Gadgetory

overclocking can produce sizable increases in the clock rate of a GPU or CPU but in laptops there's always been somewhat of a limitation on how far you can go and that's often a thermal restriction because you've got a limited area you can cool there's immutable cooling you can't just throw a bigger heatsink on there and it's also been because of the components now with the new i7 6820 HK that is actually an unlocked mobile CPU so you can overclock it through BIOS as you would normally do with any desktop CPU there's also the gtx 970m and this thing and more recently the GTX 980 launched to four laptops that is a desktop part in laptops we tested that and we're able to offset the clock by about 200 megahertz which is pretty darn big and actually does have a noticeable gain in some gaming experiences now with CPU overclocking on a laptop in particular we're looking at more than just gaming this time we are overclocking these 6820 HK that's the brand new unlocked CPU in here with a 970 m and then testing to see how does that impact production workloads alongside gaming so we test a few games and then we're testing Photoshop transforms batch processing video editing all these things and those are very important for this type of laptop because a gaming laptop is often what gets deployed in production use cases in the field so we use gaming laptops for our video and photo processing when we recover in CES and that's what we're testing today how does this impact the gaming and production experience with CPU and GPU overclocking the laptop we're using for these tests is the 1885 dollar fame book for sk7 300 CyberPower laptop and that has forged specs an i7 6820 HK processor which is unlocked and shipped stock at 2.7 gigahertz turbos to 3.6 gigahertz and has eight megabytes of cache the gtx 970m and video GPU is on there for the video card and that is also unlocked to some degree you can overclock that and the main concerns we're going to be looking at our thermals primarily but we're also just looking at how far can we push these things before they become unstable we use the witcher 3 dirt GTA 5 Metro last light and mordor alongside a few other games for our benchmarks and as always the full methodology with a huge list of tables for our production workloads is linked in the description below if you want to learn how we did these and see what was used for the testing let's start with our overclocking results and then move on to the benchmarks this table shows the incremental testing of our overclock and shows how we achieved our final resting clock rate of 4.0 gigahertz we attempted 4.2 and 4.1 but they were unstable and without a lot of fine-tuning it just it didn't look like it was gonna be a good fit and so we settled on 4.0 gigahertz which is a reasonable overclock from the 2.7 stock and 3.6 turbo the GPU we overclocked successfully to 1170 2.3 megahertz which is actually the maximum allowable overclock it is limited to a 135 megahertz offset from base and we ended up with a 1450 3.5 megahertz memory clock which is 400 megahertz offset from base previously we did this with a Dominator Pro G with a GTX 980 desktop part so there's actually a desktop part in a laptop and that progression is shown here if you're curious let's start with thermals that is what the overclocking will most immediately impact on a laptop the fame book for is a gtx 970m silicon rest at 41.3 celsius delta t / ambient when at stock clocks and the temperature increases marginally nine point four four percent difference between the two when overclocking the GPU and CPU in conjunction the i7 68 20 HK has a very slight increase in thermals at 39 Celsius to forty two point eight to Celsius post overclock the CPU turbo boosts a 3.6 gigahertz when under load and that is the case for the above chart here are two thermal overtime charge to show additional data the wave pattern you're seeing and the GPU one is a result of fan spin up and spin down as the GPU achieves the required heat thresholds for rpm increases which appears to be about 45 degrees Celsius delta T on the GPU side now it's time to move on to the production workload benchmarks we don't normally do these but for a laptop like this where it might get deployed in the field and used for everyday production tasks for Photoshop and Premiere users things like that is absolutely worth doing and that's what we're looking at here for most menial tab anything for example that requires around six seconds or fewer to complete we saw in consequential real-world impact from overclocking even when the gains may be nearly 10 percent the observable difference in such an instance is effectively non-existent for example zero point eight nine seconds image resize time versus zero point nine eight seconds is a almost ten percent difference but it's effectively imperceptible for the more intensive actions like the application of filters to large files in Photoshop we actually did see measurable worthwhile increases in performance take our Photoshop lens blur test as an easy real-world example processing time to apply the lens blur filter shows a difference of twenty point four percent between the stock and overclocked tests and that produces a little over twenty seconds difference in this instance that's a huge chunk of time and for larger files or more complex filters the twenty percent performance difference will be noticeable and will improve productivity of the user for video editing testing through PC Mark we saw a difference of twenty-one point four two percent that's the Delta between the two clock raids and this reduced render time from one forty 6.8 seconds to one hundred 18.4 seconds averaged across three tightly consistent runs and again that's noticeable with large files or with frequent production moving on to gaming let's look at a few FPS differences between the stock and overclocks laptops these games are generally bound by the gtx 970m and won't show massive CPU overclock gains to show the CPU independently really producing a difference we would have to drop the resolution substantially or drop the quality settings and at that point it's no longer a real-world scenario because no one's gonna do that it's just it's not worth it GTA 5 moves from 48 FPS to 55 FPS Delta 13.6% post overclocked and whether or not that's actually visible during gameplay does remain questionable the 13.6% Delta may be noticeable in periods of severe frame drops but generally we'd think not shadow of mordor is a 1 FPS difference between the CPU only OC and stock clock laptop tests there's effectively no difference here the GPU OC generates an eleven point seven six percent Delta between clock and U+ CPU OSI configurations but again potentially not that noticeable even with the couple FPS gap it's just it's not something you're necessarily gonna pick up on as a user especially because the 1% and 0.1% frame times are so tightly timed dirt rally shows about a 1 FPS gain for the CPU only OSI test in line with the previous benchmark the GPU and CPU laptop OSI pushes 61.7 FPS which is a 7 FPS gain over stock or Delta of 12 point 7 6 percent this is noteworthy because we're now exceeding 60 FPS which to some folks is a magic number that's always in demand this pattern persists through The Witcher 3 and Metro last light and you can read more about those tests in the link in the description below we are thoroughly impressed with the laptop as a whole and the overclocking potential of the 6820 HK which again is an unlocked Intel CPU because it's got that K signifier then and the 970m whether or not it's worth overclocking such a laptop is the big question here and for gaming my answer very plainly is no it is generally not worth overclocking even with the couple percent difference you see in some of these games the actual perceptible difference is marginal and it doesn't generally a whole lot more heat but just because it doesn't generate a lot of heat doesn't mean that the CPU and GPU are happy increasing the voltage to these devices which is what overclocking and part does can actually damage their long-term potential so it's not something you really want to do for a couple FPS gain the risks reward just isn't there for production however I will say that we will be configuring OC profiles on our production game and laptops that we take to the field because the difference of 20% and a render time is enough that we might be able to finish one more video before that next meeting and from a production standpoint that is big because time is money produce an extra video that's more money you're making and that's just how the stuff works so for anyone who is a production user on premiere or Photoshop it may be worth considering an overclock on something like a 68 20 HK for your on-the-go system and that's something that I would do somewhat sparingly I'd probably save it as a profile if possible and then just apply it when I'm and I know I really need the extra 10 minutes at the end of my render because I'm on a tight schedule but for the most part if you're just gonna let it render overnight I'd probably leave it alone because you know why burn cycles on something if you're just gonna go to sleep and it's gonna be done anyway when you wake up so whether it's worth it or not forgave me no production probably yes but in sparing situations is how I would answer that as for the review of this thing this is not a review so you'll find that in the near future this is the first 970m we've worked with if you're curious about other gaming laptops we've worked on the 980 m and 980 versions of the GT 72 from MSI and CyberPower and you can check those of course in the channel if you're curious so thanks again for watching hit the patreon link in the post roll video if that link in the description below for more information and I will see you all next time