AMD Thunderbird & Duron Overclocking Revealed

In the end, using a combination of Tom Shaver’s pointers, the technical savvy of Ace’s Hardware readers, Hiroji’s experiments with the AZ-11 and of course Dr. Pabst’s overclocking guides we managed to come up with a method for modifying the FIC AZ-11 that would enable the ability to overclock our CPUs, both engineering samples and currently available parts. 

Below you can see a picture of the finished product, it can be cut down in size tremendously by using less wire and a smaller perf board but the point of this was to illustrate that it can be done. Take note that we used the bottom of the PS2 connector as a ground of the dip switches.

Click to Enlarge

Hiroji also provided information on how to adjust the voltage sent to the CPU using another modification to the AZ-11, and if you’re interested you can read about it at his site, however we simply chose to connect the “Golden Bridges” using a conductive pen at L7 on our CPUs to increase the core voltage to improve stability when overclocking. 

Thunderbird core voltage settings