What is important? FSB or CPU speed?

[LexPliant]

For the AMD Athlons, which is more important in overclocking? FSB or the overall speed? Since the L2 is running at host clock. Will a Thunderbird at 1440 (144 x 10) be faster than 1533( 133 x 11) ? How does FSB affect AGP port timing?

 

[Confused]

By running a faster FSB, you are getting data to/from all other components (RAM, AGP, PCI, hard drives) quicker, so the system will feel more responsive. However, with running the FSB faster, and not in a 33MHz multiple, you are actually running all of these components out of spec. At 144 FSB, your PCI will be running at 1/4 that, which is 36 MHz, which is a whole 3 MHz (10% faster than spec). This increase in FSB could, in rare cases, cause data to be corrupted as it's being read to/from HDD, and could cause problems with PCI devices.

My FSB is running at 147MHz, which is 36.75 MHz PCI, and has been running this way for the past 6 months, and i've not had any problems yet with anything. However, your milage may vary.

As an example, Seti@home (DC project, click my sig for info) LOVES high FSB/memory speeds, and it will run much faster on a computer with high FSB compared to standard FSB at same overall CPU speed

Overclocking with the multiplier is (safer) on the Athlons, as you are keeping the PCI and memory speeds in spec


Confused