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Please be advised that the following article deals with overclocking and possible modifications to your AMD processor. This will void your warranty, and VL will accept no responsibilities if your computer melts down and flaming midgets exit your floppy drives.

• It's a matter of days before the latest in AMD's arsonal splashes on to the scene, and you're probably looking at that brand new CPU you just bought 15 minutes ago and asking yourself why? Truth is, there really isn't a good time to buy a CPU, as there is always something newer on the horizon.
  
  All is not lost though, as there is a strong chance you got a fair amount of headroom for overclocking. For those of you who do not know, overclocking is the art of pushing a piece of hardware beyond manufacturer specifications. From CPUs, to memory, to video cards, each item can be pushed a little harder to squeeze more performance out of your setup. Today, we're going to focus on CPUs, the AMD Athlon XP in particular, and we'll be covering the Palomino, the Thoroughbred and the Barton models. We'll be covering how to unlock them, how to overclock them, cooling tips, and some benchmarks to prove a point regarding the CPU Ratio and Front Side Bus.
  
  In order to save a bit of time, and get right to the point, I'm not going to go into great details about each of the chip's particular architecture, 166/333 FSB explanations, debate about performance ratings, and ramble on about motherboard technology. We covered several AMD CPUs and motherboards here at VL, so please feel free to go over the reviews if you would like to know more about those topics.

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