Clocking, What is it?

[ComputerGeek101]

Please don't make fun of me but what is clocking? thanks

 

[FatBurger]

You mean like when you hit somebody?

But seriously, in which way do you mean? As in over/underclocking?

<font color=blue>If you don't buy Windows, then the terrorists have already won!</font color=blue> - Microsoft

 

[tnadrev]

i think you are confused a bit...
the term clocking is not used, however if it were to mean something, i would say that it would mean setting the frequency (or clock speed) of a CPU

the terms that you have probably seen, underclocking/overclocking refer to decreasing and increasing the CPU freqeuncy respectively. This can be acheived in two ways,
FSB-
the system's FSB (or system bus) is basically the interface between the processor and the core logic (chipsets, etc) The FSB on most newer systems can be adjusted from your system BIOS without even opening your case,
here is an example, if you had a Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47 GHz), its FSB runs at 133 Mhz, with multiplier of 11, for 133 X 11 = 1.47 GHz, if you increase the speed of the FSB, say to 140 Mhz, the clock speed of the CPU becomes (140 * 11 =) 1.54 GHz (around an 1800+) another benefit (or drawback) of this is that, typically you increase the speed of your memory as well, and other components, which can give more performance (in addition to the higher CPU speed) but can also cause stability problems with parts not running to their specifications.
These

Multiplier,
the multiplier on cpus can be changed, (not any intel cpus) often the CPU must be "unlocked" to allow the multiplier to be changed (also done through the BIOS) the benefit of this is that this does not stress the other components in your system by running them out of spec.


There is much more to running your system "out of spec" than this, but i tried to give a "heads up"

Engineering is the science of making life simple, by making it more complicated.