From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Feb 2 09:16:53 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id JAA26320 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 2 Feb 1998 09:16:53 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ifi.uio.no (0@ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA26268 for ; Mon, 2 Feb 1998 09:16:07 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dag-erli@ifi.uio.no) Received: from hrotti.ifi.uio.no (2602@hrotti.ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.15]) by ifi.uio.no (8.8.8/8.8.7/ifi0.2) with ESMTP id SAA19994 for ; Mon, 2 Feb 1998 18:13:49 +0100 (MET) Received: (from dag-erli@localhost) by hrotti.ifi.uio.no ; Mon, 2 Feb 1998 18:13:48 +0100 (MET) To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Overclocking a Pentium 120 References: <9802020845.ZM7015@unknown.zmail.host> <9802020932.ZM7015@unknown.zmail.host> Organization: Gutteklubben Terrasse X-url: http://www.ifi.uio.no/~dag-erli/ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no (Dag-Erling Coidan Smørgrav) In-Reply-To: "Ross Potts"'s message of "Mon, 2 Feb 1998 09:32:18 -0500" Lines: 40 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 19.34 Date: 02 Feb 1998 18:13:47 +0100 Message-ID: Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG X-To-Unsubscribe: mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org "unsubscribe hackers" "Ross Potts" writes: > ACtually , I could just swap a 133 from work, clock it to 150, then put my 120 > in at work and clock it to 133. I'm such a dirty bum! IMHO, if you ask for advice, you should at least be prepared to listen to what you actually get. A 150 Mhz Pentium is clocked at 60 MHz externally, while a 133 Mhz Pentium is clocked at 66 Mhz. This means that RAM, L2 cache, the motherboard chipset (including I/O controllers) and the PCI bus (which runs at half the bus clock, i.e. 30 or 33 MHz) is slower in a 150 MHz machine than in a 133 MHz machine. Be my guest and count on your fingers: that's practically the entire computer! The only situation in which a 150 MHz machine beats a 133 MHz machine is when doing a very long series of very simple calculations on very small data sets (i.e. data sets which fit entirely into the L1 cache - *not* the L2 cache since it is clocked at bus speed). That situation is practically never encountered in real applications, and most certainly not while running a task-switching OS such as FreeBSD. You will gain *nothing* by overclocking your 120 or 133 MHz Pentium to 150 MHz. If you still don't believe me, check out the URL I gave you earlier today. You will find benchmark results of various processors run at various bus speeds and clock multiplier settings. And, the 133 MHz processor you have at work will probably not run any better at 150 MHz than the 120 MHz you have at home, because the odds are that the 120 MHz is a 133 Mhz chip, re-marked by Intel to fill the demand for 120 MHz chips. Finally, I don't know if I like your attitude very much. Overclocking is a nice feature, not a God-given right. If your processor runs well when overclocked, fine. If it doesn't, don't complain - you got what you paid for in the first place, no more, no less. -- * Finrod (INTJ) * Unix weenie * dag-erli@ifi.uio.no * cellular +47-92835919 * RFC1123: "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send"