please settle this argument

[badaphooko]

my friend has a xp2500 unlocked along side an abit nforce board.. he claims lowering the fsb and raising the multiplier is faster than upping the fsb and lowering the multiplier.. I always thought the higher the fsb the faster it went. can someone please tell wich is faster? and why .. so i can explain it to him.

 

[Elcs]

Most AMD overclockers have their RAM running at the same speed as their FSB.

Therefore the higher the FSB, the faster the RAM and furthermore, Bandwidth increases allowing the RAM to be used faster and more efficiently, ie. reducing a bottleneck.

I believe this is correct.... although someone could probably explain it far better.

 

[SilverBack]

Raising the front side bus is faster.
Memory is acessed faster the higher the bus.

 

[TerryMathews]

Processor bus speed is (relatively) unimportant. Run the processor bus at whatever speed will give you the highest memory frequency.

Ex: A 2500+ running 2.1GHz on a 300MHz bus (7*300) with the RAM divider set at 1/2 (150MHz RAM speed) will be significantly slower than a 2500+ running at 2.1GHz on a 200MHz bus (10.5*200) with the RAM divider set at 1 (200MHz RAM speed).

 

[myocardia]

Why don't you just prove it to him? Run a few benchmarks of his choice, and when yours outperforms his, he'll have no more argument!

 

[SilverBack]

Good idea!

 

[FrustratedUser]

Increasing FSB >> Increasing multiplier when the resulting CPU speed is the same.