What difference do MHz make?

[The Dragon]

Hello everyone I just saw a post of someone asking which is the best 980 out there, they said EVGA 980 Classified. I checked it out and the only thing I really noticed was a 165MHz clockspeed difference. How much performance difference does .165 GHz make? Like in CPUs .1 GHz difference would be basically insignificant. Thanks

[minibois]

Hello everyone I just saw a post of someone asking which is the best 980 out there, they said EVGA 980 Classified. I checked it out and the only thing I really noticed was a 165MHz clockspeed difference. How much performance difference does .165 GHz make? Like in CPUs .1 GHz difference would be basically insignificant. Thanks

You can't compare in Ghz/MHz anymore.

Look up some reviews of the different 980's (Like on the Linus Tech Tips channel) and you will see why it is suppose to be better

[Guest Kloaked]

Probably insignificant to most people, but what matters is the components the card is built with to allow for better overclocking, especially when the card is put in a water cooling loop.

The "best" 980 for most people would probably be a reference design or something with a non-reference cooler but closer to the reference design price.

[zlolslavez]

Between the same graphics card, maybe like 1-5fps.

[Toddwjp]

different brand gpus just have different board designs and coolers that offer different levels of cooling, over clocking stability, etc. the higher clock from the factory compared to reference is just the manufacturers way of saying we guarantee this much over clocking compared to reference. and i think you maid a typo in your post, 1GHz would be massive. but Mhz make enough of a difference.

[The Dragon]

You can't compare in Ghz/MHz anymore.

Look up some reviews of the different 980's (Like on the Linus Tech Tips channel) and you will see why it is suppose to be better

They have the same amount of cores and same amount of and ram speed. So I don't see how you can't compare in MHz/GHz

[The Dragon]

different brand gpus just have different board designs and coolers that offer different levels of cooling, over clocking stability, etc. the higher clock from the factory compared to reference is just the manufacturers way of saying we guarantee this much over clocking compared to reference. and i think you maid a typo in your post, 1GHz would be massive. but Mhz make enough of a difference.

Its .1GHz

[Arphenyte]

GHz as you probably know, it's a unit of frequency. The higher the frequency the better performance you'll get, that applies to both the CPUs, and GPUs. Although, as you stated in a CPU 0.1GHz would be insignificant, .165GHz on a GPU is not, you'll be seeing a significant difference when it comes to benchmarking.

[Megahurt]

It's not about how many more MHz, it's about how much more % it is than stock. It doesn't scale perfectly, so a 10% overclock will not give you 10% more performance, but you can expect a 20% overclock to give you twice the boost in performace than a 10% overclock would.

[Toddwjp]

Its .1GHz

 

put the dam 0 infront

[orangecat]

It's allot more complex than one processor is slightly higher clocked than another. it all depends on the architecture. if your comparing 2 GTX 980s then yes clock speed matters but fi your comparing a 290X to a 980 well they aren't the same so clock speeds might be different and one could be faster than the other at the same clock speed.

[MrBucket101]

For me and my card, every 100MHz I can overclock the card, I usually get around 8-10 more FPS in games.

The classified's can handle ALOT more power than the reference PCB's, so you can really overclock the hell out of them. If you don't plan on overclocking to the max, then you might be better with a different card

[minibois]

They have the same amount of cores and same amount of and ram speed. So I don't see how you can't compare in MHz/GHz

*sigh* You can't compare in MHz or whatever because for example a GPU might run very hot all the time, causing it to thermal throttle or whatever (just an example)

You can compare GPU's with each other by looking at benchmarks, where you can see the GPU's in the same scenario and see which one outperforms the other in a day to day scenario.

[Lotus]

The quick and dirty way in the same architecture is to just use simple ratios.

 

EX: i5 4440 is 3.1 GHz, i5 4460 (same processor but the haswell refresh version) is 3.2 GHz. That's basically 0.1/3.1 which is a 3.2% improvement

 

For GTX 970s, you have the slowest clock speed (1.05) and the fastest clock speed (1.22), which is 0.17/1.05, or a 16% improvement. The problem with GPUs is that, unlike the CPU example above which included locked CPUs, GPUs are always overclockable. This means that even the cheapest $330 GPU can go higher than the 1.22 GHz stock clock speed of the fastest stock GPU, and it's all about the silicone lottery. Basically, what really matters are 1) binning (what quality of chip your GPU is) and 2) whether or not you're thermally limited by the cooler (almost impossible in low cost cards, rare in the GTX 970, and really important in the R9 290x). Binning is usually luck, but some GPU partners like Gigabyte test and reserve the better chips for their higher end cards, but it's never a guaranteed process or result. Basically, IMO there's very little reason to get a more expensive version of a GPU. What matters is that it's a GTX 970, not what version it is.

[ManIkWeet]

Yes it matters, because the clock speed is active for each and every individual core in the GPU chip, each and every core is used to calculate each and ever pixel on your screen in a highly parallelized way.

[The Dragon]

put the dam 0 infront

I don't have to but for you, 0.1GHz

[Jumper118]

I don't have to but for you, 0.1GHz

it might only be 0.1ghz faster at stock, but if you get a classy, you don't leave it at stock

[Badger906]

the classified, is built with much better components such as its transistors so its built to handle more current flow more accurately and not die so easily, allowing it to hold a better overclock than some cheaper cards and or the ones based on the reference board.

[rtpb5642]

0.1 GHZ on a CPU and 0.1 GHZ on a CPU are very different.

[byubi]

In this part of the world, we need the zero lol.

You can compare the speed only when it's the same chip/architecture. So 165MHz more means a few more frames per second.

 

A better cooler will increase the lifespan and your card and will run quieter, so making the decision based on that makes more sense.