Shader speed vs. Core speed ?

Well, I tried searching but got no luck eventually, so I starting this thread to get expert's help, as the title says which is better, in performance of system, as another question is, how about Stream processors vs. shader speed ? I know it's a bit awkward but it's kinda like asking Nvidia vs. ATI lol

 

Depends on the game, if the game is shader heavy it can more use of the shader clocks than a game that was not shader heavy.

When overclocking you overclock everything to gether or in a locked ratio most of the time, usually not doing so can cause instability easy or leave you with little to gain.

 

There where some threads a good while ago where the shader clocks were discussed, basically in game which are shader intensive (Bioshock, for example) will get an advantage (in shaders) having a higher shaders clocks.

Now, remember that a GPU has its own cpu and ram memory. Usually what you can control directly with overclocking programs are the core (cpu) and memomry (ram) clocks. The shader clocks are tied to the memory clocks when you overclock unless you modify them.

 

IIRC the shader clock is tied to the core clock. But with some GPUs/Programs there is the option to unlock the shader clock's dependence on the core clock. In my experience, the shader clock can usually be pushed higher than the core clock (as a percent based on the stock clocks), but as Viscous said, it may be better to leave them locked.

 

You can change the core and shader clocks independently.

The best way to find the right clocks is through experimentation. As noted, some games like a faster shader clock and others like a faster core; download FRAPS and record your framerate using different overclocking combinations and go with the highest performance.

 

It depends on the brand of GPU. For ATi cards, the core clock controls the "shader" clock so increasing the core clock also increases the shader frequency. Nvidia cards have the shader frequencies separate or asynchronous with the core speed, so they can be changed separately.

But yeah, it depends on the game. Usually games that aren't memory bottlenecked (i.e needing a lot of VRAM) tend to be more shader intensive.