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Subject: Re: Tinkering with bus speed

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 05:12:55 01/21/99

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On January 21, 1999 at 06:25:27, Enrique Irazoqui wrote:

>Changing CPU clock frequency in BIOS from 100 to 112 Mhz increases the speed of
>my PII-400 by exactly 12%, as if I had a 450. Is this too good to be true? Any
>undesirable side effects?
>
>Enrique


It will do two things:

(1) it increases the operating temperature of the CPU core, and the L2
cache.  That will definitely decrease chip life.  How much is unknown (ie
a chip that would normally last 10 years may only last 8, although it is
also possible that this can shorten its life to 1-2-3 years as well.)

(2) you can produce non-detectable errors, where slight timing problems on
the BUS go undetected, or memory is 'almost' able to keep up but not every
time.  We see _lots_ of problems doing this on the linux-smp mailing list.

I remember the old saying 'if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is..'



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