The Overclocking Basics

Quite simply, overclocking is changing the settings on your hardware to make it run faster than the manufacturer intended. All hardware has a certain margin of speed that it was designed to run in. Therefore, overclocking pushes the hardware past its limits. For this reason, you can sometimes run into problems.
Many parts of the system can be overclocked, but the processor is the most common. Most think that it is designed to run at one speed and that it can't change. But, this isn't really true. Processors are designed to run at different speeds, just like your other hardware. This way, it can work with a variety of systems. Besides, chips are often labeled slightly lower than their actual speed so that the manufacturer can guarantee it will work at that speed.

The actual speed of the processor is controlled by jumper settings on the motherboard. These jumpers control the bus speed and the processor speed. The reason this is built into motherboards is so one board can operate a number of different processors. Many like to overclock the bus speed, which is basically overclocking the chipset and cards.

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