Here’s an interesting video that we came across today where we find South Africa’s UFDisciple testing the hypothesis that a cheaper Intel CPU can be overclocked (just a bit) to yield improve performance in 3D gaming. As a hypothesis it sounds good, and in fact resembles the original motivation that many of us had back in the day when you could purchase a cheaper CPU model and overclock it to something similar to a more expensive SKU that delivers higher fps.

The outcome of UFDisciple’s overclocking exploits with the Pentium G4520 are not what you would call astounding, largely due to the limitations of the CPU. The test setup includes a MSI Z170 motherboard and a GTX 1080 card – the idea being to see just how much the performance was affected by using a cheaper CPU. Indeed the Pentium does become a bottleneck. Even after several attempts with various BIOS revisions, the board cannot push the CPU beyond a +8% overclock. UFDisciple goes on to test how much an 8% performance increase affects actual gaming performance. Turns out, it has quite mixed results.

UFDisciple is currently No.2 in the Rookie League on HWBOT. He was also the winner of the World Series for Amateurs contest in South Africa earlier this year. The video might not be the most scientifically accurate thing you will see today, but regardless of that, it’s great to see a young, enthusiastic Rookie overclocker sharing his experiences. Catch the video from UFDisciple here on his YouTube channel, and if you have any advice regarding his overclocking - I’m sure he’d appreciate anything that more experienced overclockers have to contribute in the forum link below.