Burning bridges worth it?

**rpertusio** · March 12th, 2003, 06:18 PM

With the thread title "burning bridges", some might think I'm trying to get revenge or something... but in fact I'm talking about the L3 bridges of an Athlon 1700+ (Tbred B) here

By decree of my motherboard (Asus A7V333), I am limited to 12.5x multiplier. So, I have overclocked to 12.5x167fsb (stable) = 2075MHz. If I were to burn some L3 bridges, I could enable the multipliers from 13x and higher.

Theoretically, a 13x160fsb would bring me to 2080MHz, which is what I can run stable now at 12.5x166.

My question is this.. will it make any difference? Any chance I could squeeze even more out of it by using higher multipliers instead of higher FSB?

any/all thoughts are welcome! Thanks

- rp

**chris64** · March 12th, 2003, 09:49 PM

I would think a higher FSB will have better performance.

**rpertusio** · March 13th, 2003, 12:41 AM

Then maybe I'll keep the bridges as they are. Good enough answers for me...

Your input is appreciated!

- rp

**RamonGTP** · March 13th, 2003, 05:25 PM

The problem with faster FSB is that you also overclock all the other components of your PC, unless you have a motherboard that locks all the other frequencies.

**radio1_mike** · March 14th, 2003, 01:26 PM

I agree, if you want to take a chance with the L3 bridges that'd be the way I'd go.

Upping the multiplier only affects the CPU, unlike heavily tweaking the FSB.

If successful, you can always jump up some steps on the multilplier and then increase the FSB modestly and see how that goes.

**rpertusio** · March 14th, 2003, 03:28 PM

I don't have a motherboard to locks other frequencies when upping the FSB. However, if I'm not mistaken, a little bit of overclocking the other components can show a bit of improvement.

Is the AGP slot also overclocked? (I know for sure the PCI slots are..) That is my only real concern.

Thanks for the all suggestions. I may just go ahead and burn some bridges anyway 'to see what happens'. If all else fails, I can always reconnect the bridges, I suppose.

- rp

**rpertusio** · March 15th, 2003, 11:20 PM

Update:

Today, I grabbed a 9V battery, some small wires, and attempted to burn the L3 bridges. Of the three, only one of the bridges seemed to burn away. So, I took a razor blade and physically cut the other two.

Results? I now have the upper multiplier settings (13x and higher) of my 1700+. I was only able to overclock a few MHz higher.. but that's okay by me.

I used to have:
12.5 x 167MHz (2088MHz)
Now, I have:
15x 140MHz (2100MHz)

Although not much of an increase, I'm happy I am not stressing the rest of my components with the overclock.

A side benefit: I was able to lower the voltage by .25, lowering my temps a bit

I won't complain about that!

Thanks for the input everyone.

- rp

**woodbutcher** · March 16th, 2003, 12:09 AM

rp, thats a nice bit of OCing.
I certianly like the idea of having the PCI bus more along the lines of where it should be.
Nice to be able to run DDR2100 ram as well.
Do you happen to have a link to a site that furter explains the L3 and what needs to be done?

WB

**rpertusio** · March 16th, 2003, 01:18 AM

well..
the specific page I was using to modify my thoroughbred is: Tbred Painting Guide. However, in your case, you may find the whole Overclocked Inside website helpful.

By default, my L3 bridges were closed (see 11 X FSB on that page). My motherboard limited me to 5.0x to 12.5x in multipliers.

I raised my multiplier manually to 13.5 (see 13.5 X FSB on that page) by cutting the three bridges.

The processor was already 'unlocked'. All I did was add 8X to the multiplier settings. If your processor is unlocked, you may not even need to do the L3 bridge cutting/burning. If your processor is locked, then you'll need to modify the L1 bridges before anything else. (In most cases, modifying the L1 bridges is all you need to do)

More specifically, the "battery trick" didn't work as well as I hoped. The theory is that if you attach 2 wires to the battery, then place the wire tip on the L3 bridge you want to burn (for 1 or 2 seconds), the bridge will 'burn' with a tiny puff of smoke.

The first bridge I attempted to burn went fine. (frankly, the smoke kinda scared me..) The other 2 bridges failed. So instead, I took a (clean!) razor blade and 'punched' the tip in between the bridge contacts. I didn't perform any 'slicing' action, or I might have cut all the other bridges

Instead, I gently 'rocked' the blade until it created a small pit between the contacts.

Probably a lot more information than was necessary, but maybe someone else will find it handy.

- rp

EDIT:
Additional notes: Setting the multiplier manually (with the L3 bridges) changes the name string of the processor. (It now shows AMD Athlon 2200+ in the BIOS, WCPUID, 3Dmark03, etc..)