Dracio

Distinguished
Jan 15, 2010
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I've always wondered how multiplier and FSB affect the clockspeed right down at the basic level.

Obviously you have the FSB speed then multiply it to get the clockspeed but the question is for example, which would be faster?:

fsb = 200 multiplier = 10 clockspeed = 2GHz
fsb = 100 multiplier = 20 clockspeed = 2GHz

Obviously they're the same overall clockspeed... but would one perform better than the other?
 
Theoretically, the CPU with the higher FSB, all other things being equal, would be faster.

In reality, you wouldn't have two systems like that. You'd have 400 MHz X 7.5 or 500 MHz X 6 for 3.0 GHz. And the overall performance increase does not scale linearly with FSB speed.