Palomino unlocked from the factory?

I was wondering if Palomino's come unlocked from the factory. I was under the impression that all new chips have the multipliers locked on them. But when I set the CPU speed to manual in the BIOS I have multipliers from 5 to 12.5/13.0. I thought you had to blow bridges to get unlocked multipliers? and another thing, what the h is 12.5/13.0 multiplier? is 12.5 or is 13.0? Both? A little confused here, thanks in advance.

12.5 is the last of the lows, and thirteen is the first of the highs, i have no idea why they connect the two, when low switches to high 12.5 does not equal 13, its beyond me.

but palaminos came from the factory locked and you have to connect bridges to unlock them, not blow bridges, however, thoroughbreds, version a and version b, all come with the L1 bridges connected and the chips are therefore unlocked (or, technically just not locked, as it was never locked to be UNlocked).

lastly, even if the chip is locked, the multiplier options will still be listed in bios, they just wont work, if you change the multi from its default it wont do anything

You really lost me with when the low switchs to high part. Low and high what? Performance? Is it a BIOS setting? I'm pretty new at this. Today was my first real attempt at overclocking.

Cool! I was wondering why I couldn't boot using the 5 multi, or why my CPU's speed was listed as the same when I used the 12.5 multiplier. It looks like in order to use these multipliers I will have to connect the L1 bridges. Luckly there seems to plenty of guides around here to do that.

Also to get higher multipliers than 13 I'm assuming I'll have to do various chip mods, connecting or disconnecting bridges. pin mods, etc, right? I know those guides are lurking around here somewhere to.

Anyways, thanks for clearing that up. I was really confused on why it said 12.5 but the CPU speed looked like I was still using 11. Learn a little everyday, I suppose.