In a multi-bandwidth CDMA system, the performance of a multiple order selection combining rake receiver is analyzed according to the spreading bandwidth of the system and the delay spread of a Rayleigh fading channel. The results for various channel environments indicate a tradeoff between total received signal energy and multipath fading immunity. Increasing the occupied bandwidth of the system (wide-bandwidth spreading) gives better performance for small delay spread environments, while gathering more energy (narrow-bandwidth spreading) gives better performance for large delay spread environments. It is also shown that the performance difference between low and high order selection combining grows larger as the spreading bandwidth is increased. It is noted that performance degrades by increasing the bandwidth above a certain point and the optimum spreading bandwidth for each channel environment decreases as the delay spread of the channel increases.