Editing Overclocking (section)

=== Measuring effects of overclocking ===
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[[Benchmark (computing)|Benchmarks]] are used to evaluate performance, and they can become a kind of "sport" in which users compete for the highest scores. As discussed above, stability and functional correctness may be compromised when overclocking, and meaningful benchmark results depend on the correct execution of the benchmark. Because of this, benchmark scores may be qualified with stability and correctness notes (e.g. an overclocker may report a score, noting that the benchmark only runs to completion 1 in 5 times, or that signs of incorrect execution such as display corruption are visible while running the benchmark). A widely used test of stability is Prime95, which has built-in error checking that fails if the computer is unstable.

Using only the benchmark scores, it may be difficult to judge the difference overclocking makes to the overall performance of a computer. For example, some benchmarks test only one aspect of the system, such as memory [[Bandwidth (computing)|bandwidth]], without taking into consideration how higher [[clock rate]]s in this aspect will improve the system performance as a whole. Apart from demanding applications such as video encoding, high-demand [[database]]s and [[scientific computing]], [[memory bandwidth]] is typically not a [[bottleneck (engineering)|bottleneck]], so a great increase in memory bandwidth may be unnoticeable to a user depending on the applications used. Other benchmarks, such as [[3D Mark|3DMark]], attempt to replicate game conditions.