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Unlocking AMD Athlon XP multipliers, guide and a question.

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First post, by Danger Manfred

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Hello!

I found a generally super helful guide for unlocking Athlon XP CPUs, which goes into a lot of detail, but at the same time confuses me.

First of all, here it is:

https://fab51.biosbude.de/cpu/barton/athlon-e23.html

Now what I do not understand is the access to multipliers.

As someone wanting to play speed sensitive DOS games, access to the low multipliers (4-12.5) is crucial.
But to play late Windows 98 era games, access to high multipliers (12-25) is a must.

If it was possile to choose from 4 to 20 (or even 25), I could even drop the FSB to the lowest my motherboard supports (100) and a Thoroughbred-B or Barton would be sure to run anything from Wing Commander to Unreal Tournament 2004.

But as I understand the guide, I can only have either the low multipliers, or the high ones, am I correct?

Reply 1 of 1, by dionb

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Are you talking about setting the multiplier by hardware (pencil) or software?

For the former, everything is available, but you need new pencil lines for new settings of course.

If you want software, this page of your link is relevant:
https://fab51.biosbude.de/cpu/barton/athlon-e24.html

As I read it, you need to set L5(2) and L6. Then the CPU will be treated as an XP-M and you can set any multiplier up to 24x. There are some differences depending on BIOS vendor and chipset though. Ideally you'd want to boot at the lowest possible multiplier (for DOS) but be able to select up to 24x, which should be possible on non-nVidia chipsets with different settings for AMI vs Award.

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