Base Clock vs. Multiplier Overclocking

You can speed up your CPU by overclocking both the base clock and the CPU multiplier - but what's the difference between these, and why are there two overclocking options in the first place?





Intro Theme: Showdown by F.O.O.L from Monstercat - Best of 2016

[ThisIsTenou]

Well that's all nice and good but why not just overclock by adding RGB

[RC-nqmg]

I haven't overclocked in a long time, but I still remember my last mess. It was a sempron 2500 rated at 1.67Ghz from a 166Mhz base clock with 10x multiplier on an NF7S board with a custom flashed bios. Multiplier was locked on the CPU so only way was base clock, ram was double effective for 333Mhz clock. I had the clock cranked to 215Mhz giving me a CPU clock of 2150Mhz, ram clock of 430Mhz (using 333Mhz ram) I cant remember what I had the ram voltage set to, but I was feeding the CPU with 2.2V on the core (rated for 1.6V) to keep it stable. I ran it like this for years on air cooling, and even went as far as tweaking the ram timing tables. The graphics card was a mediocre GeForce 5200. The passive heatsink was removed and replaced with a CPU cooler. I had to relocate capacitors to the back of the board to make it fit. I volt modded both the ram and the GPU to crank up the supply voltages, and had the 266Mhz memory clocked at approx 380Mhz and the 333Mhz GPU at 500Mhz completely stable on air. Wish I kept that video card, it looked like a freaking monster when i was done with it.

[krash]

Does this mean if manufacturers start making 200MHz base clock motherboard, we will have 8GHz CPUs in no time?

Just kidding

[lmaoroflcopter]

Back in the day when I used to bother overclocking it was all about the 1800+ thoroughbred and then the 2500+ Barton core, push the FSB and I'm pretty sure multiplier was sacrificed at times to favour higher bus frequencies like if you could hit 3.2ghz with a 320mhz clock and 10x multiplier or a 160mhz clock and a 20x multiplier, you'd push for that 320mhz

*numbers picked to be easy to add not to be accurate clocks.

[FreakinKatGaming]

If your actually about that Overclocking life, you've done the following
1. Reset your Cmos more times then you can remeber.
2. Reinstalled your Operating systems and formatted and partitioned so much so that you could do it blindfolded.
3. You love your NVME because you now see the speed at which it boots as opposed to SSD.
4. Read more trouble shooting errors you basically know them by heart.
5. Your wonder if you can squeeze just a tiny bit more power out of it, knowing damn good and well your possibly about to completely reinstall and set up your OS uet again and correct all your bios to stable... for now.
6. You have either completely abandoned windows except for maybe the novelty game or 2 that will only run on windows so you've kept it around so when friends or family come over they dont think your Mister Robot and are hacking into some super secret government files or something. Or your getting your feet wet and starting to dabble in things like ubuntu (arch linux ftw, just saying) and are starting to realize what you've been missing out on and how much other OS just flat out suck fat weiner meat.
7. You honed in on the word linux and flavor and just had to read this whole post in the assumtion you might find out something new that you didnt already know and now you might be annoyed with me yet silently laughing how accurate I am in my wild guesses? Comments welcome leave them below👇

[rich]

The base clock is essentially the 'heart beat'. It makes sure everything stays in sync, even if they use a different operating frequency.

So yeah, it is best to leave it alone. Behavior predictability goes out the window if the base clock is too slow or too fast, and that issue becomes more and more severe the more a specific device relies on the base clock. If it is running too fast, it can cause some devices to 'miss ticks', which can cause horrible instability in rapid yet mission critical functions, like memory management. Too slow could cause the device has to wait an unusual amount of time every base clock tick, causing a stuttering system.

[Marco_Onyxheart]

In my day, only the most expensive CPUs could do multiplier overclocking. FSB overclocking was how we did it.

[Edmo]

1:22 It makes no noticeable difference if u oc to 4, 57ghz instead of 4, 5hz for example. thats why 100mhz steps are more than enough.

[jayviescas]

Thank you! Though I've built and worked on PC systems for over 20 years (still not to the extent or with the same amount of training that you and your crew have) I can barely explain how components of PCs interact and what to look out for should problems arise. I really learn a lot from your videos.

[benitollan]

Linus you'll get better results if you don't drop the voltages.

[Finite-Tuning]

Good job! I wouldn't mind a much longer more detailed session on the specifics of overclocking, something like a how to on today's more modern hardware. Things have changed a bit in the past 10 yrs, so you could do a whole new series/segment on oveclocking section by section if ya like. Well, I'd like it if ya did it, so one vote from me.

[WolvenSpectre]

Way better explanation than I got in my IT courses.

[BKaattt]

Back with the first gen i7 you had to use the baseclock to overclock, they had the multiplier locked down unless you payed 1k for the "extreme" cpu.

[danielharman]

Literally was just watching a video on these topics and was so lost. Thanks for the video!!!!

[PAPAJOETTV]

hes the first person to explain the difference between host and multiplier that i can actually understand tyvm :)

[TetraSky]

I honestly just overclock the Turboboost of each core, I don't touch the baseclock or multiplier. Without any voltage change, I was able to gain 300 Mhz on all cores and 700Ghz on single core, 100% stable(never crashed once in 8 years).... Not incredible by any means, but it's better than default clocks.. Though I did have to reduce it by 100 Mhz last year because the PC was starting to act "funny" on boot, sometimes not booting at all, was working fine once booted into windows though. I guess when a CPU gets older, it doesn't run as fast anymore? Somehow?
First step of troubleshooting : Get rid of all overclocks. Does it still do the thing? No? Overclock is the issue, dial it back. And it was, surprisingly... No more boot issues. Because even though once in Windows it was stable again, if it takes 3 tries to ever boot in the first place, there's a problem.

[Tyler-ndqg]

I can not explain in words how I love this series!! Also ltt

[DeFault-Gamer]

Please make an In-depth guide on Overclocking (CPU+GPU+Memory)

[THETHPHANTOM]

how are you only just making this video now 2018? should have made this topic like your first channel upload.

[stayfrost]

My old FX based system ran at 235MHz BCLK (200 default) with a 21.5x Multiplier for 5.05GHz frequency at 1.44v. The added advantage was that my Memory instant crashed with Multiplier OC but with BCLK bumped up, it ran at 2200MHz (1866 default, and remember this was DDR3) at 1.65v. The PC itself felt extremely responsive as if someone was playing a video in fast-forward for some weird reason (only happened when I bumped the BCLK), sadly even that couldn't save FX from its worthless Single Core performance XD Running a R5 1400 now @4GHz, planning to get Ryzen 3000 series when it launches :D