It can but IMHO the risk is low. The issue is that as the feature size in processors got smaller and smaller you start getting "friction" (for lack of a better word) of the electrical current. This can indeed erode the pathways in the chip and can lead to degradation.
However most of Intel's chips are made to last for 10 years under normal use. Even if that is cut in half, most of us don't use a chip more than a few years. And you also have to take into account the manufacturing methods. Intel (and AMD) doesn't actually make hundreds of different chips for all the different speeds of each type. They usually make one of each type and then sell it at different prices and different speeds because that is what the market wants. Sometimes they test the chips and the ones that meet (or exceed) the manufacturing spec get clock higher while the others get clocked slower. But sometimes the market demand for the lower end chips is so high they have to sell chips that could run faster at lower speeds. The only issue I have ever run into after 12 years of overclocking CPUs is stability. Sometimes you can bump the CPU voltage to offset this but that leads to more heat and more power usage. I have seen degradation of a chip after a long period of overclocking, most notable with my venerable Celeron 333 chip which I ran at 800 Mhz for almost a year. After a while it got more and more unstable and I had to bump the speed back down, first to 500 and then back to 333. The chip didn't explode or fry, just lost its ability to overclock. Bottom line, the only danger in overclocking is heat and instability. With the former you just get a bigger heatsink and with the latter you test the system and only run it at the speed/instability level you are comfortable with. -- Brian Weeden On 11/8/07, Rick Glazier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I was under the impression that over-clocking erroded the > electronics at a microscopic level... (A "hidden cost" so to speak...) > > Rick Glazier > > From: "Winterlight" > > I am surprised that anybody is still screwing around with > > overclocking considering the the price and power of modern > > processors. >
