FSB vs Multi

[g-a-m-e]

Hi all,

quick question:

It's common knowledge that a higher FSB is preferable to a higher multi, the overclock is more efficient that way right ?

Now i was first running pi at 11 x 268 with memory running along at 268mhz and got 28.404 seconds

Then after a whole lot of trying (clockgen + A64 tweaker) i finally got the bastard to run at 9 x 328 with a 166 divider.
Those settings produce the same clockspeed and memory speed, but should give me a noticable improvement over the first setting with the 11 multiplier because of the higher FSB, but it didnt do squad unfortunately, same time exactly..(28.375)

Now my question is; When the max of your ram is reached, does it still serve any purpose to raise the FSB higher ?
I'm beginning to think that the only reason a higher FSB is better is because of the increased memory bandwith ...

**Long post, so for all you the lazy bastards among us ill recap:

So after you reach your rams limit, its absolutely useless to up the FSB even more ... right ?

 

[madmat]

Clock speed is clock speed is clock speed...X CPU at X.XXGhz will perform the same regardless of how it's achieved, where FSB comes into play is with ram bandwidth (as you've surmised) allowing the CPU to shove data out through the ram and draw the dat in through the ram faster thus lowering the time it's sitting idle waiting for actual work to do or waiting to send out the work it's completed.

If you're not using a ram intensive app you won't see any change by choking the ram back to a lower speed so your results will be the same (this applies to Super PI and Folding, neither rely on ram that much) but on apps that use the ram lanes quite a bit such as games you'll see a drop in performance by going to the uber high FSB with the ram running at less than 1-1 via a divider.

Us Intel guys have learned this long ago due to having locked multi's.