Unlocking
the AMD Palomina CPU by connecting the Athlon XP L1 Bridges
Ok so you are
ready to unlock the multipliers on your AMD Athlon XP , and
push that FSB into a higher gear ! :-)
Lets start then
:
The first warning
is simple: don’t even attempt this procedure unless
you have a very steady hand! Even then you will need a powerful
light source to adequately determine your degree of success
at each stage. A magnifying glass, jeweler’s eyepiece,
microscope, scanner or macro digital camera can all be used
to see what is going on, but there is no substitute to using
the naked eye and angling the CPU in bright sunlight to
determine the surface relief. Only then do the dark marks
between the rows of gold contacts actually reveal themselves
to be laser-etched pits.
The Athlon XP, or Palomino, uses a new type of "organic"
packaging, much like an Intel PIII. This is probably the
reason that they began laser cutting huge pits into the
bridges, because if you look at the photo below, the connection
is not a simple copper bridge, as before, but appears to
be a set of two of them, or perhaps a large copper bridge
buried beneath the surface.
This
is close to what it actually looks like in real life:
I
ask that the first person who kills an Athlon XP dissect
it to discover if this new pit cutting is a necessary adjustment
due to a design change (widening the bridge) or if it's
a "diabolical" attempt to stop overclockers on AMD's part.
(I highly doubt that it is, because that's what the Extreme
Performance tour is supposedly about, isn't it?.)
If
you take some acetone and a paintbrush to clean the scorch
marks out of the pits, you'll discover gold contacts at
the bottom. These are believed to be the reason that people
are having trouble unlocking the Palomino. If you fill
up the pits with conductive paint, you may be shorting the
locks. By filling the pits with nonconductive glue,
I was able to attain full control of the multiplier lock.
Start by cleaning
the whole L1 area, including the pits, with acetone. Let
it dry. Then shield the "dots" with scotch tape. The placement
of the tape is critical. It is important that the tape does
not overhang the edge of the pits as this may prevent them
from being fully flooding with glue. Try placing the tape
so that it just covers the gold contacts and no more. Press
the tape down firmly along its edge. You could place a slip
of paper over the tape and rub on the paper with a pencil
to ensure that the tape beneath if totally sealed.
Super glue is
a good choice for filling the laser pits because it is not
affected by most cleaning agents. Place a drop of glue over
the five pits and use the corner of some tissue paper to
draw off most of the drop until it is reasonably flat. Leaving
the full drop will result in an unnecessarily large deposit
of glue that will take over an hour to dry and may be difficult
to reduce in size. Irrespective to the amount of glue used,
it should still be left for at least half an hour to fully
dry. Having used the correct amount of glue the tape should
peel off successfully leaving only the desired strip of
hardened glue covering the five pits.
Let it solidify
a little bit so it doesn't run and then pull the tape off.
Use a Q-tip and
some acetone to soften up the Super Glue, then carefully
work down the mound with a Stanley Knife or razor blade
until you've got it's flush with the rest of the surface
and just the pits are filled in. If there's still a small
hill, don't worry about it, just so long as you make good
contact.
Let that Super
Glue harden up, then take some acetone or pure alcohol and
clean the "dots" one last time, making sure that you will
get good contact and remove any glue that's on them. Use
scotch tape to shield all but the bridge you're working
on. Leave enough space between the pieces of tape so you
get a good connection, but don't leave the space too wide
or you might cross the bridges. Crossing the bridges
is very, very bad and can damage your CPU and RAM !.
Apply some conductive
paint with a toothpick. Get a good amount on there and don't
get near L3 !
Let it harden
up enough so it won't run, then carefully remove the tape.
Don't let it get too hard or it will remain as one large
blob after you pull the tape - a blob with wings. This effect
is hard to describe, but if it happens to you, you will
know what I mean. If this happens, carefully remove the
wings with a razor blade. Now let the paint set up and fully
harden, or the next step will smear it.
Shield again...
and again and again .....
Carefully pull
the tape so you don't rip up the existing paint on the first
bridge.
Repeat the process
until you do all 5 bridges.
The result: Using
my trusty ABIT Max2 mobo I was able to gain full multiplier
control on my AMD XP 2000 and confirmed the multipliers
10, 10.5, 11, 11.5, 12, and 12.5 working.
At 155 x 12 I
was running my unlocked CPU at 1886 instead of the stock
1666 mhz ( with voltage increase to 2.00 v for CPU and 2,95
for RAM). But most importantly I increased my FSB and the
memory bandwidth by 589 points in Sysoft Sandra and my whole
system is more responsive and super fast . Under full load
it is very stable. Using my Termaltake SLK heatsink, my
temps are 50 degrees on the CPU . :-) Of course I could
have gone higher to the extrems like a lot of the other
OCs do , but i believe in a stable system as well and dont
ever wanna risk any data corruption again , especially when
I am in a process of doing some work ( 'cause just in case
You haven't realized it by now , a PC is a tool to achieve
the goals you are setting )
HAPPY OVERCLOCKING
!
