Will overclocking my Core i7-4790 improve my gaming performance?

Good day sir, I have already read about this from other forums but I just want to know your opinion. I have an i7-4790 paired with H97 mobo and I know i can't do OC. My question is do I/We really need to overclock the cpu for gaming? or will overclocking give a big impact (let's say fps) in gaming? Thank you.

Hey there Giric,

Everyone is going to have a different answer to this one, but I think there's so many ways of tackling this question is that it's a hard one to answer. Depending on the game, yes - overclocking your CPU will provide you with more performance. In some games, you won't notice any additional performance whatsoever.

If you're in a CPU bound game, then the difference between your stock clocks and an extra 300-500MHz might be worth it. The Core i7-4790 that you've got is plenty powerful at stock clocks, but is it worth upgrading your cooling and motherboard? Probably not. You've asked if overclocking has a "big impact" on performance for games, and I will say no - no it doesn't - most of the time. As I said, in some games you might notice a difference - but they have to be games where they're CPU bound (where the CPU is the slowest part of the equation, with the GPU not being stressed as much).

I'm going to open this up to our readers though, as they'll provide you with some great insight into various games and whether they're CPU limited - as well as providing you with some advice on whether you should indeed, overclock that Core i7-4790.

Last updated: Nov 3, 2020 at 08:10 pm CST