what's teh down-side to no clock-multiplier???

[Jumper]

The ASUS a7m266 soulds like a great ddr mb except that it doesn't have clock-multiplier support. What is the downfall of not having that option? Thanks,
Jumper

 

[TechnoFile]

The downside is you really wont be able to overclock a chip very much at all. The clock multiplier(ie 7x, 8x, 10x) is the thing that really gets you high numbers. With no support for that, you'll be stuck changing the FSB(the thing the clock multiplies) for small performance gains.

 

[DaveB]

Well, it's not much of a problem with the new chipsets. With the old AMD 750, VIA KX133 and VIA KT33, you couldn't get the FSB over 110 MHz so you had to use the multiplier. O/C'ing using the FSB is better since you're keeping the RAM speed at the same ratio with the CPU. Using higher multipliers can cause you to reach a point where the small AMD caches can no longer keep up and performance remains flat even though the CPU goes faster. If the A7M266 can run at 133 MHz with FSB up to at least 150 MHz, the multipliers will not be that important to you.

 

[Jumper]

Thanks for the reply. I am hoping to avoid obselesence by waiting for the 266 fsb technology and then upgrade the cpu in a few years with a palomino or some such cpu. Would the lack of a clock multiplier negatively effect such a plan?
Jumper

 

[Rob Cork]

It'll only be a problem if you intend to oc the new chip when you get it. If for example you get a 133MHz fsb chip running with a multiplier of 11.5 (1.53gig chip), you'll probably only be able to raise the fsb to around 150 or so before your PCI cards/ram/hard drives start complaining - that'd give a speed of 11.5x150=1725. That's not a bad overclock, but we don't know how well the new chips will oc - probably a fair bit more than that, and it'd be a shame to have to miss out on a really big oc because you can't change the multiplier. But if ocing doesn't matter that much to you, I wouldn't worry.