On tonight's show, we'll show you how to overclock your processor. What is overclocking? If a processor is rated to run at 1 GHz, the manufacturer has rated it as reliable when running at that speed. Many processors, however, can run faster than their rated speed. For example, if you bought a 1-GHz processor, you may be able to run it at 1.3 GHz. When you are running it faster than its rated speed, you have overclocked the processor.

The tradeoff? Push a chip too far, and you might lose some reliability. That could mean a system that won't reboot till you turn the settings back down, that will only run for short periods of time before crashing, or that randomly crashes.

To overclock, you need a motherboard that you can change the settings on. While there are two settings that govern processor speed, you can generally only change the front side bus speed:

1. The bus speed
   This is the internal speed of the motherboard. For example, you can often set a normal 66-MHz PCI bus to run at 75 MHz, 83 MHz, or even 100 MHz. Some mobos with a 133-MHz bus can run at 150 MHz or more -- if they don't crash first.
   
2. The multiplier
   The processor speed is a multiple of the bus speed, so the multiplier determines how fast the processor runs. For instance, a 200-MHz processor is three times faster than the 66-MHz bus, so its multiplier is 3X. If you make it 3.5X or 4X, then the processor is going to run that much faster. Every processor we know of today ships "clock locked." That means if you change this setting on the motherboard, the chip will refuse to run.

If you have a machine built by a major manufacturer such as Dell, Gateway, or HP, you won't be able to change the speeds on the motherboard. You'll need to buy a new motherboard to overclock the chip. Otherwise, you can look to the manual for your motherboard. With luck, you'll be able to adjust the settings in the BIOS. You might have to fiddle with jumper pins down on the motherboard. (Get the manual for your motherboard, a flashlight, and a pair of hemostats.)

If your motherboard allows you to change bus speed, then you can probably clock the chip up faster. You might only gain a small bit. Overclockers.com's CPU Database lists processors and the speeds different folks have ramped 'em up to. It's an outstanding guide to how well your processor will respond to overclocking.

Remember, just because you can tweak the settings doesn't guarantee that the chip will actually run at that higher speed.

Click here to learn more about overclocking.