Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Paint Yourself An Athlon MP

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the conductive-paint-that-is dept.

SNIa asks: "How many people are checking the prices of AMD chips after seeing this?" and points out this article at HardwareZone.com about modifying Athlon XP processors to perform like MPs. No guarantees, except a voided warranty.

5 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Don't try this at home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have worked in AMD's R&D department for the last six years. I was pretty involved in development of the XP and MP series in particular. Let me make clear that modding XP chips to work as MPs is a bad idea and will most likely result in one or two cooked CPUs within a month.

    Yes, we know about the trace. We put it there to differentiate between the XP chips which contained our hacks to make it play nice in multiprocessing systems (aka the Athlon MP), and the chips not containing those hacks (aka the Athlon XP). Think of it like this: converting your car to diesel would give a great increase in fuel mileage, but it cannot be achieved by simply adding a "DIESEL FUEL ONLY" decal by the gas tank.

    I don't want to sound elitist and say "Leave the chip-mods to the pros", but sometimes chip mods have an amateurish feel to them. Please, don't wreck your systems. Leave the traces on the XP chips alone.

    (posting anonymously to protect my job)

    1. Re:Don't try this at home by tempmpi · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes, we know about the trace. We put it there to differentiate between the XP chips which contained our hacks to make it play nice in multiprocessing systems (aka the Athlon MP), and the chips not containing those hacks (aka the Athlon XP).

      AMD already said that the only difference between Athlon MP and XP is that the MP cpus passed the multiprocessor test. I think a chip mod like that is more like over clocking: AMD doesn't guarantee that it will work, but there is a good chance that it will work.
      How many Athlon MPs does AMD sell compared to the Athlon XPs ? 0.1% ? Many more cpus should pass the test and they will be sold as XP cpus.

      --
      Jan
  2. Good VIDEO and GUIDE for connecting the bridge... by Andorion · · Score: 5, Informative

    This could come in very useful when you're trying to MP-enable your chip.... or maybe you can unlock the multiplier and MP enable it at the same time? =) BWAHAHA.... Where else, but Tom's? =)

    -Berj

  3. How about Pep Boys or Track Auto? :-) by BLKMGK · · Score: 5, Informative

    Look for defroster repair paint. It'll be in a tiny bottle and is copper colored. It's got copper in it and is used to (duh) repair the copper defrogger lines on windows. It will work fine for this but it's pretty thin so be careful it doesn't run. Sometimes masking is a good idea but be careful that the "paint" doesn't wick under the tape. Just maybe use a toothpick to dab on the paint - you don't need much on there as it's a logic connection not something carrying amperage. In the past #2 lead pencils have been used for a removable solution. However this is much trickier IMO and is somthing I'd only try for test purposes.

    P.S. Yeah, there are actually places that sell conductive paint but they're usually not as common as an auto parts place. I'm not sure that RatShack actually carries this stuff but I guess it would be worth a shot...

    --
    Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
  4. Re:Perfornance Reports?? by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have a dual Tyan m/b with two XP chips in it. It runs hot, but it's been calculating SETI@Home more or less 200% of the time since it was installed, about 3 months ago. No problems, and I think it would have found them by now :-)

    Pretty soon it's going to be taken off SETI and put onto the real task, but I thought S@H would be a good reliability burn-in (not to mention adding 6-8 S@H units per day to my total :-)

    Simon

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!