Q6600 "Tape Mod," does it make a difference?

[lytalbayre]

So I was reading about people modding their Q6600 to run at default bus speed of 1333mhz by putting a small piece of tape over one of the pin contacts.

Other than oc'ing on boards that don't support oc'ing well, is there a reason to want to do this over simply upping the bus speed manually in the bios?

Does it unlock anything on the chip to make in process faster or anything like that?

Thanks.

 

[Ika]

If you have a capable motherboard, it's probably a much better idea just to OC the usual way.

 

[Idontcare]

Is this like the BSEL mod folks do on server boards with XEONs?

If it is then no you aren't going to gain anything doing it versus manually setting your BIOS to 1333 FSB...but if you have an Intel board that doesn't allow FSB manual settings then this gives you an angle to overclock.

2 paths, same destination.

 

[DSF]

My understanding is that it's usually done when BIOS overclocking isn't an option. Most Intel boards, big-brand computers like Dells, etc.

 

[olmer]

I think tape mod is inferior to the pin one ? search extremeoc forums for an explanation. Pin mods do help to overclock higher on crappy boards/at all on non-overclockable proprietary ones. I use foil instead of a pen and it works just fine. As with any pin/volt mods you are risking much more than just overclocking via bios in case you mess it up. Non pin cpus will make you fiddle with foil for up to half an hour (or that is just my fingers?) ? it was so much easier to simply short two slots with a piece of wire on pms. Just before you do it ? make sure your cpu actually can overclock that much. Few low c2ds (e2140,60 to 266) and one q6600s b revision (to 333) did only boot at stock whatever conductors I tried. If you are to buy a pen ? make sure it is less than 10ohm R.

 

[QuixoticOne]

I can't imagine that it is advantageous to hard hack the CPU
when you can use a BIOS solution.

Also I believe (depending on your chipset) there are programs that run under Windows that can control things like voltage and CPU clock speed e.g. going from 266 -> 333 -> 400 or whatever,
CPU multiplier, etc. That way even if your BIOS is nerfed and you don't hard-hack the CPU you can still OC the CPU / RAM / whatever....