Do cooler chips mean more throughput at a given clockspeed?
Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 11:09 am
A recent post by Colm reminded me of an argument a friend and I were having: Does the temperature of a chip affect its performance?
My friend aircools his system down to 5-10°C above ambient. He says that even without adjusting clockspeed, lower temperatures alone improve his FLOPS, FPS, and RAM bandwidth. I spin my fans slowly and run my chips hot, and I figure as long as it doesn't create instability, there's nothing to be gained by keeping the chips cooler. Who's right?
My friend aircools his system down to 5-10°C above ambient. He says that even without adjusting clockspeed, lower temperatures alone improve his FLOPS, FPS, and RAM bandwidth. I spin my fans slowly and run my chips hot, and I figure as long as it doesn't create instability, there's nothing to be gained by keeping the chips cooler. Who's right?