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A new unlocking kit for AMD Thorougbred, Barton and Thornton Processors hitting the shelves, manufactured by Speed-Strip LLC. The principle is based on shorting the pins connecting to the contacts on either side of the 5th L3 bridge, rather than closing the bridge itself. Instead of using a wire loop or conductive paint, Speed Strip's SSA-1 is a little plastic matrix that is pushed over the respective pins with a metal mask to electrically connect pins AJ27 and AH28 (any ground will do in this case). While there is no doubt that an established method will also work in a simplified design, we have some issues with the mechanical realization of the SSA-1.

Is it worth it, do we recommend it? Read on to find out.

Unlocking AMD CPUs has become more and more fashionable in the enthusiast community. There have been unlocking kits in the form of conductive tape or rather, tape with some conductive traces that would close some of the bridges on the CPU packaging. The conventional method has still been to close the cut bridges using rear window defroster repair conductive paint or similar. In some cases, a #2 lead pencil mark could just do the same trick.

The Retail package of the Speed-Strip offers "quasi-unlimited" overclocking potential.

One different method, originally posted on OverclockersWorkbench used a different approach, that is, unlocking was achieved by shorting two of the pins of the CPU together using a wire loop. A few months ago, we took this idea a bit further, exploiting the fact that the pinout of the CPU is point-to-point preserved in the solder points of the CPU socket as they are visible on the back of the mainboard. In other words, instead of manipulating the CPU itself, we manipulated the solder points by drawing connective points between the crucial pins.

Aside from the drawback that the mainboard needs to be removed from the case, this method offers the advantage that there is no mechanical interference with the mounting of the CPU within the socket, which has been one of the issues with just sticking a piece of wire into the respective holes on the socket 462 interface. In addition, any configuration can be easily drawn for hardwiring of a fictive multiplier, should the BIOS not offer support for soft multiplier settings.

A new method now promises to revolutionize the unlocking of the Athon32 family, with the restriction that the method only applies to Thoroughbred and later steppings. In other words, this will not work with any Thunderbird or Palomino core-based CPUs. The principle is very simple. Instead of using a wire or conductive paint, a little plastic tab with predrilled holes is slid over the respective pins of the CPU, providing a little metal mask to short CPU pins AJ27 (8x multiplier enable) to AH28 (Gnd), which is equivalent to closing the 5th L3 bridge. All details on the multiplier circuitry are found on John Carcich's website.

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