How does frequency on a CPU impact performance? I.e. if I overclock a 2Ghz CPU to 4Ghz, is it +100% performance?
In: Technology
This is like adding Nitro to your car.
The engine (CPU) will work harder and provide more power but the rest of your car: the transmission, radiator, brakes, shocks, tyres, exhaust, alternator and differentials are all designed to operate with your default engine specs. So if you’re souping up your car by adding Nitro you need to additionally soup up your brakes, exhaust and tyres at least but you’ll be limited in terms of how much you can do – for instance you can only improve your cooling so much.
The same is true of overclocking a CPU in a computer.
Also your BIOS has a permitted range of settings which controls how much you can try to overclock. You could potentially create a custom bios but those limits in the BIOS are there for a reason. Actually overclocking a CPU by 100% would most likely melt the chip almost instantly.
Don’t be confused by features like Turbo Boost or Dynamic Acceleration which is designed into certain processors. This TEMPORARILY increases the processor power when needed. But this is not true overclocking as this is a default feature designed into these systems.
there are diminishing returns, as others have mentioned.
something to note is that clock speed is only a useful comparison for similar or the same chip. 2 chips can have the same performance with radically different clock speeds due to different architecture.
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