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The purpose of overclocking is to increase the operating speed of a given component. [3] Normally, on modern systems, the target of overclocking is increasing the performance of a major chip or subsystem, such as the main processor or graphics controller, but other components, such as system memory or system buses (generally on the motherboard), are commonly involved.
These adjustments provide the two common methods of overclocking and underclocking a computer, perhaps combined with some adjustment of CPU or memory voltages (changing oscillator crystals occurs only rarely); note that careless overclocking can cause damage to a CPU or other component due to overheating or even voltage breakdown.
Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calculated in software running on a generic CPU can also be calculated in custom-made hardware, or in some mix ...
Underclocking can also be performed on graphics card processor's GPUs, usually with the aim of reducing heat output. For instance, it is possible to set a GPU to run at lower clock rates when performing everyday tasks (e.g. internet browsing and word processing), thus allowing the card to operate at lower temperature and thus lower, quieter fan speeds.
Clock rates can sometimes be misleading since the amount of work different CPUs can do in one cycle varies. For example, superscalar processors can execute more than one instruction per cycle (on average), yet it is not uncommon for them to do "less" in a clock cycle. In addition, subscalar CPUs or use of parallelism can also affect the ...
Thus, GPUs can process far more pictures and graphical data per second than a traditional CPU. Migrating data into graphical form and then using the GPU to scan and analyze it can create a large speedup. GPGPU pipelines were developed at the beginning of the 21st century for graphics processing (e.g. for better shaders).
In applications where the computer is often heavily loaded, such as scientific computing, performance per watt (how much computing the CPU does per unit of energy) becomes more significant. CPUs typically use a significant portion of the power consumed by the computer .
Some BIOS implementations allow overclocking, an action in which the CPU is adjusted to a higher clock rate than its manufacturer rating for guaranteed capability. Overclocking may, however, seriously compromise system reliability in insufficiently cooled computers and generally shorten component lifespan.