Higher bus vs higher multi

[ShadowFold]

Does doing 15.5 x 200 VS 12.5 x 248 at the same 3.1ghz make a difference in gaming?

[3870x2]

I believe a higher bus speed provides better results. Some people lower the multi for boards that support a higher FSB, because there will be no difference in heat, which is the real limiting factor if you have a good mobo.

[EnglishLion]

Generally you'll see an improvement in performance from the higher bus as opposed to the higher multiplier. If both are stable choose the higher bus speed.

But to bring this round to your actual question about performance in gaming - no noticeable difference, not even 1fps I shouldn't think!

[lemonadesoda]

3.0Ghz on a higher bus is better then 3.0Ghz on a slower bus, HOWEVER, depending on your system you will have a "ceiling" somewhere on the bus. So therefore you OC to the highest stable bus OC on a low multipler... then you UP the multiplier.

For this reason FSB 1066 and FSB 1333 processors are very popular. Because you can OC these to 1333 or 1600. Whereas WHERE exactly can you take a 1600 processor to? No regular mainboard today will take that to FSB 2000+.

Some years ago, the P4 2.40 /533 was very popular. Much more popular than the 2.40 or 2.80 /800. Why? Because you could OC 2.40/533 to 3.60/800. Whereas you couldnt take the 2.80/800 to 3.40/1000. The 1000FSB was just too high.

[wolf]

higher bus equals faster/better communication with the ram if im not mistaken...

[JBravo]

Also, higher bus should eliminate possible bottlenecks between your cpu/ram/gpu I think

[Konceptz]

As other says, the core 2 chips are bandwidth whores. Also using a lower multiplier places less of a strain on the chip when overclocking.

[Tau]

Obviously higher bus speeds would be better, though are you likly to see any real life performance diffrent between 200/250? probobly not... you will notice an improvement in benchmarks but that is about it....

Maybe in situations were CPU-Memory communication is a bottleneck... but i cant see many instances of this having a practical effect.

[farlex85]

I haven't noticed much difference but that's not to say it isn't there. I typically run my bus at 515 (2060) to do 3.6ghz as opposed to 450 (1800) just b/c it works out better w/ my ram at a 1:1 ratio, and I figure a higher bus w/ no extra voltage couldn't hurt too much. I don't really notice anything working better or worse though when I sometimes run it w/ full multi. AMD's bus works differently though so I don't know if it's comparable.

[Konceptz]

I know with my setup, i stop seeing real world performance increases after 1600mhz front side on my quad. I've taken my quad out and popped in my dual core and took the front side bus up to 1900 and still nothing to gain.

In my observations with core 2 overclocking, the quads seem to stop showing improvements after 1600mhz front side and dual cores stop after 1800mhz. this was done back to back on the same system. only swapped out the processors.