Clarkdale Efficiency: The Perfect Clock Rate For Intel's Core i5-661

Overclocking BCLK To 156 And 160 MHz

156 MHz BCLK: 3.9 GHz Nominal Clock

A 156 MHz base clock means a 3.9 GHz nominal clock (25x multiplier) and 1,400 MHz idle clock speed.

If two cores are under heavy load, Turbo Boost offers a speed bump to 4.06 GHz.

With only one core in play, we’re now hitting 4.21 GHz.

160 MHz BCLK: 4.0 GHz Nominal Clock

The next stop is a 160 MHz base clock. Multiplied by the default 25x ratio, we now get a 4.0 GHz nominal speed.

With Turbo Boost applied to both cores, this results in 4.16 GHz.

And if a single core is sufficient to handle a comprehensive workload, the system will add two 160 MHz speed increments and reach 4.32 GHz. We had to increase the BIOS voltage by 0.135V to get here. Let's see how the increase affects overall efficiency.