What is exactly "overclocking"?

What does it do?

What are the advantages of overclocking?

Overclocking is the art (science?) of increasing the core clock of a component of your PC to run faster than originally intended. You can overclock your CPU, GPU, and depending on your knowledge you can increase your RAM speed, and change it timings. All of these actions are meant to increase the productivity of the component. When you do overclock there are many things to take into account.

1st Heat: Overclocking creates extra heat. This means that you’re going to have to supply a better cooling solution. Using heatsinks from Zalman, and Artic Silver 5 thermal paste will produce the best results. Also when overclocking the CPU you must add core voltage. This will create more heat for the Northbridge as well. Boards such as higher level ASUS, Gigabyte, Abit, and DFI have copper heatsinks on the NBridge so replacing it isn't necessary. However on the mid and lower boards replacement cooling is necessary. I suggest a Zalman ZMNB-45J for this.

2nd Stability: You can clock as much as you want, however can you do it stabaly? You’re RAM, and core voltage is going to have to be able to support the core clock. I found this out when trying to hit 4Ghz+ My cooling and vCore could hold the clock, but my RAM was too slow, and the timings too tight to be able to hit 4Ghz. In changing my RAM I was able to hit the desired clock. Same applies to GPU. You have to remember to increase your RAM speed when you increase your core speed. Now it’s harder to modify the vCore on a GPU, so you aren’t going to be able to hit 1 GHz on a GPU, but clocks of 800 MHz have been achieved on 7800GTs and X1800s. Newer and older cards can do this too.

3rd warranty: If you do any clocking at all, and fry a part, there is no saving you. Manufactures will not accept a return (with the exception of eVGA), so if you do it, do it in small increments so that you can monitor the change and adjust accordingly. Now the hardware will usually have a safeguard built into it, so if it’s overstressed it will shut down, but be warned it may never fully recover.

Now there is also a whole new tier of overclocking, and that is unlocking the multiplier. This is done automatically on AMD, and can be done on Intel. What this will allow you to do is multiply the core clock more than normal. Thus achieving the highest clock available, however hitting the peak clock of a processor is usually imposable, and is best not shot for.

There is also BIOS flashing for GPUs. This basically unlocks the remaining pixel pipelines on the card, and adds pixel shaders. It will also up your clock. BE WARNED! BIOS flashing is very dangerous. If you fail you WILL fry your card. I was able to take my X800 Pro and make it an X800XL (because they both use the R420 core) however I can not make it a X850XL.

There is a basic video tutorial in my sig.

Cheers
Cameron