Freespeed Pro GFD
Tech Specs:Overclock your Athlon via the Gold Finger connector
Range from 500MHz -> 1050MHz
Featuring: Red Power LED
Ever since the AMD Athlon was first opened up, the discovery of these small metal contacts at the top of the PCB (now known as a Gold Finger) has caused many companies to create a add-on for the Athlon, which enables users to overclock the Athlon CPU. They enable the user to adjust the resistance values in the circuits on the Athlon which in turn determine the multiplier setting on the processor (which on Intel CPU's can't be changed). A UK-based company called Ninja Micros has created a Golden Finger card for over clocking the AMD Athlon CPU called the "FreeSpeed Pro".
Athlon processors currently can be overclocked by applying different voltages and resistances to the Golden-Fingers edge connector. On the Athlon there are two things which you can change - the core voltage supplied to the CPU and the CPU speed multiplier that is applied to the CPU to determine the clockspeed with respect to the chosen FSB.
The FreeSpeed Pro was the second commercial card to hit market and has the distinct advantage of being less expensive than the competition (plus smaller and more efficient). Ninja Micro kept the board small and used the less expensive dip-switch method to adjust resistance values, which have proved to benefit and also show up a flaw in the card.
The FreeSpeed Pro is very small and it sticks vertically up from the Golden Finger connector. It also does not come with a method of securing it to the Athlon, but due to it's smaller size, it stays on the Golden Finger connector fine anyway and so there is no need for it to be secured. You connect a standard 4-pin power cable to the FreeSpeed Pro to give it power to overclock the Athlon and also the LED showed the unit to be working by lighting up when the system is powered on.
of all we powered up the system with no freespeed in it to test the initial
setup and as expected, it worked fine - showing the usual high speeds of an
Athlon CPU. We then set the CPU to the normal speed with the freespeed (as in
550MHz) and booted the system. This proved to us that the freespeed powered
up and initially worked fine. Then, we went up in small increases of 50MHz as
recommended by Ninja Micros.
The FreeSpeed Pro was tested on an OEM Athlon 550 CPU that has a 650MHz core
and 3.6ns cache which is soldered to use a 1/3rds CPU speed divider - a standard
OEM heatsink was used. The CPU ran perfectly at 750MHz with a core voltage of
1.75 volts. By increasing the core voltage to 1.8 it would not go any further
in MHz stakes but this is due to the overheating of the Athlon which we are
sorting at the moment with the aid of better cooling.
from these early results you can see that this makes the FreeSpeed Pro the best
value for overclocking your Athlon CPU. The reason we wanted to use an OEM heat
sink was that everyone has access to them.
Even though I was unhappy about the Freespeed sitting on top of the Athlon,
my thoughts were re-assured once I saw how well the card worked. The FreeSpeed
Pro is the way to go to help keep costs down whilst over clocking your Athlon
CPU. After all, the whole purpose of overclocking is to save money by buying
cheaper CPU's and running them at higher than standard speeds.
Pros!
-Great Price!
-Easy to use - within 10 minutes we had our Athlon running at a higher and stable
speed
-Best way to save money with Athlon overclocking
-Excellent instructions
Cons!
-Dip switches were a pain to set
-Because it sticks up vertically, the FreeSpeed Pro can't be used with cases
which have the PSU over the CPU area.
-You void your AMD warranty by using it
