Is Faster MHZ always Better?????

[ElectricMan]

I was bored and decided to mess with my duron 700 some more . I had benchmarks of 6425 running at 10/100 , but MEM5 said my MHZ was 1010. anyways I set my board to 9/100
and keep my voltage maxed at 1.92 I then ran 3dmark , and got a score of 7104. hmmmmmmm , why?? it seems like common logic it would drop not gain.

[Nagorak]

There are many factors which affect your overall system performance. First of all, make sure your system is running with all of the "goodies" enabled. Just setting your system to Optimal rather than Normal in the BIOS can greatly increase your performance. Setting to Normal generally allows you to get more MHz out of your CPU, but usually the Optimal settings will work better, even if your CPU is running slower.

In other words, MHz isn't everything. Make sure you don't sacrifice Optimal settings just to get more "speed" out of your CPU. In the end, you might just end up slowing yourself down.

That said, it could have been just a fluke, maybe you should try running your benchmarks again, making sure that nothing changes besides your CPU speed.