by Anton Shilov
02/13/2003 | 09:37 AM
Every hardware enthusiast knows that it is blind easy to unlock multiplier of AMD Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” processor in case it is locked at all. But we managed to find probably the simplest way of unlocking the multiplier. In order to perform it you will need nothing but a piece of thin and small wire and five minutes of spare time.
As you know, there are L3 bridges on every Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” processor to determine the multiplier of the CPU. In case we lock the last bridge, we unlock the multiplier. But in order to lock it we have to do something with the microprocessor itself what may cause us to lose the warranty. Therefore, in order to remain the processor unmodified, we have to cope with our mainboards. We may either get a mainboard that unlocks multiplier automatically, but it is not easy, as there are very few such products on the market and all of them are based on the expensive nForce2 core-logic, or we may try to modify our existing mainboard somehow.
In order to “teach” your mainboard to unlock the multiplier, take a piece of wire and lock two contacts in the Socket as shown on the picture below and that is it!
Very easy, don’t you think?
Of course, you can lock together two processor’s pins or close together two socket's pins on the backside of your mainboard as shown over here to get the same result, but I personally think that our way to unlock the Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” chips is the simplest.
The only thing I should point out is that only 5x to 12.5x multipliers are available after such mod. Well, overclockers surely do not need more :)