You have to be a genius to overclock a Duron

[swayinOtis]

I am sorry, but I just tried to read the duron overclocking article at anand but it was too insane for words. I saw something about cutting traces with an xacto knife? Please, no way.

I am confused, too. I have heard of locked and unlocked CPUs. I have heard of MSI boards not allowing overclocking. I have heard of guys taking pencils and doing something to the CPU. It's all too freaking insanely complicated to me.

Someone either set me straight or I'm just going to forget about it.

I can't believe AMD would make the Duron so hard to overclock. Cutting traces? Can't handle that.

 

[gplracer]

All you have to do is get a motherboard that supports multiplier unlocking. Asus has a good board and the abit kt7 is a good board. All you have to do is connect the L1 bridges and boom your are ready to go.

 

[johncar]

Fanon,
Know the feeling you get from so called "how to" articles. Go here:-
http://members.xoom.com/candjac/index.htm select Duron OC article, full of pics, diagrams, and text which explains things so you "understand" what's going on.
John C.

 

[troubledshooter]

I know the feeling, but fight it out. Try doing it too, practice really is the best way to learn something

I did "the pencil trick first" but finally found a conductive pen. Works MUCH better.

gl

 

[paulip88]

Seems like you read a lot of the early articles that came out before the easy way was revealed. Right now, to put it simply, you need either an Asus A7V or an ABit board, a pencil, and a socket A chip. What you do is you connect the L1 bridges using the pencil, and then use the multiplier adjustments on the Asus or Abit boards to do the OCing.

---Detailed Version---
The Duron OC article on AnandTech deals with adding DIP switches to the FIC board to allow for multiplier adjustments (I believe). This article is basically irrelevant, since we now know that Asus and ABit both produce boards with this feature built in.

Cutting the traces on the chip is not necessary. All you need to do is connect the L1 bridges located on the top of the chip with a pencil, or some other conductor (preferaby something better).

All the CPUs are "locked". They can be unlocked using the method described above. There have been rumors of AMD putting a stop to this, but so far no one has seen a CPU without the L1 bridges.

The MSI does allow overclocking, but only by increasing the FSB speed. This is NOT the best way of OCing the socket A processors. You will not get very far. Thus, although the MSi board does have some overcocking features, it essentially doesn't, since it is missing the multiplier adjuster, which is what would give you the most mileage on the OC.

 

[fu]

troubledshoot,

i'm just curious... could you explain what you mean by a conductive pen works much better?

 

[Dan]

Around 2AM I thought I was going to have to resort to a conductive pen as well. However, after 4 hours sleep I went back at it with the old mechanical pencil (and a magnifying glass this time.)

My 600MHz Duron is now at 800MHz. Time to start raising the bar!!!

 

[swayinOtis]

Thanks Paulip88. I kind of thought the Anand articles were outdated but wasn't sure. I wish they would update their info.

Anyway, thanks for your help.

 

[Dan]

Fanon: Don't despair. I've been running most of the day at 900MHz. With the help of everyone here you too will figure it out!

 

[paulip88]

Just remember that mileage will vary. Mine only runs at around 850. Its stable at 800. I THINK its stable at 850, but i can't really tell since my HD died on me. The dead HD is probably not from OCing.