What is the purpose to have clock control?

Question

I am beginning to use SpeedFan. It has a function to automatic control clock with respect to the CPU temperature.

I was wondering if the clock control means to control cpu frequency?

What are the purposes to have clock control?

Especially when control it with respect to the CPU temperature what is its benefit? Is it that when the CPU is too hot, lowering the clock rate (CPU frequency) will slow down the working CPU and therefore make the CPU less likely to be overheated and therefore safe?

Are there other purposes to control clock rate?

Is it possible to accomplish this in Windows XP and Ubuntu by the OS alone?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You are correct. Lowering the CPU frequency will generally lower the core temperature, as well as using less power - for this reason, modern CPUs have core clocks and voltages that can be controlled through software. For the most part, this already happens automatically, depending on your OS settings.