Most Efficient 8120 Overclock (my results)

In these hot summer months It seems to be a good idea to sacricifce a little performance for comfort, having a 60c heater in your 30c room is not pleasant. So I set out to prioritize my overclock for efficency and here are my results for anyone who is in a similar situation. 

I used AIDA64 Extreme edition and ran all the benchmarks (with a few exeptions) at full overclock, [email protected]. Then I set it to stock 3.1ghz@Auto (1.1875v I believe) ran the same benchmarks. I added each set of scores together to form 1 mega aida score. Compared them and noticed a 14% score increace. I then set out to check every 100mhz in between. The results of coarse were non-linear so evey tenth counts, it sucked...

From 3.1ghz, 3.2 gave me a 2% increace, 3.3=4%, 3.4=6%, 3.5=7%, 3.6=8%, 3.7=9%, 3.8=10%, 3.9=10.9%, 4.0=11.7%, 4.1=12.2%, [email protected]=12.6%, [email protected]=13.1%, [email protected]=13.5%, [email protected]=14%.(yes I tried 4.5ghz at mulitple voltages at this point). 

So the first 900mhz gave me an extra 11.7% with no voltage increace and the last 500mhz only boosts me an extra 2.3% and sent temps way up. These results made my desicion clear as day. So then I ran the stability test and failed. It passed the benchmarks at [email protected] but it wasn't stable till I gave it 1.2375v making 3.9ghz more appealing, but after 3 hrs in AIDA64 stability test it said 40c and as im typing this my cpu is 21c so says software and thats exact ambient temp so I'm happy for now, unilt its -40c out... But when that happens I'll make a heat your room with bulldozer overclock.

And for anyone who Is interested in overclocking but hasn't done it yet here is the best bulldozer guide I have found. 

 

 

I've been able to OC my 8120 to 4Ghz with no voltage changes for the better part of a year. Have a fairly simple, elbiet large heatsink/fan to it but it runs fine, and not too hot (maybe 45c?). Even when doing HD video encoding for 6+ hours on end using 98% of the cpu. I've really been impressed with how much you can OC these chips, I remember old athlons not being able to go up more than a couple hundren Mhz without crying and hanging on you.