Overclocking occurs when you run your computer's processor at a higher speed than recommended by a hardware technician. To take an example, Samantha, if you have a Pentium III 233, overclocking might mean running it at 266 MHz, making the processor work faster and increasing the speed at which your computer performs its many functions.
This is done to improve performance without spending a lot of money on a higher range processor. However, experts maintain that overclocking can only cause a 5 to 15 per cent improvement in performance, and maybe marginally more with the right components. So, don't expect your processor to double the speed at which it works.
Overclocking, if not done properly, can also be hazardous, because when you run your processor at a higher speed, more electricity flows through the chip. This causes the CPU to get hot quickly and act erratically, resulting in error messages, program crashes and random rebooting. When Bubbles, my pet parrot, tried it, his PC refused to boot for a week.
WEB RESOURCES:
If you want to try speeding up your computer, check this article serves as a guide to overclocking various motherboards and Pentium processors. For Celeron processors check Overclocking Mendocino, while this page has information on Athlon overclocking.
Once you have finished overclocking your PC, try running a benchmarking program such as Wintune before and after, to find the extent to which performance has been improved.
ADDITIONAL LINKS:
Overclocker Café |
Overclockers.com |
Overclockers Intelligence Agency |
Duckman's Wild Page
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