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AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Review 6 Weeks Before Release

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the chips-to-beat-up-your-neighbor dept.

Mathew Solnik writes: "Tom's Hardware has a review of the AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 6 weeks prior to its official release. This review shows how to unlock the multiplier on the AthlonXP and how to reach AthlonXP 2000+ speeds easily." Note that by doing so, you are voiding any warranty you may have started with, risk blowing up your eyeballs, etc; do proceed with caution.

5 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. the good toms hardware by NeoTomba · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Tom's Hardware has been getting a lot of bad press these days. Thier burning Athlon videos caused a lot of controversy, and regulars at some other tech sites (*cough* Anandtech *cough*) have a strong dislike for Tom's work.

    But this article just goes to show you why Tom's Hardware is the best hardware review site out there, just like it has always been. Over the years, Tom has written some of the best articles for hardware enthusiasts and has pushed "overclocking", a term which was once mysterious, into one of the big issues of modern computing. Motherboards are now being designed specifically for overclocking, and this has lead to huge increases in performance. Most people forget that Tom's Hardware has been one of the most influential sites as far as this is concerned.

    It's good to see what is undesputably the best current article on technology. I hope even those who hate Tom's Hardware will see the light. No other tech site has anywhere near the ability to do stuff like this.

    -NeoTomba

  2. Re:Just what we need... by dillon_rinker · · Score: 5, Funny

    And you call yourself a geek! It is obvious to the rest of us that both AMD and MS are trying to ride the coattails of D&D, where the goal is to accumulate as many XPs as possible. I've almost got enough to reach second level, which means more HPs and another spell. It's a good thing CDRs are so cheap these days...

  3. Very nice ... BUT by arminh1974 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now all that is quite an achievement, that they figured out all what's involved, but let's face it: Overclocking an Athlon XP 1900 to 2000 won't do anyone any good. That's like 2% more performance and at what kind of expense and risk? What would be informative and what wasn't provided would be if an Athlon XP 1500 (1.33GHz) can be rigged to reach 2000+ (1.66GHz) that way. It's all about how much headroom the CPU-core has and the price/performance overclocking provides.
    Tom's article shows that the Athlon XP clearly doesn't have a lot of it. We can expect the Palomino core to stick around the 2000-rating (1.66GHz) for a while ... at least until they go 0.13micron.

  4. Illegal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    This sort of circumvention is illegal under the DMCA.

    In addition, since it makes Ahtlons explode it can be construed as a terrorist act under the recent counter-terrorism act.

    In short, Tom will be shot at dawn.

  5. Be very careful if you do decide to overclock. by Anton+Anatopopov · · Score: 5, Interesting
    If I could give one piece of advice from personal experience, the pink thermal pad supplied with certain heatsinks is not adequate for the job. If you intend to overclock your cpu, scrape off all the pink crap, and use some proper thermal compound like arctic silver. Spread it very thinly, too much and it will act as an insulator.

    Also, bear in mind that not only will your warrenty be void, but some people have said you may be liable to penalties under the DMCA, since the clock multiplier lock is considered a form of 'encryption' and the increased processor speed gained by unlocking it can be seen as 'copyrighted software'.

    Quite how this can be the case is beyond me, surely the speed at which I run my software is down to me, but you never know with these DMCA issues. It can all get a bit surreal at times.