AMD Duron overclocking project (English Version)

The FID story is quite simple. The FID is a 4-bit signal. Usually, for every bit a connection is made from the CPU to the northbridge. The northbridge connects the signal to Vio through a resistor. If nothing else happens to it, the signal line is "high". Through the mainboard, the socket, a pin on the Duron and the CPU itself the signal finally reaches one side of the golden bridges on top of the CPU. The other side of the golden bridges are connected with 0V.

For every bit the rule is that if its corresponding golden bridge is open, the bit is positive (1). A closed bridge means the bit is negative (0). Now what we want to accomplish is that the cpu isn't going to set these bits, but we set them ourselves instead. The solution is very simple: we use a soldering iron to remove the corresponding pins in the socket, which disables the bridges. Next we solder a wire to a set of jumpers or dipswitches, which wil take over the function of the golden bridges.

You can see what we did in this schematic. On the left is the situation before the "treatment" and on the right you can see the situation after our soldering iron did its work.


Step one is to detach the CPU's pins of the mainboard. The easiest way is by removing the corresponding connectors from the socket. It takes some effort to open the socket, but with a little handyness and some persistence it can be done. Next you remove the connectors by heating the solder of the four pins under the mainboard so you can pull out the pins very easily. We advise that you practice first on an old mainboard or a cheap slotket-convertor. You don't want to wreck your brand-new mainboard of course. The final result looks like this:


Step two is to make the connection between the jumpers/dipswitches and the connection under your mainbord which corresponds with the connectors you have just removed from the socket. If you're a little handy with the soldering iron it is all quite easy to manage.