Interesting things you can do with a pencil
Mar 17 '01
The Bottom Line The ability to break a clock multiplier so easily is an overclockers dream. Having the ability to tweak clock multiplier and FSB give maximum flexibility in overclocking.
As discussed by myself and others in various processor reviews on overclocking CPUs, overclocking is the process of running a processor at a speed greater then rated by the manufacture.
Two ways to overclock a CPU
Since a CPU speed is determined by a combination of the Front Side Bus speed (of the motherboard) and the CPUs internal clock multiplier, there are two ways you can overclock a processor. Increase the Front Side Bus speed, and/or change the clock multiplier. While Intel products have locked clock multipliers that are generally considered unbreakable (leaving only Front Side Bus overclocking for Intel owners), whereas AMD owners can change the Front Side Bus speed (with KT133A or 760 chipset motherboards only) as well as clock multipliers.
What's this about a pencil?
OK, I am finally going to get to the point. Reviewing Front Side Bus overclocking and the preferred motherboards to use are beyond the scope of this article. In order to do the pencil trick, your motherboard must support selectable clock multipliers via BIOS control or dip switches. If you are in the market for a new motherboard and processor, I would highly recommend either the ABIT KT7A, or the Asus AV7133. (Both KT133A chipset motherboards that use standard SDRAM, allow clock multiplier selectability, and are stable at high bus speeds).
That having been said, here is what the pencil trick is all about. There are a series of contact points at the base of Athlon Thunderbird and Duron processors. The areas of particular interest are the L1 and L7 bridges. (They are labeled. For an article with pictures on the process, see http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q3/000711/index.html ) By using an ordinary mechanical pencil to draw lines between contact points (The graphite in the pencil "lead" conducts electricity) as detailed in the article on Tomshardware, you can actually change the clock multiplier and CPU voltage of your Athlon or Duron.
By changing the clock multiplier, and using good cooling, you can run your Athlon far above spec speed. Although results vary widely, people have been running TBirds as fast as 1.5GHz with air cooling. Given the architectual advantages of the Thunderbird processor over the Intel product line, these overclocker Thunderbirds are the fastest PCs available today.
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