What is overclocking?

[tycoonist]

I keep reading about overclocking and I don't know what it is. Can someone please tell me?

[dmoltrup]

In its simplest form, overclocking is making a computer processor run faster than it was intended. For example, if you have a PentiumIII running at 1.0GHz, you go into your BIOS and make it run a little bit faster.

To make it more complicated, overclocking produces a lot of heat. To effectively dissipate all of the added heat, you must add fans, heatsinks and the like. Basically, you have to add things to the processor that more efficiently and quickly, remove the heat from the computer.

You can overclock your CPU, RAM, Video Card, and in some rare instances, even overclock your hard drive.

Overclocking voids your warranty and speeds up the inevitable failure of your components, though. If you have a proprietary computer system, such as Compaq or Dell, it is nearly impossible to overclock the CPU. Many overclockers completely build their computer based on which motherboards and CPUs overclock the best.

[tycoonist]

Thanks for the reply.

[Harshu]

Well overclocking basically mean to increase the clock speed of the processor from the recommended. We do this by increasing the the FSB(Front Side Bus), Increasing the core voltage, Increasing the clock multiplyer etc. Here is the discription: -

Increasing FSB: - All the processor have a specific FSB. Celeron 66MHz, Celeron-II 100Mhz, P-II 66, and 100MHz(above 350MHz), P-III 100 & 133MHZ(The Coppermine series), PIV 400MHz(actually it is of 100MHz but due to its quad pipe it is multiplyed with 4 so 400MHz, Athlon 200MHz, Athlon T'bird 266MHz.
Now every mobo supports some higher FSB also for processor compatibilty. (you can plug Celeron(66MHz) and P-III(100MHz) on i440BX chipset. So a 350Mhz P-II haves 100MHz of FSB (3.5*100). Form BIOS or through jumpers we increase the FSB from 100MHz to 112MHz so there is a incease of 12% in the speed i.e. FSB of 12MHz is increased so now processor runs @ 394MHz.

Increasing Core Voltage: - We increase the voltage through jumpers so more voltage is supplied than recomended. So the speed is increased. But this is the most dangerous way to do OC it can create ashes.

By Clock Multiplyer: - A P-II 350MHz have a 100 of FSB and clock multiplyer of 3.5 so effective speed is 350Mhz now if we increase the clock multiplyer to 4 the speed will increase to 400MHz.

I think this will spread some light on OC. But word of caution it is very dangerous. It can ruin your Mobo or the processor. All other components in extreme cases. So without proper cooling(preferbly a ATX ful tower with atleast 2-3 fans) it is...........you can understand

Bye, Happy Computing.

[$1500-P4 gamer]

Everything here is correct I just want to add one side note.Many boards like my Asus p4t-e come with a quick overclock by chooseing desired end speed.Meaning on mine bios reads-auto,manual-undermanual it says 1500 through1650mhz.My proc. is a 1500mhz P4 but it increases in increaments of 103 105 108 110mhz for quick overclock.

A better question would be how do they know the clock speed to start with and what is stock rated speed anyhow?

Procs. of the same core are all made the same way with the same manufactureing tech.But due to unavoidable manufac. defects there is subtle dif. between any two chips.These dif. can result in a pretty significant clock speed change.So after the chip is produced they bech and stress test it bumping up the speed each time much like when we overclock.They go as high as they can till the chip creates errors.At this point they reduce the speed 10% for stability and long life of chip.I will say this though,a 10% underclocking by their terms is more like 15 or even 20% in some situations for us.By that I mena they are running some intensive tests at a high speed looking for the smallest of errors.Some of wich may not effet you in real life.

I think this is why Asus and many other brands offer a quick overclocking of up to 10% as this is really safe.Most graphic,sound cards and hdd can take the boost in pci bus up to 40mhz which is a 20% overclock.On the P4 with high multi this can result in huge overclocking with almost no risk what so ever.But as mentioned it takes a known good overclocking board and stable ram aswell as a temp. monitor so you can watch the heat pair that with a alarm and you are ready to go 10% with no probs. in almost any situation.Don't know about AMD though just speaking from what I know about Intels.Have a Duron 1gig. and havent messed with it yet,it's still 1gig.:D

[eazyt]

overclocking is useful as long as you r not gung ho .....me i work hard for my money and after some reaserch i buy the best my meager dollars can afford so i have to be safe.... i went with a 950 duron ,geforce 2 mx200 and a little outdated, msi k7t(via 133a chipset )this is the most powerful pc ive ever owned but i was let down because i could not afford a 1ghz processor so i over clock ....after rasing the fsb to 106 to achive 1 ghz.......my usb ports were Screwed and i knew this was beacuse of the increased bus cause when i turned it back down....it worked..

so i looked on the internet and pencilled out my chip and raised the multiplier to 10 (from 9.5 )this is what youd call mild overclocking but my system is rock stable and no need to go faster than ighz at the cost of the parts i dont wanna.... overclocking brings me joy....in the form of ONE THOUSAND MEGAHERTZ for about 110 dollars canadian (about 65 american $$)

[tycoonist]

Thanks for all your replies. I see that overclocking could greatly increase speed in my computer, but it does have its consequences (like many other things in the world). I might look into it one day. I'm not that computer literate, and I don't have any extra money to spend on my computer if I do something to it.