Benchmarking
When overclocking, most of the gains aren't extremely noticeable, but as always, it will depend heavily on the programs used, actual hardware, and how much of an overclock is obtained. The most common benchmarks are:
For every benchmark, there are of course, tweaks. There are too many to cover in this article, as it is aimed overclocking rather than tweaking., but that’s what this is all about. Tweak. Experiment. You may just find a new useful tweak!
For general comparison, in 3dmark, it’s considered "comparable" as long as you use the default settings. Changing something will alter the comparison, and render it useless.
These programs are also very handy for troubleshooting, and general hardware information (i.e. Showing off your speeds.)