Why do people always suggest that? I'm not trying to be rude or anything, just curious. Why get something to overclock to 3.4 when you can get something that starts at 3.4 and overclock from there? Its only $25 more on newegg.
Again, I'm not trying to be rude just don't understand. I don't really understand how overclocking works as I've never done it before, though I would like to learn.
If you don't want to read a lot, then this is the key take away: GET THE MOST FOR YOUR MONEY BY SAVING AND GETTING THE SAME PERFORMANCE FOR LESS
It's like anything else out there.... if you build or do something yourself you will find the results more pleasing. If you simply just buy into a factory-built item you will end up paying more than necessary when a little bit of reading and time could bring better results.
For example, and I will address the CPU soon, I do ALL the maintenance and tuning of my motorcycle which involves a USB-controlled fuel/air mixture electronic to adjust the horsepower/output so you can trade off mpgs for power and vice versa. I could have paid someone a few hundred to find out the best settings for my bike, but instead I spent an afternoon reading up on the matter looking at charts for averages of people with the same hardware and bikes. I traded my own time and labor for paying for something that would have surely guaranteed results, but in the end I made out better than friends who did the same for a price.
Now, as for your CPU, take a look at this article:
Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: January '10 : Introduction - Review Tom's Hardware
On the second to last page it reads:
Past the Point of Reason:
With rapidly-increasing prices over $200 offering smaller and smaller performance boosts in games, we have a hard time recommending anything more expensive than the Core i5-750. This is especially the case since the Core i5-750 can be overclocked to great effect if more performance is desired, easily surpassing the stock clock rate of the $1,000 Core i7-975 Extreme.
Perhaps the only performance-based justification we can think of for moving up from a Core i5-750 is that LGA 1156 processors have an inherent limit of 16 PCIe lanes for graphics use. This is an architectural detail that the LGA 1156-based Core i5 and Core i7 processors share, so if a gamer plans to use more than two graphics cards in CrossFire or SLI, the LGA 1366 Core i7-900-series processors are the way to go.
To summarize, while we recommend against purchasing any CPU that retails for more than $200 from a value point of view, there are those of you for whom money might not be much of an object and who require the best possible performance money can buy. If you're buying several hundred dollars worth of graphics and are worried about a potential platform bottleneck, we recommend the following CPUs:
Now, that didn't tell you WHY we recommend overclocking, but that little tid bit right there stopped me from wanting to buy a i-7 920 unless I got with a dual-GPU solution, which costs far more than any other processor on there.
In the end, it all comes to getting the most for your money and needs, which brings up a big question: What games are you looking to play and at what resolutions? If you are like me and use a 26" monitor at 1920x1200 and want all the goodies, you need to know how to overclock if you are limited to a certain spending. I could either spend $2,000 to get a PC that handles it all GREAT, or spend a little less and take the time to get the most out of the hardware I purchased.
I bought the PC in my sig over four years ago, overclocked it a couple years ago and put a slightly better, overclockable vid card in and have been able to play everything out at pretty good fps and eye candy. You can do the same by spending a little more time.
