Can't you just overclock your 2.0 macbook?

[gnasher729]

Given that Intel produces millions if not tens or hundreds of millions of processor a year, they certainly would not have the time or capacity to test each chip individually. Therefore, it would be impossible to "rate" their clock speeds based on individual testing or quality control, which could take a long time to produce conclusive results.

intel does "impossible" things quite well. I don't think you thought this through. When you buy a MacBook with a 2 GHz processor, Intel _has_ thoroughly tested this chip and has made hundred percent sure that it will work at 2 GHz. Every single Intel chip in a Macintosh (or Dell, or HP or any computer) has been tested by Intel and is guaranteed to work at its rated speed.

What they _don't_ do is to check exactly what is the maximum speed for each chip, if say Apple orders one million at 2.4 GHz and one million at 2.0 GHz, then Intel will be testing _all_ chips for 2.4 GHz speed until they have a million that work (and the ones that failed will be tested again at 2.0 GHz, and they definitely don't work at 2.0 GHz), and once they have all the chips they need at the higher speed, the rest is only tested at the lower speed (so there may be chips that will actually work at 2.4 GHz among them).

The plant building the chips costs billions of dollars. The equipment that automatically tests each chip for its speed costs "only" tens of millions. There is no Intel processor that goes untested.