regarding how to bench, not really sure, still evaluating this. Right now I don't experience clock drift up to 1000mhz cpu clock and all other clocks stock. it drifts at 1080mhz and up. will try 1040mhz next.
I am doing as suggested by pepe2k with sleep 60. I would say for now that if it doesn't drift, then it's ok.
Will post my findings later on.
Regarding not setting the MAC address what will happen ( it happened to me ) is that on every boot you will have random MAC addresses for all the four interfaces.