If you want to have a look at what a FreeSpeed Card looks like from any angle, check out this VRML of a Revision 1 card (you will need the MetaStream 2.1 plugin to run it...it's only 600k to download, you may want to switch to Direct 3D mode in the viewer to make it smoother). The VRML model was kindly donated by the3rdaxis, very nice work!.

More news on Athlon 550s. We today received three more. Two were week 52, one was week 01. It seems that there is no way to tell what you are getting when buying as both the week 52s were 0.25 micron with 600Mhz cores and 3.6nS cache (even though they were from the same FAB as our last 750Mhz core one. 

The week 00 FAB 23 Athlon had a 0.18 Core :) , though it was marked K7650CURBBA we thought it would clock well......no such luck, this 0.18 core would not go above 650Mhz whatever we tried (voltage and cache speeds did nothing). It really does seem that not all 0.18 cores are the same.

We have ordered 2 more 550s from another supplier today, if they turn out to be the elusive 750s, we will post the suppliers web site. Also if anyone else knows of a definite source, please let me know. Fluke

27/01/00: Today I received the two 550 Athlons we had been promised. On first inspection we were really disappointed. This was the marking on top of the casing.

K7550MTR51B C

219952603752

We immediately thought....."C", 0.25 micron...........then we decided to inspect the core to confirm the labeling. This is what was written on the core

K7750CURAFC 

Finally a 750Mhz 0.18 core.......strange that the "C" was still present on the casing. The cache speed was 3.6nS which is ok for clocking.

First thing we did was attach a FreeSpeed and see what it would do in standard trim.....a rock solid 800Mhz. Next for the cache.....We adjusted the cache to 1/3 divider in hope of much higher speeds to come. (plus I don't really enjoy resoldering if 2/3s is no good). The result ?

One Athlon reached a rock solid 900Mhz..............the other hit 950Mhz. Both needed just 1.75v Core and only modest cooling (0.18 cores run very cool). Now with both tests we didn't have a good PSU handy (only 225W), way to low.....we suspect with a decent PSU and a K7M Motherboard for some FSB adjustment 1Ghz must be surely reachable.

All in all it looks like this is the new overclocking CPU to have. Week 52 550s from FAB 21 :) 

btw: We don't not have a definite supply of these yet, if we do find them, we will supply the 550s from our website. However, we have ordered two more from the same batch. We can supply these to anyone for £215 each (I know this is abit expensive, but we almost paid that ourselves, so the extra is just for shipping, we can also mod your cache if you require it).........the first two orders secure the 550s :) Fluke

26/01/00: Well, we were meant to get our 0.18 550 in today, though it turns out it may be only a 0.25 Core after all. However, the guys over at www.overclockers.co.uk have informed everyone on their news pages that they should have a batch coming in. I feel a pre-order coming on :) 

We now have a banner that anyone can use to link to us with. Many thanks to the editor of Super7.net who constructed it.

We are getting many emails each day on great core speeds from FreeSpeed overclocked Athlon 500s. It seems that 850Mhz is being achieved more and more. This is great news, and does seem to suggest that AMDs FABs are getting better all the time at making Athlons. Fluke

25/01/00: Another review is up at Lostcircuits, have a look :)

Wolfram Schlich (one of our German resellers), has kindly translated our FreeSpeed instructions into German for us. You can download a copy in MSword format here. Fluke

24/01/00: As you all probably already know, H Oda has released his software cache adjustment program. We must congratulate him on some very nice work.....no-one thought it could be done, however, for serious overclocking the program is of very little value. 

When your Athlons cache reaches its limit, your PC usually won't even post at startup let alone boot all the way into Windows (which this program requires to run). This means that the program could only ever solve stability problems in windows that are a direct result of your cache becoming unstable......this only probably happens in very few cases. Even so.......great work!, check it out.

Anandtech has just posted a great article on Athlon overclocking including a nice little review of our FreeSpeed card. Though our card did not come top (due to a 10$ higher price than our closest competitor), we feel our customer service more than makes up for it and we also include shipping in our prices :)) 

Hardware-Norge has also just posted a review of our FreeSpeed Card.

Mike West over at 3DNow! UK, has informed us of a rather cool guide they have just written to the superb Asus K7M motherboard........if you are lucky enough to own one of these boards, check it out. Fluke

20/01/00: First, a few more rumors concerning the long awaited 0.18 550 Athlons. How does this sound, 750Mhz Athlon 0.18 core with very fast cache ???, sounds like a possible candidate for 1Ghz :) . Remember, we have not seen one yet, and this may all be speculation (though the cache speed spec seems to have come from a AMD test sample press release) ...who knows :) , fingers crossed....we will keep you all posted.

www.gamers.com have updated there message boards, but in the process has lost 2 days of our posts, ohh well.......It does seems however much improved, though you now have to sign up for membership to post. There are lots of boards using this service so it's probably worth it.

Now we all like playing UT and Q2 on a LAN ?, well, we are going to try and arrange a LAN party for a few clans. We currently look like we have three clans interested,  including the guys over at Clan OCuk.  

We hope to book a function room (and bar of course :) .....and we will help supply the network and provide a NT server, (though we will need volunteers to help with admin and networking). 

Sounds like a great day/weekends fun.......if anyone in the UK is interested, please visit the UT section of www.clantiger.co.uk and mail the organizer "Flood", so he can get the ball rolling :)

Maybe if there is enough interest, we could provide prizes for the winning clan :)  Fluke

19/01/00: Some good news, we think we have secured a source for some 550Mhz 0.18 micron Athlons, and may get a sample next Wednesday. We will keep you all posted (1Ghz here we come :)

We have also found out a nice little hack for all you GEforce owners out there. If you are using the latest detonator drivers if you add this line to your registry, it enables Nvidias overclocking options in your display properties.

This is the location of the hack to add:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NvTweak]

Add this dword:

"CoolBits"=dword:00000003

This hack was borrowed from Tweak3D

17/01/00: Just got hold of a Annihilator Pro GEforce256 card today.....though so far have not seen much of a improvement in framerates over our old overclocked SDRAM board. Will try to get some good benchmarks in the next few days.

Saku has just increased his clock speed even further now to a staggering 945Mhz :) .......not far to go till the magic number :). 

In the mean time we have got our old 700Mhz Athlon to 900Mhz stable.....but feel it has alot more in it yet (even on air cooling), I feel a race to 1Ghz on the way :) Fluke

15/01/00: Hi, Our Clocking Competition has just been upped yet again :), Saku Lehtonen, one of our resellers, has just achieved a totally amazing 875Mhz! from his Athlon 500 using the standard 1/2 cache divider.......I can't see anyone being able to beat this :)

A new site worth a visit is K7 Core, they are trying to catalog trends and specs on all Athlon CPUs by week, please visit them and help the database grow. 

Those nice people over at Montac have just released two new cooling kits to go with there excellent Arctic Circle cooler. One kit is a Cache cooler, comprising of two fan units, and the other is a back plate cooler to help cool the rear of your Athlon. Excellent stuff guys!

We have just added a Press & User comment page.....please check it out to find out what people think of FreeSpeed. Fluke

14/01/00: Another FreeSpeed Review has now been posted at Hardwire. 

Could Troy Sandstedt get in touch with us, your given email address just bounces back as invalid. Thanks, Fluke

13/01/00: We are pleased to say that we now have had our FreeSpeed cards reviewed by two Hardware related web sites.

Please check out the reviews at www.bxboards.com and www.hwzone.it.

Many more reviews will be following shortly, we will keep you posted. Fluke

11/01/00: Hi all.....We have just got this photo from Thumper (one of our first ever customers). He has solved all his cooling problems as you can see :). You may ask where can I buy one ? ,well ........you can't, but to make one, just take 4*Celeron 500 coolers, glue together with thermal adhesive, patch together cooler power leads and you have a instant NINJA cooler :). Nice work! .

We have got some great news for all those looking for good Athlon 500 CPUs. We have been informed by one of our UK resellers, Power Computing, they now have stock Athlons which are proving very clockable.

Initial reports are of very high stable speeds, at standard Core Voltages and very cool running temps (only needing standard cooling even when clocked!) .........get your orders in fast :) Fluke

09/01/00: First, back by popular demand is our cheesy Bruce Lee piccy :). We'll just have to live with the possibility of legal action from the Lee family, though he surely would of used an Athlon CPU :)

Someone has posted on the msg board that there is a survey here, trying to find out cache speed trends in Athlons. Check it out.

Alot of people have been talking about cache adjustment, so today we decided to do some more cache tweaking tests, this time on our Athlon 700 system to get a good idea where this CPUs limits were being hit.

Here is the cache adjustment table we used

The first interesting thing we discovered was the cache setting resistors were the same arrangement as on an Athlon 500 with 1/2 divider (the 700 is meant to be different). Now our 700 until now has only ever been able to reach 800 and has always failed to even post 850. So we adjusted the cache to 1/3. That did the trick.....a rock solid 850Mhz at 1.75Vcore. Next for 900 *gulp*. The system posted fine but would not quite get into windows, even with a crazy 1.9Vcore. 

This proves that on a Athlon 700, the cache is holding you back around 50Mhz, but 900Mhz seems to be just to much for the core to handle. (though a later 700 core may have better luck).

One other interesting note is that though the system at 850Mhz feels very quick and most benchmarks confirm this, Quake2 now benches around 7 FPS slower......this may lead to the conclusion that it's better to have a 50Mhz slower CPU than have a faster one with slower cache :) .....at least as far as games are concerned (this would be offset if you could reach a extra 100Mhz)

So for all you folks already pushing your 500s to 850Mhz, think twice about cache adjustment, 900Mhz may not make as much difference as you would think.....and you are not going to get past 900 without sub zero cooling systems :)  

Please note that @ 850Mhz, heat is a real problem on .25 micron CPUs......our Arctic Circle unit is coping just fine, but is around 50% warmer than it was at 800Mhz. Fluke

08/01/00: We have just received a shiny new Arctic Circle Cooler from those nice people over at Montac. The unit is just pure quality and is by far the best cooler we have ever used, keeping our 800Mhz Athlon almost stone cold :). Check it out, definitely highly recommended. 

If anyone needs the latest shipping instructions on FreeSpeed fitting, you can download them here.  Fluke

05/01/00: A Couple of things worth a mention from the last few days.....

Many of you may of seen posts around the net concerning a new program due for release by the maker of WCPUID. This program will allow clocking of Athlons through software. After looking into it for a while I suspect these are its functions. It will allow FSB adjustment on all motherboards that support this function (only the K7M at present I think). It also allows for control of cache divider. This function sounds cool, but again I think it will only be available on future motherboards with a design to support this feature (maybe the next generation of boards due this quarter). So, at the end of a day, this utility will be really handy on next gen boards (remember though that clocking Athlons really needs Multiplier adjustment rather than FSB tweaking (which usually results in major stability problems)

We are currently thinking of a redesign of this site (I know it's bad :) ......frames will go, and we should have some cool new logos. Check out a beta logo here and let me know what you think. Cheers, Fluke

01/01/00: Happy new year everyone!. 

To kick off 2k we thought we'd offer the first order of the millennium FREE OF CHARGE, offer stands as of 12:08 GMT :). I will update this page as soon as we get the order. Fluke

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