Just my 2cp's, no mostly (as in 99.9%) Over Clocking is pointless and may in fact wear the components down faster, with very little to no benefits.
No benefits other than a pretty big boost in speed. :/
I accept the speed increase argument
that is the point of OCing
My statement is more along the lines of effective benefits vs risk's.
As an example, the system I downgraded to be a ... Game Computer was done more to run Windows 7 XP Mode than any other reason. And I was kind of tired of not having a real KR/SA system and I wanted to replace this computer anyway.
This computer is a Q6700 (Quad Core at 2.66GHZ) with an FSB fo 1066. The Video is a NVidea 9600GT 512MB DDR3 Memory. The memory is 4GB of DDR2 Dual Channel FSB 1066.
With out OCing the System 99.9% of the time runs with 0% cpu (aggregate) utilization. If I stick 2D in Windowed mode the aggregate cpu utilization is 2%. SA/KR are less than 1%.
If I OC (which it is now) to 2.75GHZ ... well the normal state is still 0%, 2D is still 2% and SA/KR are still less than 1%.
*Shrug* I have long lost the sense of excitement at having the computer usage be 0% to 2%.
I accept that a percentage of the Computer Population get all excited about the Specs NON O/C'd and O/C'd. They are beneficial to the Computer population by giving a voice for bigger and better.
On the other hand, if I could wave my magic wand at Intel/AMD I would have them give us a 1M fold increase in L1/L2 Memory. Perhaps to the extent of using what is now RAM to be nothing more than what we now use Disk Drives For.
I would have the Video Card Makers give us a 1M Fold increase in multi-core technology for .... lets just leave it at graphics processing, perhaps one of the easiest applications to design and code to take TRUE advantage of parallel processing.
An true story. A friend of mine like to push everything to the Ragged Edge. He O/C'd his computer to where he believed it was unstable then backed it down to were he believed it was stable.
The computer worked well for ... a month or so, then I get a call about how his disk drive is no longer booting and does he have a virus. I go have a look see and the pattern is more like a defective disk than anything a Virus would do, so I pulled it out and stuck it in another computer and run a check disk on it. A massive amount of errors are being reported and they are not the kind that have anything to do with a disk failure, it was plain old disk data corruption.
I stick a dos memory test (from sysrescue) and get it running. We go out something to eat and talk come back about 4 hours later and we look at the results. Well there is an error that is occurring in one specific test. This is the nightmare scenario as it is pattern sensitive and can certainly give the indications that everything is well ..... but .....
We just backed him down until the error no longer occurred and then I gave him a choice. Either insure the system temperature would not change, you know the pesky dust bunnies that build up that tend to change the thermal profile of a computer system, that the Air conditioning in the room wont change OR he can reduce the O/Cing by an addition 25%.
O/C'ing and Heat are enemies. If one is going to O/C then one needs to make sure they keep the Thermal Profile as low as possible and that can be very expensive depending on just how much your O/C'ing.
I will take license and use Kelmo's question to make this observation. If your not happy with the performance of a $150US cpu and there is a $1000US cpu that makes you happy then take the cheaper route and get the $1000US CPU. It really is cheaper in the long run.
