Processor Clock Speed

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I have a AMD1 gig processor with a new motherboard. The motherboard manufacturer’s driver disk had (what I thought at the time) a neat little utility to change/monitor the FS bus settings, clock speed, etc.

When first started, the utility showed the clock speed to be 720, I played with it until it was at around 900, then total system “freeze up”. From this point on, nothing would work, scandisk would hang at 2 percent, reboot and scandisk would hang at 15 percent. In the interest of my sanity, finally rebooted from startup disk, reloaded the motherboard drivers, reformatted the drive, and reinstalled Win98.

When going through the reboot procedure, the BIOS splash showed clock speed of 1120 mhz. My questions are these:

1) What is the difference between processor speed and clock speed, and
2) how do you get 1120mhz from a 1000mhz processor?

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1)The following is from “Whatis.com”:
In a computer, clock speed refers to the number of pulses per second generated by an oscillator that sets the tempo for the processor. Clock speed is usually measured in MHz (megahertz, or millions of pulses per second) or GHz (gigahertz, or billions of pulses per second). Today’s personal computers run at a clock speed in the hundreds of megahertz and some exceed one gigahertz. The clock speed is determined by a quartz-crystal circuit, similar to those used in radio communications equipment.

2)This is called “Overclocking” and one cam burn up their mother boad and/or processor. This is done manlly by increasing the voltage to make the processor run faster.

Also from Whatis.com:
Overclocking is resetting your computer so that the microprocessor runs faster than the manufacturer-specified speed (for example, setting an Intel 166 MHz (megahertz) microprocessor to run at 200 Mhz). Somewhat surprisingly, this is possible. However, it’s more likely to work with an Intel microprocessor than with those of other manufacturers because, according to Tom’s Hardware Guide, Intel labels the speed of its microprocessors more conservatively.
Factors that favor your ability to successfully “upgrade by resetting” include (in addition to having an Intel microprocessor): having a well-designed motherboard with a fast enough bus and having a fan or other cooling device that will keep your system cool enough.

The procedure for “overclocking” depends on your combination of factors. The first and most commonly applicable step is to reset your computer’s bus speed. The microprocessor is often able to adjust successfully to a slightly higher bus speed. Resetting the bus speed may require resetting jumpers inside your computer. In newer systems with SoftMenu BIOS, the bus speed can be set through your system setup interface.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Thanks Dave, now back at 1 Ghz.

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