Hey guys! I just overclocked my Phenom II X3 720 BE to 3.5 GHz at 1.4875V. A big thank you to red1776 for that!

I was just wondering where exactly will the effect of the higher clock speeds be noticed. Will any of the current games take advantage of this extra 700MHz OC with my current specs?

Any apps that would benefit?

Thanks.

Multi threaded applications and games. Your biggest drawback will be your video card in games more so than the cpu. Production software would benefit as well.

You won't really notice the extra speed advantages in most current games. Mainly you'll score higher in benchmarks

You should be seeing the effects of the change by now if there are to be any.

Games are generally limited by the graphics card, as supersmashbrada already mentioned.

You might see some, if you upgraded your graphics card recently.... But effects would be minimal, although in some cases, it might make a game which is previously totally unplayable, become slightly playable. If a game was already running super smooth with no problems, you can't do better than that can you?

If you convert/rip music files, that should help. Video editing, zipping/unzipping files, etc.

Yes as CMH and supersmashbrada mentioned it won't change greatly.

But in overclocking you will see little advantage in performance but it will also reduce the lifetime of you graphic card and also when overcloking if the temperature goes too much high thus over heating may damage it as well.

I'd have to agree with CMH and supersmashbrada that your limiting factor in games would be the GPU in most cases (exception below), but in apps that use cpu only like video encoding and music converting you will see a difference.

CPU Bound:
The frame rate bottleneck in a game is the CPU. The GPU is waiting around for data to be fed to it. IE: at low resolutions where the cpu isn't feeding the gpu with frame information fast enough

To test this lower your CPU speed to its default settings, and load up a recent game Crysis, Farcry and set the resolution to say 640x480 and lower all the the settings to their lowest levels, then run the same test again with the overclock you should notice a difference. I choose those games because they have built in benchmarking tools, I'm sure there are more games out there with benchmarks, so please no flaming for mentioning Crysis.

GPU Bound:
The frame rate bottleneck in a game is the GPU. The CPU is / could supply data faster than the GPU can render it. IE: at 1920x1080 and above, where the GPU's Frame buffer / GPU itself just isn't fast enough

To test for GPU limitations set your monitor to its highest resolution and playable settings. Run the benchmarks with your CPU at stock speeds then run it overclocked. If you are GPU bound you should see little to no change in the Frame Rate.

And FFS Don't us a console port like GTA, etc to test this cause you will always be cpu bound.
Sorry if any of this information is confusing, and/or wrong, this is a hard subject to describe IMO.

Negative affects of overclocking.
More Heat
Shorter lifespan

Lifespan is mentioned alot here.

Can't say I would disagree, but I would say its quite unproven, assuming you've got the heat part figured out.

Alot of overclockers upgrade their cooling systems to go with the overclock, and alot of the time, this upgrade causes the CPU to run cooler overclocked, than with the standard cooling system running stock.

Of course, I'm just throwing theories out there, and given the lifespan of CPU/GPU chips themselves, I'd say a shorter lifespan would still allow your system to outlive its usefulness....

True even if your overclock takes half the CPU's life away it should still last about 5 years from what I've read. As always your mileage will vary.

I've got my C2D E6420 running ~50% OC for almost 3 years now, and its still running strong.

During that time, we've got DDR3, SSD, BluRay (or at least death of HD-DVD), a new Intel socket, 3 generations of graphic cards, introduction of multi-GPU graphic cards (as opposed to SLI), HDDs reaching terrabyte size....

And thats only 3 years.