Barton Unlocking Confusion!

Hi all,

A friend told me that the nForce2 chipset unlocked Barton CPU's so I bought
an AMD XP2500+ sometime ago with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. Hey
presto it unlocked the XP2500+ which nows runs at 2.1Ghz (XP3000+). I
couldn't get it to run at 3200+ like many people on here but I'm more than
happy.

I recommended this set up to anotehr friend, but afterwards I was told that
Bartons are now locked by AMD.
Does that mean that my Barton was unlocked to begin with and that the
nForce2 chipset motherboard had no bearing on the matter at all?

Also if I wanted to get a faster CPU, which would be the best CPU to go for
as an alternative.

Thanks,
Gra.

On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 09:34:48 +0000, The Old Man wrote:

Hi all,

A friend told me that the nForce2 chipset unlocked Barton CPU's so I bought

Then your friend didn't know what he was talking about. The multiplier is
locked/unlocked on the cpu. Nowhere else.

I recommended this set up to anotehr friend, but afterwards I was told
that Bartons are now locked by AMD.
Does that mean that my Barton was unlocked to begin with and that the
nForce2 chipset motherboard had no bearing on the matter at all?

Now you got it.

Also if I wanted to get a faster CPU, which would be the best CPU to go
for as an alternative.

Athlon 64 or Athlon FX. It wouldn't make any sense to replace the cpu in
your current board for just a little more speed. At least to me it
wouldn't. You can probably get more than 2100MHz out of your current 2500+
by raising vcore. Did you try 11x200 with 1.85 vcore? Or maybe 13.5x166
depending on your ram.

--
Abit KT7-Raid (KT133) Tbred B core CPU @2400MHz (24x100FSB)
http://mysite.verizon.net/res0exft/cpu.htm

The Old Man wrote:
Hi all,

A friend told me that the nForce2 chipset unlocked Barton CPU's so I
bought an AMD XP2500+ sometime ago with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe
motherboard. Hey presto it unlocked the XP2500+ which nows runs at
2.1Ghz (XP3000+).

BTW, this rating depends on your FSB I'm running two bartons 2500's at
13x140=2100MHz, which has an effective rating of 2768.

I couldn't get it to run at 3200+ like many people
on here but I'm more than happy.

I recommended this set up to anotehr friend, but afterwards I was
told that Bartons are now locked by AMD.
Does that mean that my Barton was unlocked to begin with and that the
nForce2 chipset motherboard had no bearing on the matter at all?

There's a lot of information and mis-information out there about Socket-A
AMD CPUs. A brief summary:

On the CPU side:
1) Socket A Thunderbirds are what I call "bridge locked". Before the
multiplier can be changed, the L1 bridges have to be reconnected. This is
the infamous "pencil trick", though you need to insulate the gaps for some
end-of-line Thunderbirds that came out on OPGA. You can also change the
default multiplier without reconnecting the L1 bridges by modifying L3, L4
and L10 bridges.
2) Palomino CPUs are the same as Thunderbirds in that they are
bridge-locked, but all of them are on OPGA which requires that the trench be
filled. Again, the default multiplier can be changes without reconnecting
the L1, but this time you need to modify the L3 bridges.
3) TBred and Barton CPUs are all "bridge unlocked", with the L1 bridges not
being cut at the factory. This means that if your motherboard supports
multiplier adjustments, there is nothing else required to change the
multiplier. The L3 bridges still control the default multiplier, if it needs
to be changes. The exception to this rule is the so-called "superlocked" or
post week-39 CPUs, which I call die-locked. These are CPUs with a date code
(the 4 digits in the 2nd line of text on the sticker) of 0339 or later
(though this limit is a bit fuzzy). Here the L1 bridges are intact, but they
(along with the L2 and L3 bridges) are ignored by the CPU, as it stores this
information in the actual CPU die itself. These CANNOT have their multiplier
changed through standard methods, and nor can the default multiplier be
changed.

Assuming that your CPU supports multiplier changes (ie: L1 bridges connected
and not die-locked), you also need something on the motherboard side.
Motherboard fall into 3 categories:
1) No multiplier change support. You're stuck with the default multiplier,
unless you do a pinmod.
2) 4-bit multiplier support. These boards only can control the lower 4 bits
of the 5-bit multiplier setting. This means that if your CPU defaults to a
multiplier above 12.5x then you're stuck in the range 12.5x to 24x, and if
the CPU has a default multiplier of 12.5x or below, then you're stuck in the
5.0x to 12.5x range. A pinmod or default multiplier change can get you
between these two ranges.
3) 5-bit multiplier support. Most (all?) NF2 boards are in this group. They
support all 5 multiplier bits, so the full range 5.0x to 24x is available
for use. There's little point in doing pinmods or L3 mods if your
motherboard supports all 5 bits.

The ability to change the 5th multiplier bit is sometimes called,
incorrectly, "unlocking" the CPU. It has nothing to do with whether the CPU
is locked or not.

Finally, there's nothing in the CPUs to stop you changing your FSB speed.
The CPU cannot tell what speed the FSB is running at, so it cannot be
locked[*1].

Also if I wanted to get a faster CPU, which would be the best CPU to
go for as an alternative.

You'll gain very little by going to another Socket-A CPU. Save your cash and
get a A64 system


As a general note, I'm collecting as much information on AMD CPUs as
possible and making a bit of a reference set on various modifications and
facts. This is along with an OPN decoder (should handle every AMD OPN from
the first slot-A Athlon the Opteron 848's and FX51's, as well as the other
lines on the chip/label) and basic CPUID functionality (that uses the
CrystalCPUID library). It's still very much incomplete, but I'd appreciate
it if people could give it a test and/or suggest corrections and information
for the info sheets. I'm in the process of recoding the OPN decoder to be
more flexible (I'm a perfectionist ...) so I'd really like to know any cases
where the existing version does not correctly identify the CPU.

You can get it from:
http://www.emboss.co.nz/downloads/amdid-0.1.0.0.exe
(7-Zip self-extractor)
I'll put the (Delphi 7) source up once it gets to the point of being
readable



*1 = OK, it's not technically impossible to lock the FSB to certain values,
but so far it appears not to have been done.

--
Michael Brown
www.emboss.co.nz : OOS/RSI software and more
Add michael@ to emboss.co.nz - My inbox is always open

Hi all,

A friend told me that the nForce2 chipset unlocked Barton CPU's so I
bought
an AMD XP2500+ sometime ago with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. Hey
presto it unlocked the XP2500+ which nows runs at 2.1Ghz (XP3000+). I
couldn't get it to run at 3200+ like many people on here but I'm more than
happy.

I see guys saying that in this group sometimes too .. Ther eis nothing
correct about it at all however..

I recommended this set up to anotehr friend, but afterwards I was told
that
Bartons are now locked by AMD.
Does that mean that my Barton was unlocked to begin with and that the
nForce2 chipset motherboard had no bearing on the matter at all?

Yea.. Bartons were unlockd (mine is).. BUT you can still overclock.. Buy the
2500+ and pc3200 ram (if it's for a new computer) and turn the fsb up.. If
you can get the fsb to 200 then your at 3200+ speeds..
Keep in mind that this is overclocking AND amd cant stop this (at least they
cant now.. who knows what the future holds)

Also if I wanted to get a faster CPU, which would be the best CPU to go
for
as an alternative.

If you have a version 1xx a7n8x then that could be the reason you cant
achieve 200 fsb.. Or maybee your ram is pc2700 and not pc3200 ?.. But I
would say the better option is to try getting your system running that cpu
as a 3200+.. You can go higher with good cooling but I think that the
highest normal I see with air cooling is around 2475..

Dont feel bad about your cpu not overclocking.. mine doesnt underclock
properly.. 1.70v chip and it goes unstable at 1.6v (even when only at 1650
mhz)


Thanks,
Gra.

The Old Man wrote:
Hi all,

A friend told me that the nForce2 chipset unlocked Barton CPU's so I
bought an AMD XP2500+ sometime ago with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe
motherboard. Hey presto it unlocked the XP2500+ which nows runs at
2.1Ghz (XP3000+). I couldn't get it to run at 3200+ like many people
on here but I'm more than happy.

I recommended this set up to anotehr friend, but afterwards I was
told that Bartons are now locked by AMD.
Does that mean that my Barton was unlocked to begin with and that the
nForce2 chipset motherboard had no bearing on the matter at all?

Also if I wanted to get a faster CPU, which would be the best CPU to
go for as an alternative.

Thanks,
Gra.

the cpu is plain unlocked
my unlocked xp2500 runs at 2.3ghz if i want, lot of heat though
prob do 2.4
i run it at 2.2 though

"Geoff" wrote in message
...
The Old Man wrote:
Hi all,

A friend told me that the nForce2 chipset unlocked Barton CPU's so I
bought an AMD XP2500+ sometime ago with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe
motherboard. Hey presto it unlocked the XP2500+ which nows runs at
2.1Ghz (XP3000+). I couldn't get it to run at 3200+ like many people
on here but I'm more than happy.

I recommended this set up to anotehr friend, but afterwards I was
told that Bartons are now locked by AMD.
Does that mean that my Barton was unlocked to begin with and that the
nForce2 chipset motherboard had no bearing on the matter at all?

Also if I wanted to get a faster CPU, which would be the best CPU to
go for as an alternative.

Thanks,
Gra.

the cpu is plain unlocked
my unlocked xp2500 runs at 2.3ghz if i want, lot of heat though
prob do 2.4
i run it at 2.2 though



Thank you all for the explanations. I would agree that there's little point
in going for another Barton as 300-400Mhz is little difference in real world
computing these days except for benchmarks. My next upgrade will be the 64FX
then!

BTW, my FSB is at 200Mhz now and the ram is DDR400 Crucial.

Regards,
Graham.

| Did you try 11x200 with 1.85 vcore?

http://sysopt.earthweb.com/articles/...awb/index.html