Whats the story on the multiplier lock?
The Athlon is multiplier locked; that is, it has a multiplier that is set during manufacture and is not intended to be changed. Intel’s Pentium II/III and Celeron processors are multiplier locked, as well. As mentioned above, it’s the multiplier that determines the speed of a particular Athlon. For instance, a 5X multipler makes an Athlon 500, while a 7.5X multiplier is found on Athlon 750’s. If you can change the multiplier, you can change the speed of the CPU. In the case of current Athlons, the multiplier can be set at anywhere from 5X to 10.5X, for a speed range of 500 MHz to 1050 MHz.
