3770 vs 3770K

[Avan]

I need some help/advice here. I plan on putting together a new PC this weekend and it was planned to use a 3770K, but I cannot find anyone selling these aside from making a 9 hour drive to the closest Microcenter that has these in stock. So what I would like to know is, can I still OC a 3770 by upping the BCLK like on the Bloomfields? I'm not shooting for any crazy clocks here, probably 4 - 4.2 or so. The machine is going to be for gaming.

Thanks!

EDIT: Or would moving to the 3570K be okay? Not sure if the loss of HT is a huge deal or not.

[theix]

I don't think BCLK overclocking is very healthy for daily use. It clocks up the whole system.

Since your rig will be for gaming then 3570K will be a better choice. HT mostly doesn't help in fps.

[itznfb]

You won't get very far with a non-K version. You'll only be able to up the bclk a couple mhz and it's not worth it. Wait for the K to come back in stock or be satisfied with the stock speeds.

[zanzabar]

if it is not a K it will not overclock more than 1-2% if you are lucky, so always get a K. they even cost only $5-10 more than the non K but they are the highest end only.

[Avan]

Okay, so K for sure then. Is the loss of the 2MB L3 Cache and HT a big deal if the pc is just for gaming?

[bamtan2]

Okay, so K for sure then. Is the loss of the 2MB L3 Cache and HT a big deal if the pc is just for gaming?

not with conventional wisdom. I've seen data showing minimum frame rate improved because of the extra threads, so I do value them. but it is not a big deal.

[zanzabar]

not with conventional wisdom. I've seen data showing minimum frame rate improved because of the extra threads, so I do value them. but it is not a big deal.

were did you see that, normally at the same clocks the chip with no HT will do a little better in minimum frame rate since the windows task scheduler will overload cores with giving a command to the core and the fake core at the same time. HT is only good with lots of simple int work (then it is really good,) but if you have somehting coded for 2-4 cores and are running HT it will go slower in most cases.

[BeepBeep2]

Well a lot of people are doing 107-108 MHz bclk it seems, and max multiplier on non-K versions are 43.
That is a healthy 4.6 GHz on air/water.

...and because the OP said this:

I'm not shooting for any crazy clocks here, probably 4 - 4.2 or so

I suggest saving $30 and going with the non-K SKU

[OldChap]

I would say that the extra few $$ you pay for the K will mean double the re-sale value in a couple of years ... well you get the idea....

I just got mine so I have still to get to know stuff but together with a 77 MB mem overclocking is back too .. I'm about to start investigating Bclk but I did hear that it pushes cpu volts a lot.

For me the question you might ask yourself if you are only gaming is 3570K or 3770K?

[zanzabar]

Well a lot of people are doing 107-108 MHz bclk it seems, and max multiplier on non-K versions are 43.
That is a healthy 4.6 GHz on air/water.

...and because the OP said this:

I suggest saving $30 and going with the non-K SKU

that is interesting, is that higher multi with messing with the turbo to make standard? i thought that it has a max of 39.

[sin0822]

BCLk OCing isn't healthy. If you are going to do it 24/7 more than 1-2mhz, you are going to take out other components other than your board and CPU.