Calculate your PC speed

What you'll need:

An open computer case and your motherboard manual is all you'll really need to try it, but more efficient cooling may be useful as well. Of course, your motherboard needs to support the bus speeds you plan to use and the multiplier you plan to use. Your motherboard manual should tell you whether or not it supports certain bus speeds and certain multipliers. If the exact CPU speed using a particular multiplier and bus speed isn't listed, don't worry. If you have the proper multiplier and bus speed in your manual, then you should be okay.



How to calculate your desired speed:

* First consider your default speed. For simplicity, lets say it's 1 GHz. If this is an Athlon processor, it would most likely be running at the 133 MHz bus speed with a multiplier of 7.5 (100x7.5 = 1000 MHz = 1 GHz) or at the 100 MHz bus speed and multiplier of 10 (10x100 = 1000). Let's use the latter instance as an example - 100 MHz bus and 10 multiplier.
* If you wanted to run at around 1.2 GHz you could increase the multiplier to 12 and leave the bus speed alone (100x12 = 1200). *Please note* most of today's CPUs prevent you from changing the multiplier and only allow you to change the bus speed! The step below explains how to do this.
* If you wanted to increase the bus speed and the motherboard supported the higher MHz bus speeds, you could do something like 10x120 for 1200 MHz. Calculate your new speed by multiplying the bus speed by your CPU's multiplier.
* You could also try increasing both the bus speed and multiplier. An example would be increasing the multiplier to 11 and bus speed to 110 MHz for just over 1.2 GHz (11x110 = 1210 MHz).



How to SET this speed:

* In your motherboard manual, find the jumper settings for the particular bus speed and multiplier you want to use. Locate those jumpers on your motherboard and change them to fit the jumper settings in the manual. If it says "closed" for a jumper, then you need to have the little "shunt" placed over the two pins for that jumper which "closes" the connection. If it says "open" you may need to pull off the shunt.
* If your motherboard has a "SoftMenu," then you can change your bus speed and / or multiplier in the computer's BIOS. Usually you will have to press F1 or Del to enter your BIOS while your computer is starting up. Try to locate the CPU speed settings and rotate through the available bus speeds until you find the one you are wanting to try.
* Some motherboards will have both jumpers and a SoftMenu and you can use either one. Others have a combination and you may need to change the bus speed on the motherboard with jumpers, and change the multiplier in the BIOS. That's all there is to it!