Can anyone help me understand how to overclock my CPU? I don't know all the specs of my Processor but here's what I know

Intel Pentium 4 2.40GHz
System bus 534.55 MHz
Internal Clock 2405.46
System Clock 133.64
Multiplier 18.0

L1 T-Cache 12k u0ps
L1 D-Cache 8k Byte
L2 Cache 512 k
FSB Mode QDR

512MB Memory

Again, I have no idea what i'm doing.

What motherboard do you have? If it isn't a custom built pc(by a local shop etc), it probably won't have a motherboard that can oc.

It needs fsb adjustment above 133, an agp/pci lock(asynchronous agp/pci), memory adjustments, and voltage adjustment.

You can either look in your bios for those features, or post the motherboard model, and we'll try to find out for you.

Here's a program that can help id your board, if you need help.
http://www.lavalys.com.hk/products/everesthome.asp

It's a Bio-Star P4M266A-8235

Chipset Model VT8751
CPU Socket 478

I don't know what else you need to know...sorry.

before you try overclocking you need to understand that overclocking is the practice of running components at higher clock speeds than they were intended to run. if done right, it can yield significant performance gains with minimal cost to the user. if done wrong, overclocking can ruin parts and cause instability. you said you'v got no idea what you're doing, so if i was you i would think twice about trying overclocking without any prior knowledge. successful overclocking takes knowledge and experience.

with that out of the way...

your motherboard uses the via M266 chipset. this chipset uses the front side bus of your cpu (fsb) as a standard system speed. increasing your fsb to overclock will make your pci slots, agp slot, and hard drive interfaces run faster:

a modest 5% overclock of your cpu would make other critical parts of your computer overclocked too. the video card, pci cards, and hard drive interface would speed up as well. let's say your video card can take the extra speed (or your integrated one can too as it will also be sped up) and your increased pci clocks cause no problems. what's going to get you is the increased ata hard drive interface. ata interfaces are generally suspectible to faults whilst being overclocked. unlike when other components encounter errors (the machine will blue screen or reboot), the hard drive controller can and will actually write corrupted data to the disk. this can easily corrupt an entire hard drive and force you to reformat it to regain access. besides that, increasing the fsb will negatively effect your memory timings and reliability.

as you can see, overclocking would be a bad choice for you because you haven't the knowledge/experience and your motherboard will not yield satisfactory results. the only other way you can overclock, by changin the multiplier, is impossible because intel cpus have locked multiplier settings. the nforce motherboards, on the other hand, allow the fsb to be altered without effect on the other buses. the bottom line is: you haven't the chipset for it.

i hope this information helps you and all others who read it.

Thank you very much. You have prevented me from possibly harming my computer, and I thank you. Also, you have given me reason to learn more about the whole thing. Thanks again.

DOnt do it!

You better stick to your computer set-up. Speed or Lifespan

If you know what you're doing, you'd lock the FSB for the HDD (acronyms galore!)

I've got a question of my own: if you lock the FSB for everything but the CPU, will there be any speed gain? From what I understand, if you're getting the same amount of data processed from the RAM and graphics, increasing the CPU speed doesn't make much, if any difference.

Which would explain why my P4 2.4G @ 3.2G didn't give any 3dMark score increase.

alas, his chispet (and all via chipsets for that matter) do not allow said action. but as i said...

as for your own question...

your fsb, by default, operates at 200mhz. your ddr400, also by default, runs at a clock speed of 200mhz. ideally, the ram's clock speed should be kept equal with that of the cpu. if they operate at different speeds, suddenly your clocks don't "line up" so to speak and cause latencies and ultimately lowers your performance.

well, if you realised, I'm not using ddr400, comp is about 2 years old and at the time it wasn't worth the money.

But my question is still answered.