Ive recently been looking at a new graphics card for my gaming computer, and I see a lot of statistics like “1650 boost clock speed ,” But I don’t understand why the manufacturer wouldn’t just set the performance comparative to begin with?
In: Technology
There is such a thing as a so-called “silicon lottery”. No two chips are identical, and some are able to run faster safely, some aren’t. Temperature permitting the GPU will voluntarily overclock itself to boost clock speeds – and sometimes beyond – as long as it can take it. The base clock is the guaranteed speed.
CPUs can usually do it better since they have many cores which can be idle or busy. When most cores are idle there’s enough power (and heat) capacity available to let the busy cores speed up significantly while the idle cores basically shut down, keeping the overall power utilization within the limits.
It’s less clear cut with GPUs since you don’t have that kind of control over them, but as long as it’s safe they’re willing to speed up a bit.
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