[chucker]

Originally Posted by Banana That's what I thought. Now, does that mean overclocking is taking in a CPU spec'd for lower frequency and allowing it to run at higher frequency, which it had failed the test prior to sale? Or is there such thing as overclocking without going against manufacturer's recommendations?

Over- or underclocking is clocking a CPU irrespective of the manufacturer's recommendations.

Originally Posted by Eugene Just to get this straight. If Apple, a customer of Motorola, buys a CPU and then CLOCKS it at 25% OVER its stamped operating frequency, it's not overclocking?

Yes.

Dell knows exactly what it's doing by running Intel chips outside of their stamped clock frequencies.

E-fricking-xactly. They know what they are doing. That is the promise they make to you as a customer. They choose the components of the product they sell you.

When they sell you a laptop and its hard drive dies, that's their responsibility, even though they don't manufacture that hard drive. They have picked the drive; therefore, you as a customer couldn't care less who actually made it. By picking it, they implicitly approved of it.

When they sell you a machine and say its CPU is clocked at X, you as a customer couldn't care less that the CPU manufacturer said it's only recommended to be clocked at Y. When it doesn't run properly at X, that's Dell's and Apple's problem, not Intel's and Motorola's. Therefore, it is not overclocking, because it doesn't go over anything. That CPU manufacturer recommendation just plain frigging does not exist for you as a customer.

That is why people buy complete systems from companies like Apple and Dell to begin with: so that they don't have to deal with CPU manufacturers directly.