Why manipulate the voltage supplied to the CPU?
Current Athlon processors (except those from 900 – 1000 MHz) run at a core voltage of 1.6 volts. When you’re overclocking, however, you might run into a situation where a processor is almost stable at a given speed, but not quite. One thing you can try to increase stability is to slightly increase the core voltage of the processor. If you increase the voltage too much, however, there is a danger of causing permanent damage to the processor. Our recommendation is to increase the voltage no more than .2 volts, to 1.8 volts. Still, you do so at your own risk. AMD’s newer 900, 950 and 1000 MHz Athlons have a “stock” core voltage of 1.8 volts. Because these chips are manufactured using the same process as the lower speed chips, these newer Athlons are already near the upper end of the safe voltage range. For this reason, we would not recommend increasing the voltage of 900, 950 or 1000 MHz Athlons above “stock” levels.
