What's 'pencil trick'? 'n how do I do it?

[Zoolan]

People have been mentioning the 'pencil trick' in some messages. I just bought a Radeon 8500LE 128mb, and it's running on a Asus A7V333 m/b with Atholon 1800 and 512MB PC2700 in W2K. I wanna o/c my card to at least 300/300 level, am I pushing it? btw, I have a dual fan Enermax power supply, so cooling and stable power shouldn't be a problem.

So how do I do the pencil trick?? thx!

 

[Blurry]

I think that the pencil trick for unlocking the Athlon ThunderBird.

 

[Tates]

Everything you wanted to know about the Radeon 8500 voltage mod, but were afraid to ask

 

[Zoolan]

Thanks you Tates, the site is very helpful!

 

[Jolt2]

Zoolan, some words of caution. Besure you know what you are getting into before you start. This is not the same as the AMD pencil trick. You are not completing a trace like the AMD unlock. You are changing a resistance value by adding a jumper path with the carbon in the pencil lead. How dense the lead goes on will change the resistance and up the voltage. How good are you at gauging the density of the lead you are putting on over the resistor? Ask your self this question, can I afford to throw this card away and buy another one. If you can say yes to that question, then go ahead. To me the gains are not worth the risks with this one. Just make sure you follow the steps and do not get in a hurry. I have read more than a few times were people have damaged thier cards trying this mod and these are just the people who are trying to keep other from making the same mistake. This is not an easy mod and has risk. Good Luck

 

[Zoolan]

Thank you for your warnings, Joltz. Yeah, there's certain risk, and I haven't decided whether if I wanna take that risk. I've read somewhere, there're cases where the damaged cards were sent back and replaced with new cards, but again those guys might just be lucky. I'm gonna go out and buy a voltmeter, that should help me measure the voltage before I plug the card back in.

 

[Boobers]

How are you going to check the voltage before you plug it in (and power it up)? Did you mean resistance?

 

[Jolt2]

You can not check resistance on the board. You will pick up resistance through other componants and traces on the card and this will make your resistance reading useless. Trying to measure the resistance on the card is a sure way to fry it in the end. The voltage reading is the only way to measure the change with the pencil trick and voltage is what you really want to change by doing this. That brings back to the problem and risk of doing this. The only way most of us have to measure the voltage is to put the card back into the computer and power it up. If you put to much carbon on the outside of the resistor, the voltage will go up to high and you will damage the card. End of the show at that point because you can not do anything to repair the damage. You must take it very slow and easy, repeating the voltage test over and over as you put more pencil on because it only takes that little extra that can kill your card.

 

[Killrose]

Make sure you check voltages after trying the pencil trick. Also the LE Ram timmings in bios may be different and cause problems when trying to overclock higher. You might have to flash the bios to the Retail 275/275 after successfully upping the voltages. I know this is the case with most LE's of the 64mb variety, but i'm not sure about the 128's.