E4300 - speed stepping AND overclocking

[sswats]

I'm bunging my E4300 system into a HTPC case.
At stock speeds should be more than capable of standard HTPC use and enabling speed stepping should help reduce the power a bit.

But if I want to play games and crank up the CPU, I'd have to go in the BIOS and readjust the settings to overclock.

First question is how much am i actually saving by using speed stepping?
Second question is can i enable the overclock and still use speed stepping considering I've only overclocked to 2.7 from 1.8

Its on a Gigabyte DS3P board if it makes a difference.

 

[pastymuncher]

Well at stock it drops the multiplier down to 6x and the speed drops to 1.2Ghz. I have one in my second pc and when idling it pulls 90w of power (the whole pc). When loaded it pulls 137w of power (again, the whole pc).

Just to give you an idea of the power draw the pc consist's of:-

Biostar TP35 D2-A7 P35 motherboard.
E4300
2Gb Patriot PC2 5300
ATI X1600XT
Seagate 7200.10 250Gb Sata2 hdd
Samsung 20x dvdrw
Zalman ZM-MFC2 multi function controller (also where i get the power draw readings from).

Speedfan will work when overclocked as well. I have it on in the rig in my siggy with no problems. No point having your pc running at full speed when idling.

I had a Gigabyte 965P DS3P and my E4300 clocked to 3.4Ghz in that. It does the same in my P35 board too.