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I'm sorry if this quastion is a bit of "not so smart", but there is not enough resource on google regarding what exacally is controlling the cpu speed and what is the part that enables overclock. At first I thought it's the bios, but then how can tools like XTU overclock without managing bios, and there is people overclock through editing the kernel; so I'm really confused.

james
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In a PC, there is a crystal oscillator that keeps extremely accurate time -- at just a single frequency. That frequency is then changed for use by the CPU, RAM and other parts, to synchronize action. There are two ways the clock speed can be changed:

  • There is a phase-locked loop (PLL) that divides the frequency of the oscillator to set the bus frequency. This can be set from flash memory used by BIOS, allowing speed to be changed at reboot.
  • There are one or more PLL's on the CPU to control processing speeds. These can be set in real-time by the CPU, so that when it is under load, it can increase the clock frequency, or slow it to save energy.
DrMoishe Pippik
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