Same overclock, different multi/FSB. What's the tradeoff?

[FH]

For example with my E6600 I can reach 3150GHz via 350FSB x 9 or 450FSB x 7. Both settings work fine. What are the advantages / disadvantages of either? Sandra benchmark tells me the higher FSB gives some 7,400MB/s memory bandwidth vs. perhaps about 6,400 (I haven't checked exactly). Score 1 for 450x7, I guess, though I'm not sure about the real-world benefits. Are there any problems I should watch out for pushing the FSB so high?

By the way, is it true the Northbridge runs internally at 9/7x450 when the multiplier is set to 7 with an E6600? Does this warrant any extra considerations when using an E6600 at lower multipliers vs. a processor that runs natively at 7x?

 

[xanxaz]

The only problem that you might face with fsb that high its your North and South Bridge getting too hot and probably HDD corruption if you are on a RAID array... for a cool/quiet and energy efficience i would recomend running it at probably 400x7... 2.8Ghz it's enough if your not encoding Audio/Video... or 400x8... 3.2Ghz... do not boost the Vcore and tighten your ram timmings... my E6600 is at 1.8Ghz with a Vcore of 0.85 now and it's totally passive cooled because i dont need that kind of speed and i game a bit... but my OC experiment tells me that in a 965 it's better to keep the northbridge coolled properly... and below 400 in regular usage... or you might run into problems later... I also got a E6300+S3 up to 3.5 aircooled but its just too high for regular usage... MB wont take it for long periods of time.... with a FSB increase you will get an overall speed up... not only the CPU as you already witnessed in your memory tests...

And for last... the multiplier it's related to you CPU and not to the northbridge... Your Northbridge FSB is QuadPumped... 4X the 266 in stock and its CPU FSB related but not the multi...

 

[nvalhalla]

Yeah, what he said.

The higher FSB would serve you better, but only if you can cool the NB adequately.