Operating a Chip at higher clock speed than its rated clock speed is called Overclocking. CPU Clock speed is the product of FSB (Front Side Bus) Clock and clock multiplier. Overclocking is achieved by either increasing FSB Clock or Clock multiplier or either by increasing both.
Need of Overclocking
The idea behind the use of Overclocking concept is to increase the system performance at no cost or very little cost. We can Overclock a processor by just changing some settings on motherboard or in CMOS setup. The main considerable point in Overclocking is heat. Processor can only be overclocked if and only if proper cooling is there. E.g. Pentium 4 @2.0 GHz Processor can be overclocked to gain 2.2 GHz Clock speed.
Is it Risky?