Why Unlock

Does anyone know why AMD processors are unlocked and Intels arent, please nothing like intels suck or anything like that, if you have a honest answer please reply.

AMD's don't come unlocked, but they CAN be unlocked. Intel's can't.

It's like this. When you up the FSB you up the chipspeed as well. You probably know that. Chipspeed is multiplier x FSB, so an XP-1800 for example (11.5 multiplier) is 11.5x133=1533 MHz.

Now, every chip has it's limit where no amount of cooling or voltage will let you OC any higher. Let's say for the XP-1800 in the example above that limit is 1667 MHz.

Now, if you leave the chip locked and up the FSB you'll only get to 11.5x145=1667 MHz. OK, great. But what about the FSB? Alot of the time memory and other components can handle MUCH higher FSB speeds than 145.

So you unlock the chip and lower the multiplier to 10.5. The chip's limit is still 1667 MHz, but with a 10.5 multiplier it's 10.5x158=1667 MHz. The FSB is 13 MHz higher, which means that the DDR mem is 26 MHz faster!

The FSB overclocking can be just as important as the chipspeed. It speeds up the memory, AGP, the bus from the memory to the chip (that's why people get 333 boards and do NOT use the 5/4 divisor on the mem, cuz the chip's FSB is still 133 while the mem is 166, but if you overclock the FSB to 166 the mem AND chip are at 166). That's why noone unlocks and just ups the multiplier and leave the FSB at 133.

--Illah

Why is unlocking good? Well for the simple reason of flexability. Unlocking gives you the option to try as many FSB & Multiplier combinations that can improve your performance without having the clockspeed as your mortal limit.

A lot of people think that FSB is limited by VCore & some even think its the HSF that they are using which is totally wrong. The unwillingness to unlock is the most common problem when someone can't reach true high FSB. This is the basics of overclocking LOWER THE MULTIPLIER & INCREASE THE FSB

Now why doesnt Intell have this option for consumer CPUs? That is because they do not & will not support overclocking. While this may look like a weakness in their consumer CPUs the motherboard manufacturers has built MoBos that keep the PCI & AGp BUS Speeds withing spec at whatever FSB it is set to run. This sounds good at first BUT you actually want the respective BUS Speeds to increase Synchronously with FSB because that is were the performance gain is.

Does AMD support overclocking? No they do not but at least they give us enough rope to hang ourselves with

Also, if your memory and vid card crap out before your processor does, you can still get every last MHz out of your processor! I had to do that with a friend's computer once.