If the processor Vcore were increased to the 搉ormal?level of 1.35V, then it immediately acquired a better overclocking potential. However, the maximum result we managed to achieve in these conditions was also not that impressive. The CPU could work at 2.3GHz maximum without losing its stability.
Further Vcore increase to 1.5V allowed us to raise the CPU core frequency even higher. However, once again we have to admit that the overclocking potential of our Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Energy Efficient processor appeared far below our expectations. The maximum frequency we managed to get it working stably at ?was only 2.55GHz.
And this is the result we managed to obtain with 40% core voltage! Despite all our efforts, the clock frequency got only 27.5% higher.
This relatively scarce acceleration together with the results of our previous experiment destroys the opinion that Energy Efficient processors would be a great choice for overclockers. Both experiments described above show just the opposite: Energy Efficient processors overclocker not any better than their 搒tandard?counterparts. In other words, it doesn抰 make much sense to hunt for Energy Efficient CPUs if you intend to overclock them. Hitting extreme frequencies is not among their strengths, their advantage is of totally different sort: they can work at relatively high frequencies with lower core voltage, which eventually reduces their heat dissipation and power consumption.
The thing is that the differences between the families of processors with different thermal power lie in their maximum clock frequencies and Vcore. Moreover, if you recall the well-known linear dependence between the maximum CPU frequency and Vcore, everything will be absolutely clear right away. It is exactly the different Vcore that determines the maximum frequencies. Therefore, you shouldn抰 believe that since Energy Efficient processors have lower nominal voltage than the 搒tandard?ones, they will overclock better thanks to bigger range for Vcore increase. In reality if you raise the Vcore of the Energy Efficient processor to the level of the nominal Vcore of a regular one, you will simply be able to catch up with the frequency of the regular processor, but not overcome it.
This is where AMD processors are very much different from Intel ones. Intel CPUs comply with the rule that the processor with lower nominal Vcore overclocks better than the processor with higher nominal Vcore. And it is actually very easy to understand why so. By launching the same CPU model with different core voltages Intel pushes the core frequency parameters to the desired frequency by increasing the Vcore. So it is absolutely clear in this case, that if the CPU hits the desired frequency at a lower Vcore, then it will definitely overclock better. AMD uses the opposite approach: the Vcore gets lower together with the clock frequency just to reduce the heat dissipation. In this case, there is no way the frequency potential gets improved.
