# What is it?



## kakashi_12 (Oct 16, 2009)

What is overclocking exactly? I've had many people explain it to me and I STILL don't get it. One person even drew a picture for me. I don't understand how a cpu clocks and how it overclocks. I mean I know that it means that it's working harder than it's suppose to, kind of like putting NOS in a car. But how exactly does it work?


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## Phædrus241 (Mar 28, 2009)

In the simplest terms, it's taking a component and making it work faster than it was designed to. The faster it is, the more performance you get from it (overclocking a CPU might give you a better framerate in games, shorter load times, and make programs like AutoCAD and video editing software work faster).


If you want the technical aspect... How technical do you want? Do you want to get down to the level of what exactly a clock cycle is and how it's generated? Or do you just want to accept that clock speed can be used as an arbitrary measurement of how fast a component is?


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## kakashi_12 (Oct 16, 2009)

ya, in technical terms. Lik you said, what a clock cycle is and how it is generated.


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overclocking

OC'ing also voids warranties.


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## aje00325 (Oct 15, 2009)

Valuable information.


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