Any disadvantage to have wide speed step range?

[hardware_failure]

So I got back around to playing with a combo I got from Newegg like a year ago (G3258 + GA B85M-Gaming 3)

I noticed I can set the base frequency as low as 8 (x100 = 800MHz) and the turbo up to 40 (well even higher, but an even 4ghz is fine)

I noticed that it actually works. When idle the machine sits at 800MHz (and at a much lower voltage) and while stress testing its stable at 4GHz. When doing random tasks its bounces all around as needed.

Is there any disadvantage to this?

Thanks.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Power saving features can impact performance, yes. Here's an example with SSDs:

Results: Read/Write Throughput - Does Power-Saving Technology Kill SSD Performance?

Though it can affect other areas of system performance as well.

The question you have to ask yourself is that is the power savings, heat reduction and system longevity more important than absolute best performance by running the machine at full tilt 24/7.

 

[hardware_failure]

Thanks for the reply. The only time I would need "absolute best performance" would be when the cpu is at max turbo anyway, so I will leave it.