What is Overclocking?

[Wayne]

I've read this term many times on this forum and I was curious as to what exactly it is and how it works. I have a TNT2 Riva and in the VGA conrols it alows me to grab extra RAM for the display. Is this the same thing?

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Blessed be the Lord my strength who teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight.

[DEF BUNGIS]

Wayne, no it's not.

There is a specific amount of voltage that proccessors uses. Weather it's a CPU or video card proccessor.

When you increase that voltage, the proccessor in turn, speeds up. This is overclocking.

You can overclock with software programs, tweak programs, and by physically changing jumper settings on your hardware.

The problem with overclocking is it causes tremendous heat to develop on the proccessor chip it's self. It can also lead to an unstable system. So if your gonna overclock something, do it in moderation.

Right now, I am overclocking my video card from 120MHZ, to 130MHZ. That is a good example. If you really want to do serious overclocking, it's recommended you get a better cooling fan for the chip you plan to overclock.

[Wayne]

Thanks for the info. Looks like something I'll stay away from.

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Blessed be the Lord my strength who teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight.

[Bertram]

If you get adventurous and decide to try it you might want to read the overclocking guide posted on Sharky Extreme. (www.sharkyextreme.com).

Bertram

[stevako18]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by DEF BUNGIS:

Wayne, no it's not.

There is a specific amount of voltage that proccessors uses. Weather it's a CPU or video card proccessor.

When you increase that voltage, the proccessor in turn, speeds up. This is overclocking.

You can overclock with software programs, tweak programs, and by physically changing jumper settings on your hardware.

The problem with overclocking is it causes tremendous heat to develop on the proccessor chip it's self. It can also lead to an unstable system. So if your gonna overclock something, do it in moderation.

Right now, I am overclocking my video card from 120MHZ, to 130MHZ. That is a good example. If you really want to do serious overclocking, it's recommended you get a better cooling fan for the chip you plan to overclock.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Technicaly, that is not accurate. Overclocking is increasing either the bus speed of your system, or the cpu chip itself.(on video cards you can change the memory speed, and the clock speed of the chip) Increasing the voltage to the chip is often the only way you can get the faster, overclocked chip to run stable at the faster settings. To my knowledge, simply increasing voltage will only make your chip run hotter not faster.