What is the use of a multiplier.

[folem]

I understand generally how overclocking is achieved, but for the most part it seems to be all for bragging purposes. I would like to know how it would be useful to me to have, say, a Phenom II 965BE run at 4.2 GHz instead of 3.4 GHz when the system is still limited by a 200 MHz memory bus and a 2 GHz HT bus. What is the point of having the CPU run at a faster speed than the bus it is connected to?

 

[truegenius]

when cpu becomes the bottle neck , it becomes necessory to overclock it.
When we can't increase bus too far (due to other hardwares limitations like ram) then multiplier can come to rescue

 

[cdub1980]

I have the 965 BE running at 4.0GHz using only the multiplier set at x20. If you research Black Edition CPU's, especially starting with AM2 sockets, you'll find that in benchmarking, the traditional method of OC'ing (increasing FSB, adjusting RAM timings, etc.) doesn't give you much of a difference from simply increasing the CPU multiplier. I put this to the test with my system, I've adjusted FSB, RAM Timings, voltages, NB, etc. and ran benchmarking. Then, I defaulted everything except the CPU multiplier and ran the benchmarking again...results will be different every time you run the test, but a few runs of each setup and there was a very insignificant difference in the results.

In terms of gaming - my current OC is simply the CPU multi at x20, I dropped voltage down to 1.40v, and I OC'd my GPU and VRAM 10% with no voltage adjustments on the GPU. I'm getting 10-20% improvements depending on the game I play. Again...I tried the traditional style of OC'ing and the results matched or were slightly lower than the "simple" method of OC'ing.

Maybe I was doing something wrong, but in all honesty, I'm all about work smart, not hard. I can get a 10-20% boost in gaming performance with just a couple easy tweaks, no fussing with timings, crashing, testing, re-testing, FSB, NB, HT, etc - so I'm happy to leave it there.

Yes, the FSB can only handle so much, but even if you only boost your CPU speed, you'll still see a noticeable difference in performance.

 

[folem]

Best answer selected by folem.

 

[4Ryan6]

This topic has been closed by 4ryan6