8RDA+ 1.1 w/ Barton 2500+

Hey everyone,

I just have a quick question concerning multipliers and clock speeds....
I currently have an Athlon XP 2400+ (TB) and it's running at stock speed (2000MHz) with a 133.334 FSB * 15x multiplier.
Yesterday, I was in my BIOS Setup and I noticed that I have multiplier options from like 1x to 25x, so I tried upping my multiplier to 16x, rebooted and my CPU was recognized as 2600+ runninng at 2133.33 MHz.

My question is: Why did this work? I thought the CPUs were multiplier locked.
My other question is if I get a Barton 2500+, will I be able to up the multiplier to get 3200+ clock speeds (i.e. 133.334 x 16.5) with this motherboard?

I'm not into overclocking the FSB or anything, just the CPU as long as I don't have to up the voltage or anything.

Your input would be greatly appreciated

That's a great motherboard and CPU combo. The multipliers are not locked with your motherboard, as you have found out. With some voltage, you can possibly get to 2.3ghz and beyond. Also, raising the FSB gives great performance benefits so you should think about it.

You should drop the mulit to about 5x or 7x and find you highest stable fsb using 3dmark,prime,memtest and once you have found your fsb max bump the mulit up to 10x and then .5x up untill your reach the highest stable fsb-muilti.

Also what power supply are you using, ram, etc