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Several mods have been circulating on the web of how to unlock AMD processors. Most of the mods are confined to alterations of the CPU in form of shorting or reconnecting bridges. In most cases, these modifications reguire quasi surgical skills and yet, they won't work on some processors / systems. An alternative modification that has become fashionable is to short pins on the CPU. While this is straight-forward, this method still misses the point in that it is somewhat risky and difficult to implement. Based on laziness, our agenda has always been to use our brains instead and we came up with a simple modification that is absolutely risk-free and can be done in about 5 seconds. After doing some further research, we found that this "trick" only works with Thoroughbred and Barton processors but not with older Palomino core-based CPUs.

Following the procedure outlined below can irreversibly damage your equipment and we assume no responsibility whatsoever for any consequences of even reading this article. Again, if you have a Palomino core, you can read this but it won't help with your particular situation.

To give credit where credit is due, our article is based on this article on OCWoarkbench, the ideas of which have been more or less copied by sites like THG and others... Anyway, the procedure at hand is not really the easiest and while it makes for some good bragging about manual dexterity, it will exceed the skills of the average overclocker (no pun intended), especially of the novice, who will furthermore be afraid of doing something wrong, void the warranty or what every other concerns will come up.

Laziness has been the second strongest force behind any progress and from the earliest days on, we have been arduously striving to perfect our skills in this area of expertise. In other words, where others do hard work, we prefer using our brains instead. Or something along these lines :-)

So what is behind our idea? Nothing more complicated than the fact that the pins of the CPU are mirrored in the solder-points of the CPU socket in the back of the mainboard. Let's take a look:

CPU (bottom) and mainboard (back side) to show the mirroring of the pin arrangement. Didn't we know that already? Indicated are also the pins that need to be shorted together in order to override the multiplier settings.
Click thumbnail for larger picture

Next question is what are we going to do about them? Take out the old trusty soldering iron and modify the mainboard? I didn't really think so.

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