Overclocking is a well-known way of increasing the processor's speed for free. However, there are drawbacks: Overclocked processors tend to die quite easily. A way of increasing speed without running the risk of killing the CPU is underclocking. Instead of increasing the external frequency and/or the multiplier, only the external frequency is increased while the multiplier is decreased to keep the CPU from exceeding the maximum safe frequency. The internal frequency will in most cases decrease, but the increased external frequency will mostly make up for this. My underclocking from 233 to 255 MHz of a K6 hasn't shown any decrease of the performance at all. Since I only have got a K6 to test underclocking with, I'm not sure how well underclocking works with other processors. My guess is that PII and Cyrix processors are harder to underclock than others (since Cyrix and already use high external frequencies, and Pentium II's level 2 cache is on-chip and uses the internal frequency).

There is one problem with underclocking: Some older video cards, IDE controllers etc. might be unable to operate correctly at high external frequencies. Everything should work with an external freqency of 75 MHz, though.

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