Are the multipliers on Pentium4 chips locked?

[Clevor]

I was reading a review of the Asus PT4 motherboard on www.SharkeyExtreme and on the 1.5 gig Pentium4 chip they used, they changed multipliers from 14-16, so are the multipliers unlocked, or was this an engineering chip?

[batboy]

Must of been an engineering CPU because all commercial P-4 processors have locked multipliers.

[Clevor]

Yeah, that's what I thought too. I was hoping Intel changed their policy on the P4s.

[Yodums]

Originally posted by Clevor
Yeah, that's what I thought too. I was hoping Intel changed their policy on the P4s.

They'll never change their policy about Intel multipliers ...

[SP]

P4 Xeons are unlocked downward. That is I can set the mutiplier on my 1.7Ghz P4 Xeons to a lower multiplier and the system will boot and run at that speed. However, they do seem to be locked upward as I can't set them to a higher multiplier. If I do it just ignores it and runs at the defualt multiplier. I don't know if it's the CPUs that are locked upward or if it's that my Supermicro P4DC6 motherboards bios doesn't allow a higher than defualt multiplier. Some people have said that it may simply be the motherboards bios that refuses to allow you to set a higher than stock multiplier.

[JetMech]

Originally posted by Clevor
Yeah, that's what I thought too. I was hoping Intel changed their policy on the P4s. Intel is afraid some unscrupulous indviduals will remark chips if the multiplier is not locked. The way Dell and Gateway can sell $899.00 computers and not even say what speed they are I would say there is definitely a naivete group of folks out there begging to be ripped off.