For less than $500, the 1.2GHz makes a slightly less expensive “overclocking test guinea pig” than in the past, when new high end CPUs have been released at almost double the price. The Duron 800MHz being the “value” CPU of the two, is of course going to be a prime target for those of you interested in overclocking. That's the good news…

More good news comes in the shape of the ease of overclocking both the Athlon and the Duron CPUs. There have been many reports on the web that have indicated that AMD has nullified this by removing pins from the belly of the CPUs in question. Did they? And why have there been such reports? Who knows and who's to say. What we do know is that ours, which admittedly we get directly from AMD, can be unlocked the same way as always, via the L1 bridges.