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From: RnR on 1 Feb 2010 07:59
On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:58:53 -0600, "William R. Walsh"
<newsgroups1(a)idontwantjunqueemail.walshcomptech.com> wrote:

>Hi!
>
>> To my knowledge Dell's cpu is an altered retail version and nothing I
>> ever read over the years said it was clockable.
>
>That's true of *any* late model Intel CPU, as used by Dell or otherwise. The
>multiplier is locked, and there goes your fun. It's been that way since the
>Pentium III. Dell doesn't get any special processors that you couldn't get
>yourself. Only pre-release and "development" processors from Intel have
>unlocked multipliers.
>
>What you can do to get around this is to crank up the FSB speed. That
>involves programming the clock generator to multiply its base clock at a
>different (usually higher) rate. This tends to increase the pace of
>everything in the system, from the bus, memory and the unmultiplied base
>clock of the microprocessor.
>
>If you can get enough information about the clock generator in use to
>program it, it doesn't matter what options the BIOS offers (or doesn't). You
>can try programming it to speed things up, thereby overclocking "on the
>fly". SpeedFan supports programming some clock generators (mostly to
>downclock and therefore save power when the PC is idle). Other software can
>also do this.
>
>Since not everything will run acceptably when running at an increased speed,
>it is sometimes needed to crank up the voltages (for memory, as an example),
>add wait states or change the clock ratio of the PCI bus to the base clock
>so there is more "wait time" per cycle.
>
>> Second, I hope you are right on "not that easy to kill". I feel for
>> bad for this neighbor but sometimes the hard lessons do teach us
>> well.
>
>They're not that easy to kill in most cases. Pushing the clock rate up too
>far can crash the system, but it shouldn't break anything permanently. It's
>playing with the core voltages that can cause problems if the BIOS setup
>utility (or other control software) will allow them to set to insane values.
>That is what burns hardware when overclocking goes wrong.
>
>Sounds like they got it working again anyway, so good for them. Hopefully
>they will be a bit more conservative if they elect to continue.
>
>William
>


Thanks William. A quick Google checked confirmed what you said. I
guess I'm not up to speed on overclocking. I did it many years ago
but have no interest to do it again nowadays.

Appreciate the education.
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