About this time, several websites starting taking a very close look at the actual design of the Athlon PCB. The Athlon board held several resistors and after some initial experimentation, a few Asian websites starting posting intriguing results. It appeared that with a little soldering skill and some luck, moving the resistors to different PCB locations served to change the multiplier, core voltage and L2 cache divider. The easiest comparison would be to a Celeron Slocket adaptor and instead of changing jumpers, the Athlon's resistors had to be physically removed and resoldered into a new position. Even when compiling all the available data, full information on exactly how to perform this PCB modification was still sketchy at best. Enter Tom of Tom's Hardware, who proceeded to develop a step-by-step guide to modifying an Athlon, covering resistor values, overclock testing and even some safety tips. While he wasn't first to the party, Tom brought it all together into a very nice package and paved the way for some interesting developments in Athlon overclocking.
Eventually, some enterprising vendors starting producing and selling modified 500 and 550 Athlon processors, clocked to 650 MHz and higher. This was capitalism at its best, but it did come with a certain amount of risk. Many vendors are up-front about the modifications they have done, but others performed some behind-the-scenes adjustment to the Athlon's L2 cache speed. The 500-700 MHz Athlon models use a 1/2 cache divider, similar to the Pentium III Katmai processors. This equates to anywhere from a 250 MHz L2 speed (Athlon 500) to a 350 MHz speed (Athlon 700) and adds a nice incremental performance increase as you raise the Athlon's core speed. The problem arose when some vendors offered Athlon 500's modified to 700, but with the cache divider decreased to 1/3. With some Athlon 500 chips, the L2 cache memory simply couldn't handle the 350 MHz speeds, and instead ran at the 1/3 derived 233 MHz level. These modified Athlons with the 1/3 cache divider are in no way equivalent in performance to the true Athlon 700, and buying a modified Athlon became somewhat of a buyer beware environment.
Then we progressed to what I like to call the True Age of Athlon Overclocking, where actual user-friendly PCB overclocking cards starting making their way onto the market. These cards used the Athlon's Gold Finger connectors, and featured control switches to manipulate the Athlon's core clock multiplier and core voltage. No longer was the user dependant on vendor modifications to overclock the AMD Athlon, and these self-styled Golden Finger cards became quite a hit. Unfortunately, the Athlon's L2 cache divider is not one of the featured adjustments available through any of the Golden Fingers cards, remaining locked at the default 1/2 ratio to clock speed, and represents one of the card's few negatives when compared to resistor-modified Athlons.
First of all, the Gold Finger in question is a short 40-pin connector located on the upper edge of the Athlon CPU. An Athlon Gold Finger card is essentially a PCB board that attaches to this connector and overrides the Athlon's default voltage and clock multiplier settings. In order to utilize (or even view) the Gold Finger connector, it is necessary to first remove the Athlon plastic CPU cover. I just inserted a flat-head screwdriver between the case and the heatsink plate and twisted the cover off. This is actually quite easy to do, but for safety sake, please look up some of the fine online guides devoted to this subject. Also remember that as with any serious hardware modification, this procedure will void your warranty with AMD.
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