Be Gentle- Brand New

Hey there,

As the days have passed by I've slowly come to the realization that more can be taken from my rig if I fine tune and tweak it significantly to achieve the required performance of the growing gaming industry without throwing more and more money into upgrades. However, what's kept me from doing that is the fear that I WILL mess something up and then I'll find myself in an even worse spot than before (my initial thought is just without a pc entirely) and I'd hate to see that happen. That's primarily the reason I sought out a community to either a)educate myself or b)ask for help. My wife has always said I was stubborn and I suppose she was right (aren't they always?).

With all this being said... My computer is a bit on the older side and I don't expect MAX ULTRA FANTASTIC results from overclocking... I just want stability, to be honest. My primary reason for being pushed over the edge is Overwatch. I've been waiting and waiting for Overwatch since the DAY news was released on it. However, I may not have prepared as well as I could have and still have the same computer as the day I heard about Overwatch. During gameplay of Overwatch I have all my settings turned down to bottom of the barrel minimums and my FPS locked on Display-Level or whatever they call it (FPS counter reads 70, iirc). With all of these precautions in place I still end up dipping from 70 to 20-30 randomly during matches. I have noticed that when everyone is very close together and using ultimate abilites, etc, my FPS will drop. I can completely understand that as its taking a lot out on my computer to process what is happening. My goal is to prevent this as much as possible to have the smoothest experience.

As a last note, I'm not experienced at all with Overclocking. I'm not knowledgeable an incredible amount when it comes to the ins and outs of computers (Read: The different specs, building them, etc. It's scary and for the bulk of my life my father built our computers. Now that I'm living on my own I'm 100% willing to learn, I just need to be taught and have someone be patient with me) and would love to be semi-well versed when it comes to overclocking and really getting the biggest bang for my buck. If you have any questions for me, please be understanding there is a strong possibility that I'm going to say I don't know what that means and ask for an explanation.

Okay.. On with the show.

I've read some FAQs and went through threads and it appears the inital question are "What's your specs".. This computer is 5~years old if I had to guess and I don't have boxes laying around at this point. I'll do my best to figure out what I have and if you guys would help me figure out where all the extra is, I would GREATTTTTTLYYY appreciate it. Thank you so very much in advance.

CPU: AMD FX - 4100 Quad-Core Processor 3.60 GHz
Motherboard: I honestly don't know how to figure this out. On the board itself it says "MS-7641 Ver: 3.0" if that helps..else where on the board it reads "760GM-P23 (FX)"
Cooler: None
RAM: 8.00 GB (I have two Red sticks, reads "HyperX Red" other side reads "Kingston" on the label.. i think I see a "1.65V".. I can attach photos if required)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Case: I don't know.
PSU: Thermaltake TR2 600W Atx 12v 2.3 (I physically looked at it, reading from the side here)
Storage: Hitachi HDS721010DLE630 ATA
OS: Windows 10 Pro


PS. Please let me know if I've left anything out. Also, sorry for spelling errors.. Coffee hasn't kicked in.

Welcome to OCF.
Being gentle, realistically, you don't want to overclock on that board. It's an entry level board with just about enough to push the CPU you have at stock speeds.
If you're looking for more FPS, a GPU upgrade would be your best bet. 970's are getting more affordable every day.

What do you mean "Cooler : None"? you do have a cooler on your CPU, If its a stock cooler dont OC the CPU.
You can try to use the OC Genie in the bios, But watch your temps.

Well, that's kind of upsetting that there's no where to really go up with my current setup. I suppose I should have seen this coming.

In regards to getting more FPS.. That's not really what I'm looking for. I'm just looking for stability at 60-70 FPS, generally speaking. I'm tired of playing smoothly and then my frames drop to 20 and I'm practically watching a slide show presentation of the game. Is that one in the same, or different?

In regards to cooler, if anything it would be a stock cooler. I was under the impression "Cooler" was like, an aftermarket liquid cooling system or something in that genre. My apologies.

Lastly, what is a good range temperature wise to be in? While playing Overwatch I'm at around 45-55~. It should be noted that I did a bit of research and found MSI Afterburner, you can turn the fans up so your temperature stays lower.. I have the fans at 80% while playing. Is that okay?

Chrissybear said:

Well, that's kind of upsetting that there's no where to really go up with my current setup. I suppose I should have seen this coming.

In regards to getting more FPS.. That's not really what I'm looking for. I'm just looking for stability at 60-70 FPS, generally speaking. I'm tired of playing smoothly and then my frames drop to 20 and I'm practically watching a slide show presentation of the game. Is that one in the same, or different?

In regards to cooler, if anything it would be a stock cooler. I was under the impression "Cooler" was like, an aftermarket liquid cooling system or something in that genre. My apologies.

Lastly, what is a good range temperature wise to be in? While playing Overwatch I'm at around 45-55~. It should be noted that I did a bit of research and found MSI Afterburner, you can turn the fans up so your temperature stays lower.. I have the fans at 80% while playing. Is that okay?

Click to expand...

When the Frames drop to 20 it means you have 20 FPS, How does the FPS "work" for you? Do you play like a hour and slowly it drops from 60 to 20 or it drops in some places and fine in others?
And MSI AfterBurner is controlling the GPU not the CPU.

About the CPU temps, As long as its under 70 Its fine.

Is Overwatch primarily a CPU or a GPU intensive game? If the latter, the solution may be to get a better video card. What you need to do is determine what is the bottleneck here when the frame rate drops to 20-30. There are ways of monitoring GPU and CPU load during gaming I believe but I can't help you out there as I'm not a gamer. One thing to try would be to overclock the GPU a little and see if the 20-30 fps number improves. If it did, I'd be looking at the video card as the culprit. MSI afterburner can be used to overclock the GPU/VRAM. If you have the settings in bios to do it, you could also bump up the CPU multiplier a small bit to see if that helps during that point of the gaming experience.

Is this a custom built PC or a manufactured one?

trents said:

Is Overwatch primarily a CPU or a GPU intensive game? If the latter, the solution may be to get a better video card. What you need to do is determine what is the bottleneck here when the frame rate drops to 20-30. There are ways of monitoring GPU and CPU load during gaming I believe but I can't help you out there as I'm not a gamer. One thing to try would be to overclock the GPU a little and see if the 20-30 fps number improves. If it did, I'd be looking at the video card as the culprit. MSI afterburner can be used to overclock the GPU/VRAM. If you have the settings in bios to do it, you could also bump up the CPU multiplier a small bit to see if that helps during that point of the gaming experience.

Is this a custom built PC or a manufactured one?

Click to expand...

To answer your question in regards to Overwatch system resource utilization, good question.. I don't have the answer for that. I can do some digging, perhaps. I understand that I'm probably bottlenecking somewhere. That's a very really posibilty. It just sucks to think there's literally NO other solution other than to upgrade. My wife and I are on a tight budget.. She would kill me if I asked for an extra 300$~ for computer gear.

In regards to overclocking the GPU, a) if overclocking seems to resolve the fps issue, could I not just continue to overclock during gameplay or should that only be a once in a blue moon solution used? b) In Afterburner, which setting would it be, the Core or Memory clock? I'm just scared to do it.. I don't want to melt anything. :\

PS. This is a custom built PC my father created for my siblings and I way back when I lived with my parents about 4-5 years ago.

Thanks.

Edit- spelling

With regard to the GPU and afterburner, you should be able to safely move the Power Limit, Core Clock and Memory Clock sliders up by 10% and still be stable. Your core voltage appears to be fixed.

Concerning the CPU, as a general rule in electronics, increasing voltage by 10-15% over stock is usually safe.

Just a heads up, I haven't check CPU utilization while running overwatch, but with all settings maxed, my fx8320e doesn't have a problem maintaining 40fps @4.2ghz, and running a GTX670. With a 660 you shouldn't have a problem running medium or high.

Chrissybear, here is the mfg webpage for your motherboard: https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/760GM-P23-FX.html#hero-overview

Here is the bios section with relevant line items highlighted for overclocking. The CPU multiplier at stock is 41x. Try moving it to 42x. This board comes with cautions about exceeding the 95W power threshold so just a very slight overclock is all I recommend.