AMD is NEVER Going to Unlock the XP

[Dunga Bee]

After seeing a few screen shots of people unlocking their XP chips, the BIOS reports the chip as the next XP model up as they increase the multiplier.

So, that is really all AMD is doing to make the next higher model is upping the multiplier and I doubt they'll give the public the ability to do that same thing rather that have us go and buy the newest model. They are not really altering the technology behind the chip to allow higher speed, just changing the multiplier. Makes you wonder if you bought a low end XP if you could unlock it and really hit high end XP MHz scores.

That really explains why they have go to such trouble making that darn trench in the L1 bridges.

Pardon if this was obvious to everyone but me but I have seen posts saying that AMD will unlock them once they are out on the market. But I don't see that happening.

What do you all think ?

[]-[itman]

I agree. That's all the 1900+ was and it looks like the 2000+ is the same way. I'm just hoping the higher cpu's 2200+ and farther aren't like that.

[Thelemac]

That's how all CPUs are. It's just that normally all you see is the MHz. Now you're seeing a different number go up instead of the Speed which is based on the multiplier (apparently, I haven't really seen anything that says the FSB doesn't do it, too). Faster CPUs rarely have new technology...they just are able to run faster.

[Dunga Bee]

I guess my point was that now that AMD is upping in such small amounts and using their new naming conventions, it seems very unlikely that they will ever offer unlocked versions of the XPs.

[Thelemac]

I think that has very little to do with wether or not they unlock them. I'm not actually sure why they did so in the first place. It's not like they took pity on us poor overclockers before or anything. Just something that they did for thier own reasons.

[Dunga Bee]

Well at least they only made it difficult and not impossible. ;)

[mbigna]

AMD lobbied BIOS makers hard to NOT display the actual speed (MHz) on boot up. Not all BIOS's have complied--at least completely. I was reading the article (which I linked to from here in these forums, somewhere) where a new technique using silicon thermal paste and silver paste to unlock an XP resulted in BIOS screens that showed actual speed when the multiplier was lower than any of the 'stock' speeds that AMD has released. Otherwise, the PR (Performance Rating) number was displayed. I saw another BIOS display both the PR and the actual speed at all multipliers.

What is unfortunate is that since AMD is relying on PR numbers for marketing purposes, is that it may be forced to keep the XP's locked for liability reasons. Since an unlocked XP can show up on the bios screen as ANY PR rating, unscrupulous vendors could too easily up the multiplier on a lower rated processor and pass it off as a more expensive processor.

Chip makers (particularly AMD) should find a way of 'locking' a text string after rating a chip so the BIOS makers could display the chip's rated speed and then the actual speed at which the processor is running. Intel has managed something like this with their chip ID (a 'big brother' ploy--another reason I won't buy Intel any longer).