cores for the higher clock

speeds all the e cores as you can see at

4.3 now realistically what should happen

here is when I start cinebench we should

see it go to 5.5 GHz all core the

problem is what we're going to find is

that getting 5.5 GHz all core at a full

100% % sustained load is not what you're

going to get you're going to get like 52

51 so check this out we don't care about

our score and stuff right now on sbench

I'm just using this as a benchmark to

load up the CPU so right now we'll look

at the scores to compare but I don't as

as I hit start on allore test or

multicore you're going to see 55 on all

cores now 5'2 it dropped like we got

like three or four seconds of 5.5 GHz

and what sucks about that is that's all

that was basically required for Intel's

up to 5.5 GHz to really legal so our

power shoots right up to

253 XX watts and that's exactly what

it's max power rating is now that's why

we're not actually able to get 55 on all

cores sustained is because there has to

be a limiting factor there's there is a

throttle reason yes right now if I was

to bring up XTU or extreme tuning

utility uh from Intel it would have a

throttle reason of yes as power power

would be our limiting factor here so

what a lot of motherboard manufacturers

are doing is they're lifting up those

power limits out of the box I've already

done a complete rant video explaining

that it motherboard manufacturers need

to leave Intel limits in place unless

the user goes in and specifies lift

those limits because the cooler has

everything to do with how well it can

perform cuz the problem is when you lift

the power what do you do you also lift

the temperatures what's essentially

become

overclocking these days is not pushing

the core necessarily Beyond it rated

spef or specified speeds which is the up

to 5.8 single core and up to 5.5 GHz all

core on a 49 or 4900 K it's just trying

to manipulate the specs to get the

advertise speeds sustained so let's do

this I'm going to go ahead and load up

XTU I love XTU because it allows me to

make these changes on the fly in the OS

so right now what I want to see is can I

even come close to getting Beyond 5.5

GHz all core

and I'm not entirely so sure because

components are pushed so close to the

Limit these days with that you know well

over well into the 5 GHz range even the

AMD and that's a AMD rig behind me with

a I don't remember which CPU is on there

but it's an AMD system right there even

with amds Precision boost overdrive and

stuff it's very difficult to get the

advertised speeds for very long and even

those CPUs are up into the 5 GHz plus

range now which is huge for AMD they

were lacking in the clock speeds for so

long and they've definitely caught up

into that 5 gz race so here's our multi

our performance core ratio multiplier 55

so it's that times 100 how we get the

5500 and then the efficiency core at 4.3

now what I'm going to do right now is I

actually have to go

into you know what I'm going to click

automatic overclock and see what happens

I haven't done this in a

while let's just see if it actually does

anything

useful okay so it lifted at 100 MHz on

each and lifted the offset by 20 molts

well the attemp went to 9 DC immediately

there's 55 all core now we drop 54 hey

it's actually doing something look at

our TDP right there 330 WTS 903c on the

core and we are getting the 5.5 GHz all

core you notice we have 5.6 selected and

we're not getting 56 we're actually at

54 right now and that's because of the

fact that it probably upped our power

limit to that 330 Mark which means that

with our voltage being extremely high

right now at

1.33 we're not even getting the number

we put in we're still not even getting

sustained advertis

numbers and we've added clock speed and

we've added voltage so the power and

current limits optimized gave us a limit

of 330 which is what I thought just

based on what I saw right there 425 amps

and then know so now we can actually

adjust this sort of stuff but I'm going

to go 5 six I'm going try 57 allore at

stock voltages let the 330 be the thing

I'm not going to update the voltage yeah

so you're immediately down to 5.5 GHz

we're at

323 Watts 91c now this is this is where

Asic quality really starts to play a

role where if we have a really good CPU

that will allow us to undervolt and

overclock then we'll get really good

performance here and I think 330 watt is

a safe limit to have because of the fact

that we know the 360 cooler can handle

that anything more than that would

require some exotic cooling probably

something chilled or or Beyond room temp

there's a

38835 but this is still underperforming

so much versus what I would expect I've

gotten for or 13900 K to be nearly

40,000 and above 40,000 this so far

would start to be a lot of tuning and a

lot of work for 300 MHz now what's more

important than quote unquote

overclocking these days is just getting

our advertised speeds for sustained

periods of time so here's what we're

going to do again we're going to drop

this back down to

5.5 we're going to leave the efficiency

core at uh 43 which is

stock and what I'm going to do is I'm

going to I want to leave the enhanced

limits cuz we know we need more power

limit to get it done but I'm going to

start playing with a offset here I'm

going to go minus 50

molts and let's see if this will allow

us to get all I'm trying to do now screw

overclocking I'm just trying to get that

allore number to stay all the time now

the thing is while gaming and stuff

right now with a lesser load it would

probably stay at 5'5 just fine but

overclocks are not considered stable

unless they can handle extreme workloads

like this without crashing like there's

game stable there's like General usage

stable and then there's like stress test

table and stress test table is the only

one that we really truly care about okay

there's 55 all

core 84c still at

55 84 83 so that looks like we have a

pretty good comparison there where

temperature is not going to cause us to

drop 55 the entire

time there's a 38329 so you see all I

did was I didn't overclock anything I

just dropped how much voltage it needed

um yeah we're only pulling 288 Watts

right now which is nice at 5.5 GHz but

as you can see the stock speeds couldn't

sustain that but the stock 253 watt

because the up two and the 253 watt

limit were never going to allow full

load to sustain those types of clocks

but I do want to see now if we can do a

56 allcore overclock at a minus 50 now

we're overclocking technically because

we are above the 5.5 recommended not

recommended but stated Max up two speeds

we stay at 56 the whole time there's a

38729 so not a huge gain but voltage and

frequency are linked so as frequency

goes up voltage goes up with it so now

I'm going to try minus

60 so now we drop to 307

309 or 89c

so this is also a spike right this is

the max temp so that means it hit 91 for

a second we're at 8889 now so we drop 3

c 2 c 3 C but there also will become a

point where you'll see the clocks the

stain but if you drop the voltage too

far you'll notice the score drops even

though the frequency stays the same and

the reason for that is because of the

lower uh available wattage to it and

that wattage um voltage linear frequency

scale you might there might be uh

frequency changes happening too quickly

to actually see in the software but the

frequency might be doing quick micro

adjustments that's enough to actually

affect the score so once you start to

see the score go down if you can if

you're like I can keep undervolting this

is is great you might notice performance

going down with it and stability is

still being there I'm going to drop down

to minus 80 and see if we can sustain

that if so then I might push the

efficiency cores up to 46 now we're

technically in overclocking territory oh

see we actually drop score right there

is a 39634 so I'm going to run this

again just to see if we continue like we

lost 200 points by dropping our voltage

I want to make sure not we're not

getting like micro throttling with the

frequency here that could have just been

a weird back-to-back run on that one

yeah we lost more points

39577 so I'm going to go- 75 and see if

that 5 molts helps you'd be surprised

what 5 molts can actually do it's a

39779 okay so let's try 46 eor oh

there's a hard system

lock so this video right now was not

about showing

you how to overclock it is showing you

how much work is actually kind of

involved to get a very mediocre

overclock overclocking The Way We Know

It And used to know it is very very

different than 10 years ago my best

overclocking CPU I ever owned was a

e6300 core2 Duo 1.86 GHz processor that

I ran at

3.34 GHz for its entire life almost

double the rated

speed it was two cores and no

hyperthreading that actually was

hyperthreading I don't remember I cannot

remember if it was hyperthreaded or not

but all I know is the frequency it ran

at was insane I ran that CPU for years

and then gave it to my brother-in-law

where he ran it until he killed the

motherboard completely unrelated to the

CPU that CPU never complained about

temperatures or frequency that was some

one of the most underrated CPUs ever but

back in the day you know we would be

able to push our our frequ we would see

CPU frequencies pushed 1,000 MHz above

its posted speeds but because the

hardware is being pushed to its limits

now because of the CPU race that took

place ever since ryzen came out with AMD

giving actual danger to Intel's market

share when it comes to desktop Computing

we saw this Race For Speed for clock

speed so essentially the manufacturers

like Intel and AMD have found ways to

push their CPUs to the Limit as close to

the Limit as they possibly can out of

the box I those updates underway push

the limits as far as they can out of the

box leaving us very little Headroom to

be able to actually kind of overclock

now gpus let's talk about gpus for a

second here I don't even really need to

demonstrate this one every single GPU

you plop on your computer on your

motherboard and fire up like MSI

afterburner and monitor your speeds

every single one of them will go beyond

where they're advertised they will Auto

overclock and that's by Design because

it's called GPU boost for NVIDIA um AMD

has other uh like Auto overclocks and

rage mode and stuff like that which are

not quite as a aggressive cuz AMD is

still kind of figuring out the the the

Silicon limits and stuff when it comes

to their gpus so they don't actually

allow you to push them too too far

there's a lot of modding required to

really push an AMD GPU but Nvidia on the

other hand when it comes to GPU boost

we're in GPU boost 3 plus territory now

where back in the day it used to push

the frequency if there was available

temperature Headroom then they GP boost

would allow it to push the frequency

with temperature Headroom and power

limit Headroom where it could go beyond

specified power limits see back in the

earlier days of GPU boost uh 1.0 you

could actually modify the voltage slider

you could actually move the voltage

slider and have it affect actual voltage

to the GPU giving you proper like real

overclock overclockability when it comes

to the end user once GPU Boost 2.0

allowed for power limit adjustment the

control of the voltage stopped being

accessible to the end user where all you

could do is control the voltage slider

what I mean by that is like I referenced

with the c you have there's a frequency

and a voltage uh correlation like

correlation between the two if you move

up the frequency the voltage moves with

it all you can do with Nvidia now when

it comes to the voltage slider is move

where that slider is what I mean is you

can up the voltage at a sooner frequency

but you can't exceed the voltage that is

by design that voltage is locked down

you can't exceed it unless you go and do

voltage mods and shut mods and custom

voltage controller soldering and all

that sort of stuff now we're talking

exoc or extreme overclocking so

overclocking on the GPU hasn't even fun

because of the fact that you just we're

already in the 2700 2800 mher range and

you might overclock at 300 MHz we're

talking just over 10% which would be

very difficult to actually notice in

games an additional 10% of frames on a

high-end GPU and most people spend their

time overclocking the high-end gpus

because there's nowhere above that to go

tier-wise so you have to overclock it so

overclocking as we know it in the past

is kind of dead I mean now all we're

trying to do is just tame the monster

monsters that are asking for enormous

amounts of power and TDP to be cooled

which is now making things like water

cooling relevant again so that's why I

think this year I'm going to bring water

cooling month back in the summertime

where we just do all kinds of water

cooling projects and videos and stuff

and playing around with it because of

the fact that the high-end CPUs and the

high-end gpus are definitely demanding I

mean we're talking 600 WT gpus we're

talking over 300 WT CPUs from Intel with

a a

like multi-core enhancement and msis

whatever they call it trickery like all

of the motherboards are pushing the CPUs

beyond their 253 watt for 1490 or 14900

K and I think it's like 270 watt or 230

watt or 220 watt for I can't remember

anyway every CPU has its own maximum

wattage every motherboard is pushing

those Beyond because they're trying to

push the frequencies as far as they can

out of the box so it's nice that the

overclocking is kind of being done for

you but if you like the fun of tinkering

and overclocking like me

they sort of took all that away that's

kind of depressing how do you guys feel

about it anytime I've done overclocking

videos in the past I see a plethora of

comments saying overclocking is stupid

why would you

overclock why not why did anyone decide

at one point let's take two cars and see

you can go faster that

way