what does overclocking really help with

i got an i5 system built and was wondering, cause i ran the smart 6 program just to try out other clocking levels. i did 3dmark06 and got 15000 stock. then oced to 3.0 and got 15500. now i could also oc it to 3.8 which i did, but since i have a stock cooling setup, it ran a little high so i put it back after a minute or 2. I played crysis warhead and got around 25 to 30 fps at stock. then oced it to 3.0. and I got the exact amount of fps. Im running a gtx 9800+ 1gb card. So I was wondering if I cant see a diiference when overclocking because its not that much of a difference or because my video card is just holding me back. Im kinda guessing it my video card and that 3.0 isnt that much of an improvement. what do you guys think. if i get a better video card would overclocking make more of an impacted or not really. If it would how high is a decent overclock without having my cpu die in like 2 years. and i will be getting a cooler as well, so maybe suggestions on a real good cooling setup. thanks

i got an i5 system built and was wondering, cause i ran the smart 6 program just to try out other clocking levels. i did 3dmark06 and got 15000 stock. then oced to 3.0 and got 15500. now i could also oc it to 3.8 which i did, but since i have a stock cooling setup, it ran a little high so i put it back after a minute or 2. I played crysis warhead and got around 25 to 30 fps at stock. then oced it to 3.0. and I got the exact amount of fps. Im running a gtx 9800+ 1gb card. So I was wondering if I cant see a diiference when overclocking because its not that much of a difference or because my video card is just holding me back. Im kinda guessing it my video card and that 3.0 isnt that much of an improvement. what do you guys think. if i get a better video card would overclocking make more of an impacted or not really. If it would how high is a decent overclock without having my cpu die in like 2 years. and i will be getting a cooler as well, so maybe suggestions on a real good cooling setup. thanks

Beach86

i have 4 gb on windows 7 64 bit. i am running the game on dx 10, if that makes any difference for this game

15,5 stock frequency on 3DMark isn't bad - That's almost exactly what I got with a Q9650 and a single 4870. When I added a second 4870 it went up to 18,1. When I OC to 3.8 (25% OC) score goes up to 21,8. With a good cooler you should be able to comfortably OC around 25% (2.66 ~ 3.3) at stock or near stock voltages without heat or longivity being an issue. The graphic intensity of Crysis makes it very dependent on CPU power. That's why you're not seeing much performance increase with a modest OC. I only gained 10-12 FPS with a second GPU.

You definitely need an aftermarket cooler and some good thermal grease for overclocking. If your cpu is bottlenecking your gaming performance then overclocking can boost your framerate a good bit. If it isn't the bottleneck then it won't help much. In general, getting a better GPU will help performance in games more than cpu (overclocked or not). The i5 is fairly new so it probably isn't much of a bottleneck, if any, for your system. You should probably wait for Nvidia to release their DX 11 cards next year (Q1 2010) before getting a new video card. Even if you aren't going to get a new Nvidia card you should wait and see what the prices do when they are released. Crysis' performance will depend on what video settings you are using and the resolution you are gaming at.

yeah i run crysis at 1920 1080. yeah i was looking at the radeon 5870 but ill wait for prices to drop.so really you think if i get a good video card , then overclocking would help me.