Things like your graphics card, CPU, etc run at a cetain "clockspeed". The default speeds are usually set a bit lower than they can safely run due to various reasons.
1)One of the pimary reasons for a "lower" default clock speed is manufactures have no control over what kind of enviorment they are installed in. So, they set it lower to play it safe if it's installed in a sys that has less then adequate cooling.
So, If you have good cooling in your sys, you can usually take advantage of the clockspeed head room and raise it higher to get better perforrmance.
2)A little secrete of CPUs is two different clockspeed CPUs may be cut from the same wafer.
An example: The only difference in CPU "A" that is sold to run at 900mhz an and CPU "B" that is sold to run at 1200 mhz is that the latter is guaranteed to run at 1200mhz. In fact, CPU "A" may very well also run at 1200mhz as they are cut from the same waffer.
You can Obverclock everthing including your MOBO clock gernerator chip (FSB), RAM etc to get a "free" performance boost.
If you wish to get into oveclocking, I would suggerst you read up on it thourghly. Every componet is different an must be treated as such.
For example, if you want to overclock CPU "A", do a google search on "overclocking CPU A" to get more info on others experiences in overclocking it and that particular hardware's limit , etc.
When you overclock, do only one component a time and overclock in small steps until you find the highest stable clockspeed that you are comfoftable with.
I just tried to cover the basics here and as I stated, do some more research before overclocking.
I overclock everthing and have been for years with no ill effects.
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