AMD overclocking... 23 years ago

[doug_locke]

(heads up:  this post is a pointless rambling personal odyssey of nostalgia, dont read on if you have anything better to do)  

Ive been building my PC's since the late 90's. Back when you needed to use jumpers to tweak the fsb a tiny bit things and pins were sharper than exacto knives (bloody hand prints all over the beige boxes)  but THEN I got an Athlon 700... with dipswitches! 

 

...Sure UEFI was a "nice" change from bios BUT not needing to account for the cost of tetanus shot to the build cost was next level.   

 

Anyway, prior to my Athlon 700 overclocking was too daunting to try. Now we still did't have UEFI or Ryzen Master so we had to buy a special tool called a "#2 Pencil"

Step 1) get a #2 pencil. 
Step 2) draw 4 little lines on the cpu
Step 3) ...nope, no step 3. Your CPU runs 35% faster now. 

 

I was a little worried about temps, and the whole reason I'm writting this is because I found my old Athlon heatsink. 

At 950mhz my 700mhz would idle at 50° and hit 70C° under, I was too stupid to look up if that was good or bad. Seemed bad.  So I bought a 75cent 80mm to 50mm fan adapter. And the most powerful 80mm fan I could get for $2. 
Replaced the dinky but silent 50mm 9cfm fan with a 45db 50cfm fan which ran at full speed 24/7, this was the loudest DC fan I ever owned, but then stick it on squat plastic funnel and it can drown out a lawn mower.   (again... I was very stupid). But Gaming or idle didn't matter. the CPU stayed <45° always. 

Ive bought a dozen heat sink since the AMD 700. Every single time I but a new heatsink I try to upgrade the fan and it's never been worth the effort, yet I still keep doing it.

TLDR: Today's "Aha moment": 23year ago I got my cpu temps to drop 25° buy spending <$3. Apparently, I've been chasing that first high for my entire adult life. 

The "new" Athlon 700 fan vs (i believe) oem fan 

 

New Fan + Adapter + Oem Athlon 700 heatsink. 

 

note #1: those neon pink zipties were the first zip ties I ever owned.

note #2: 10 years ago I used that fan to dry spackle, hence the splatter of spackle on it
note #3: by the time I owned a quad core I decided to see how long the Athlon 700 would survive with no heatsink... it kept shutting down but I was able to kill it in an afternoon. 


The end  =P

[Beerzerker]

45 minutes ago, doug_locke said:

Anyway, prior to my Athlon 700 overclocking was too daunting to try. Now we still did't have UEFI or Ryzen Master so we had to buy a special tool called a "#2 Pencil"

Step 1) get a #2 pencil. 
Step 2) draw 4 little lines on the cpu
Step 3) ...nope, no step 3. Your CPU runs 35% faster now. 

 

That's connecting the chip's bridges with a pencil, sometimes disconnecting the bridges was how to get more from it - Depending on the chip.
I've done that before and it's nice to do BUT in almost every case with chips made after 0339, it doesn't work anymore because that's the date these were "Superlocked" by AMD to combat sales of faked chips - That is changing it from an XP-1700 to an XP-2200 for example.
Even with that, there is the odd chip here and there that will do something anyway if doing it, I've heard of chips still capable of changing multipliers, default bus speeds, unlocking cache and so on with chips after the superlock date.
It's rare but it has happened before.

[Woyta]

I was doing this on later socket A cpu. There was cutted gap by AMD so pencil trick does not work. You had to fill gap with cyanoacrylate glue and then connect contacts with conductive lacquer. I think that I still have in garage Athlon 2000XP with unlocked multiplier and enabled laptop functionality for better power management.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Dabombinable]

One of this CPU's past owners was really into overclocking (using the stock heatsink):

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Can't change the multiplier at least on the board it came with however - so it was probably botched. I was able to get the pencil mod working on my Thoroughbred XP 1800+ so this one should overclock. Fantastic for running Duron at high FSB as well, because my 1000 is fully stable with a 333MHz fsb (keeping it at 1000MHz with the high FSB improved graphics performance).

[doug_locke]

1 hour ago, Beerzerker said:

That's connecting the chip's bridges with a pencil, sometimes disconnecting the bridges was how to get more from it - Depending on the chip.
I've done that before and it's nice to do BUT in almost every case with chips made after 0339, it doesn't work anymore because that's the date these were "Superlocked" by AMD to combat sales of fake chips.
Even with that, there is the odd chip here and there that will do something anyway if doing it, I've heard of chips still capable of changing multipliers, default bus speeds, unlocking cache and so on with chips after the superlock date.
It's rare but it has happened before.

I'm not 100% sure if mine was the 700 or 750.  I remember the pencil trick could raise some of the thunderbirds to 1000mhz or 1200mhz. Mine would only go up to half a multiplier less than what the max was. (so 950mhz or 1100mhz). 
When I bought my Athlon, whatever it was, the Athlon 1000 still cost at least twice as much.

My town started ewaste pickup, I was getting dumpster upgrades for 5years and my athlon 700/750 became redundant. Found mostly P3's but found a 2.0ghz celeron (meh), celeron 2.4, pentium 4- 2.6ghz,  Pentium D 2.66g, eventually I wasnt the only weirdo rooting through the neighbors trash and they stopped the program.  

 

By then I could by unlocked CPU and even cheap mobo's could overclock with bios ...#2 pencils technology was obsolete. 

I held on to a couple (hundred) sticks of P2,3,4 era ram... back when they were sold totally naked. 
 

 

[thrasher_565]

i no my dad oc a cpu buy putting solder on it. and i remember ocing my p2 with a jumper.

my dad got an athlon 64 and got a thrmaltake volcano cooler and the loud 80mm fan...

my dad also got a metal 120mm fan when 80mm were the norm and he 7 volt it with a toggle switch. i on the other hand got a p4 with a thrmlright cooler and a 120mm fan and wispier quiet... and i spent my moeny on case and thing that look cool my dad would get mad at me like thats a wast of moeny (thow i got his hamydowns any way so...)

as for ocing i dont under stand it. my dad did oc my i7920 to 4.0 but it faild like 6 moth later taking out my raid zero... i mostly played diablo 2 but alot of the old but gold games too.

loved ut thow. my friend had a 486 that we did alot on surprising...

[Beerzerker]

14 hours ago, doug_locke said:

I'm not 100% sure if mine was the 700 or 750.  I remember the pencil trick could raise some of the thunderbirds to 1000mhz or 1200mhz. Mine would only go up to half a multiplier less than what the max was. (so 950mhz or 1100mhz). 
When I bought my Athlon, whatever it was, the Athlon 1000 still cost at least twice as much.

My town started ewaste pickup, I was getting dumpster upgrades for 5years and my athlon 700/750 became redundant. Found mostly P3's but found a 2.0ghz celeron (meh), celeron 2.4, pentium 4- 2.6ghz,  Pentium D 2.66g, eventually I wasnt the only weirdo rooting through the neighbors trash and they stopped the program.  

 

By then I could by unlocked CPU and even cheap mobo's could overclock with bios ...#2 pencils technology was obsolete. 

I held on to a couple (hundred) sticks of P2,3,4 era ram... back when they were sold totally naked. 
 

 

I've got sticks ranging from EDO all the way up to DDR4 with some of everything inbetween.
I also have a drawer full of DDR sticks, from the crappy to excellent ones I've got some of almost anything you can think of concerning DDR itself. 
Same goes for DDR3 as well.
For DDR2:  I didn't really bother with any DDR2 based systems but did eventually grab a couple sets of that too.

Speaking of Socket A, this is an example of what I was (And still) doing today with it all.
Yes, that an entry I did a few years ago with that chip and it is a legit XP-M 3000 chip. Got lucky when I found it and snapped it up but quick with the rarity of this chip model.
https://hwbot.org/submission/4243078_bones_superpi___1m_athlon_xp_m_3000_(barton)_35sec_625ms

[tkitch]

16 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

That's connecting the chip's bridges with a pencil, sometimes disconnecting the bridges was how to get more from it - Depending on the chip.
I've done that before and it's nice to do BUT in almost every case with chips made after 0339, it doesn't work anymore because that's the date these were "Superlocked" by AMD to combat sales of faked chips - That is changing it from an XP-1700 to an XP-2200 for example.
Even with that, there is the odd chip here and there that will do something anyway if doing it, I've heard of chips still capable of changing multipliers, default bus speeds, unlocking cache and so on with chips after the superlock date.
It's rare but it has happened before.

I had an Athlon 800 Blue Die at 1GHz well before 1GHz was even on the market.

It was the absolute best!  (until I killed it driving home from a LAN party.)

[doug_locke]

8 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

I've got sticks ranging from EDO all the way up to DDR4 with some of everything inbetween.
I also have a drawer full of DDR sticks, from the crappy to excellent ones I've got some of almost anything you can think of concerning DDR itself. 
Same goes for DDR3 as well.
For DDR2:  I didn't really bother with any DDR2 based systems but did eventually grab a couple sets of that too.

Speaking of Socket A, this is an example of what I was (And still) doing today with it all.
Yes, that an entry I did a few years ago with that chip and it is a legit XP-M 3000 chip. Got lucky when I found it and snapped it up but quick with the rarity of this chip model.
https://hwbot.org/submission/4243078_bones_superpi___1m_athlon_xp_m_3000_(barton)_35sec_625ms

When I'm working with solvents, I use my Athlon 3800+ as a temporary top to block the vapors. 

 

[Beerzerker]

3 hours ago, doug_locke said:

 

Isn't that a Socket 478 chip?
I say that due to the "Dot" at the upper left corner of it, I know those chips had that and the bottom of it is similar to a 775 chip.
All AMD chips beyond Socket A didn't have any exposed components on their underside, the last one I'm aware of would be a Socket A Palomino XP chip. I know a Barton doesn't and if memory serves neither did a T-Bred chip.
I got all of those in various models but it's been awhile since I've laid eyes on them..... Too long TBH.

Here's a fun one I have.....



Asus A7M-266D with a pair of XP-M 2800's running a pair of Tt Volcano 11's for cooling.

[doug_locke]

16 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

Isn't that a Socket 478 chip?
I say that due to the "Dot" at the upper left corner of it, I know those chips had that and the bottom of it is similar to a 775 chip.



Asus A7M-266D with a pair of XP-M 2800's running a pair of Tt Volcano 11's for cooling.

^^I bet that thing has a joystick/game port? What is the shiny disk thinh between the coolers and ram?
I think my Thunderbird mobo had 3 ram slots. 


3800+ was AM2, I got that as part of a refurb compaq gaming desktop.  Upgraded the CPU to a Dual Core 5600+, then replaced the mobo to an AM2+ then replaced that CPU with a Phenom II X4.  (The original ram was 2x1gb  DDR2-400, then added 2x1gb DDR2 800, then swapped the 2 slower Dimms with 2x2gb DDR2-800 (for 6gb). Eventually 4x2gb dimms of DDR2-800.  It was the PC version of a Theseus Ship.  
The only era I didn't have to buy new ram, mobo, and cpu all together.  I sold the 1st mobo with the 5600+ and kept the single core 3800+ thinking Ill be able to do the same thing with AM3.
 

[Beerzerker]

19 hours ago, doug_locke said:

^^I bet that thing has a joystick/game port? What is the shiny disk thinh between the coolers and ram?
I think my Thunderbird mobo had 3 ram slots.

If referring to the disc/round "Thing" that has a tinge of blue, it's the board's NB cooler I added to it for cooling.
It has one but it was passive, so I had to slap a little fan on it so chipset temps would be OK for OC'ing.

Yeah, it has 4 RAM slots because the board is a server board so naturally that follows.