Unlocking Athlon XP 3000+

Alright.... so here it is. I feel as if I have been cheated because I paid $210 for my Athlon XP 3000+ "Barton" CPU (bought about a year ago) and it only runs at 2200Mhz. Why stick with it when I can get a P4 for the same price and run at 3000Mhz? Because I am an AMD fan all the way.... down with Intel. Anyways.... I have decided to unlock my CPU and hope to get it to around 2.8Ghz and maybe even 3.0Ghz. I know I have to close the L1 bridges with conducting or some other conducting compound but this is my only CPU and I don't want to f*** it up. If anyone else has done this, can you give me some tricks of the trade? Thanks..... Oh, and I have nothing against Intel... I just don't like their CPU's...don't ask why (ie. I melted one!!!) rock on.....

well bigfoot computers has an unlocking kit that seems like its pretty easy to do and its cheap as well heres the link

http://www.bigfootcomputers.com/Mer...=PROD&Product_Code=2316CGTC&Category_Code=215

Depends on what week/year your cpu was manufactured in whether it unlocks or not.

If you can provide your cpu stepping I could tell you.

what do you mean by CPU stepping?

if you remove the heatsink. you'll see a black sticker on the CPU, copy everything off it and post it here.
If your CPU is locked, then there is no way to unlock it. But if its unlocked, then you won't have to mod to CPU.
And unless you're planning to go way below 0C° with your cooling don't expect much over 2.4-2.5GHz out of the chip

Aighty... here is what the sticker says... (notice this is coming a few days later as I pulled my case apart and decided to repaint it!)

AMD Athlon
9403354250102 AQXCA0311SPIW
Copyright 1999 AMD

The good news is that your chip is unlocked. The bad news that you have one of the very first bartons, which didn't overclock too well. Those usually maxed out at around 2.3GHz

The only athlons that were unlockable were the palomino and there was no barton back then, and as stated above you have an unlocked chip so thats good, but since it's an older one it won't overclock much. Anyway don't expect to get 2.8 or 3.0ghz out of the athlons xp you would need the north pole to do that. What you should also know that to be as fast as an 3.0ghz pentium you don't need an 3.0ghz athlon, the athlon xp is able to do more work per clock so an athlon xp at like 2.5ghz like mine is just as fast as an intel 3.4ghz, at least that's what SiSofware Sandra tells me, if you want to compare your cpu to others download this software and compare your cpu with other results provided with it.

Indeed, Just Because your AMD isn't running at as many cycles as an Intel it doesn't mean it's not as fast.

I realize that.. I just run a lot of graphic design work on it in RAW which is very hard on the cpu. I need something that is fast but I don't want to do any hardware upgrades. Where can I get this "SiSofware Sandra"? FYI - with a 3000+ pushed up to 169 FSB - 2.2Ghz (where I can get it with PC2700) and a radeon 9200 pro, I am running 6400 3DMark2K4 marks.... is that good?