Steppings

What makes different stepping versions of a same model vary the chip's overclockness potential?

Is it the quality of materials used to fabricate the chip?

Each stepping is a different attempt to make the chip. Everytime they try, the design gets slightly changed.

Every manufacturing process has variables both in the materials used and in the process itself. For cpus - there will be very little difference in variation for cpus's on the same wafer (the variation in this instance will be on its position within the stepped image not on its location on the wafer) there will then be a greater variation on cpus from the same batch but different wafers and the greatest variation will be on a batch to batch basis this is where the date code on the stepping becomes most important

OC Detective said:

Every manufacturing process has variables both in the materials used and in the process itself. For cpus - there will be very little difference in variation for cpus's on the same wafer (the variation in this instance will be on its position within the stepped image not on its location on the wafer) there will then be a greater variation on cpus from the same batch but different wafers and the greatest variation will be on a batch to batch basis this is where the date code on the stepping becomes most important

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.....or what he said...

They are constantly tweaking the core to run faster. Each major tweak is a new stepping.

They are constantly tweaking the core to run faster. Each major tweak is a new stepping.