Overclocking vs number of cores...

[Richard8971]

I've been overclocking for decades, I mean it, really I have...

I remember when I bought my P3 933Mhz and overclocked it to 1Ghz using the jumper pins on the motherboard...

My latest adventure has been my AMD 6350 and I have been doing some testing with cores vs speed.

Most of us know that if you disable cores you can lower your heat (and power) and reach a higher speed. But is speed all there is?

My particular chip seems to love 4.7Ghz @ 6 cores.

I have run it with 2 cores and 4 cores at different speeds with interesting results.

I have gotten it to 5Ghz with 4 cores but it runs SLOWER than 4.7Ghz with all 6 cores running.

Just food for thought.

D

 

[trents]

I've been overclocking for decades, I mean it, really I have...

I remember when I bought my P3 933Mhz and overclocked it to 1Ghz using the jumper pins on the motherboard...

My latest adventure has been my AMD 6350 and I have been doing some testing with cores vs speed.

Most of us know that if you disable cores you can lower your heat (and power) and reach a higher speed. But is speed all there is?

My particular chip seems to love 4.7Ghz @ 6 cores.

I have run it with 2 cores and 4 cores at different speeds with interesting results.

I have gotten it to 5Ghz with 4 cores but it runs SLOWER than 4.7Ghz with all 6 cores running.

Just food for thought.

D

Depends on what you are doing with it. Not all applications can utilize all those cores. Some can't even efficiently use four cores. In that case, fewer cores running at a higher clock speed would be "faster."

But what kind of stress testing have you done to confirm these overclock speeds?

 

[Lochekey]

When you say it runs slower at 5ghz by 4cores vs 4.7ghz by 6cores. What are you using to measure the performance. If you are using a multithreaded application the slightly slower 6 cores will win out but if you are running a single threaded application the 5 ghz setup will win. It is not like you are comparing a 6core 3.5ghz chip against a 4 core 5ghz where the 4 cor can make up for its lack of cores with speed. A 0.3ghz difference will not compensate for 2 less cores.

 

[Richard8971]

I guess my testing is biased towards what I do with my computer.

I do a lot of photo editing and photoshopping where I've timed how long it takes my computer to accomplish the same task depending on the speed and cores used.

I was simply trying to suggest that raw speed is not always the answer. I am running an AMD 6350 that is a 6 core CPU. I can disable or enable cores that I choose. I just have found that for most of my particular applications, running all 6 cores has a more noticeable impact over CPU speed.

Sorry for any confusion.

D