Replies to post #71529 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[mas]

it means the clockspeed will go up in these increments when it is needed from the base low-voltage low clockspeed. My works Dothan does it in 266MHz jumps as a datapoint.

[wbmw]

Re: What does 100 MHz granularity mean? On my system, the minimum
speed is 800 Mhz and the max is 2 Ghz. I can underclock to 50%
and get a range from 400 Mhz to 1 Ghz. Does this mean that it
will drop the low end of the range down to 100 Mhz? If so, I
think that's useful.

No. The 100MHz granularity means more sku availability. Right now, AMD has to offer things in 200MHz gaps, such as 2.0GHz, 2.2GHz, and 2.4GHz. If they want to offer 5 skus, they'll have to start doing things like 2.0GHz/512KB, 2.0GHz/1M, etc. However, with 100MHz gaps, they don't need to alter cache to affect performance, which often offers unreliable or inconsistent gains. Instead, they can have the flexibility launch a 2.1GHz part. It's something that helps in marketing, but it's not a terribly interesting feature for end-users.