Are the currently available 700Mhz Duron Unlockable?

[Rawdog]

Have the pins been removed, or any other method use to prevent overclock. Buy.com has them for $81.95, instock. Just wanted to know if I can pump this baby up?

 

[paulip88]

I think that all of the socket A chips are unlockable. There is no reason why the 700s from buy.com would have the L1 pins removed when they are still present on the new Duron 800 and TBird 1.2GHzs.

 

[Rawdog]

Cool! That's what I was hoping to hear.

Thanks

 

[Diffusion]

Not true, there was one week in which AMD removed the pins that are needed, I forget which week, you can find out pretty easily however.

 

[wviperw]

Difussion, are you sure about that? I am almost POSITIVE that AMD has NEVER removed the pins. Unless I have missed something...

 

[Vpham97]

If you are buying from Buy.com, you have nothing to worry about. Their customer service is pretty good. If you don't like something, just exchange it. I just did it myself last week. The only hassle is that you will be out of a processor for 1 or 2 weeks. Remember to use the returning coupon & ebate to save even more. Cpu from Buy.com also come w/ 3 yrs. warranty.
I made the mistake of buying from one of those pricewatch store that only have 15-60 days warranty. Didn't read the fine print when I was ordering. No return, only exchange if defective. I was planning to cancel my order and buy it Buy.com so that I could take advantage of that 3 yrs. warranty. Oh well, no loss. I will probably upgrade again in six more months.

 

[paulip88]

Diffusion,
That's pretty interesting. Seems like an awful lot of work to get rid of the pins if they were only doing it for a week. Seems like getting rid of the pins would require a significant overhaul of their packaging process.

 

[Diffusion]

It was just a brief problem and then AMD reverted back, those pins control nothing but the modification of the multiplier, here is the cached link relating to it.
8/28/00 - Saddened to report we have our first confirmed report of AMD's new successor to the Duron and Athlon, the Pin-is-gone chip on sale to the public. "I just talked to my local computer parts shop. Every Duron and Thunderbird they got in all had the multiplier pins removed. . . . I didn't get to view the chips myself, but I instructed him to look at the pin side of the chip, the side that actually plugs into the socket. He told me on one edge there were obvious pins missing. It's like they're not there." http://www.google.com/search?q=cach....asp+overclockers+missing+pin+duron&hl=en