Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse. Software said: ``You are Yin and I am Yang. If we travel together we will become famous and earn vast sums of money.'' And so the set forth together, thinking to conquer the world.
Presently they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags and hobbled along propped on a thorny stick. Firmware said to them: ``The Tao lies beyond Yin and Yang. It is silent and still as a pool of water. It does not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence. It does not seek fortune, for it is complete within itself. It exists beyond space and time.''
Software and Hardware, ashamed, returned to their homes.
Indeed overclocking many products is dangerous for a given firmware set.
It is also true that most manufacturers lock their products to a given speed, using some hardware, software and firmware techniques. They at least attempt to lock them.
The AMD athlon cpu can be overclocked by using a pencil to connect broken circuit lines... the Barton CPU can be converted from XP to MP using the same trick... Classic Pentium II cpus needed a resistor modification to enable overclocking.. some even enabled extra cache.
What is the relevance... Many hardware makers cut cost by making one product, then reducing its speed. Intel does this. I remember in the days of 486 CPu's when many 33Mhz cpus were actually 66Mhz cpus... Intel had labled them as 33Mhz to meet demand.
I know for a fact that many CDRW makers use the same trick... the hardware is physically possible of doing higher than rated speed, it is the firmware that can "unlock these hidden secrets".
That being said Firmware updates can either increase a deveice performance and stability, increase its raw speed, or down right destroy it.
On that note:
My sound blaster live PCI sound card has "features" that allow me to control the volume of the card using 2 push bottons.
It is pure hardware means... they do not provide the points of connection, but the circuit board is the same as for the more expensive SBlive cards. So all it takes is for me to solder the points together and I have a FULL feautured SBlive.
There are a few firmware patches/updates linux coders have built for many hardware devices, incluing CDRW's that allow said hardware to "give a little more".
As for software... I do not give much credenence to software overclocking any piece of hadware... it is... against my religion
But overclocking hardware without the requisit Firmware checks, modifications and/or updates is SERIOUSLY DANGEROUS.
--regards
Gillion
P.S. Most Mother board BIOS programs contain hidden settings that given the right "hacking tools" you can modify your original bios file and reflash it.