too much risk for such a expensive processor, id be damned if the process damaged the processor that would few years worth of upgrade money down the drain for me :(
so in other words in terms of overclocking it will be a step backward...what's strange is, since the nm's are going down they can stack so much more on the cpu why can't they just add more cache and cores due to all the space saving?
try and see if the older one works better...if it does I'd suggest you wait for the next latest iteration of driver before experimenting to see if all the new drivers act in that way or not!