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The AMD Athlon hit the CPU world like a thunder strike, surpassing comparably clocked Intel CPUs and thrusting AMD into the forefront of the processor market. Online and print reviewers were quick to proclaim the Athlon a huge success, literally gushing over the integer, floating-point and 3D gaming performance of the new CPU. To be sure, the AMD Athlon has been a huge hit, but if the processor has one Achilles heel, it would be the initial inability to overclock it past its default core speed.

While Intel CPUs have long had their clock multiplier locked, the Athlon goes one step further and keeps not only the clock multiplier hidden, but the bus speed and core voltage as well. Initially, many thought that upcoming Athlon motherboards would take care of these limitations, supplying >100 MHz front-side bus speeds that would make Athlon overclocking a reality. After all, this has been a tried and true method of overclocking Intel CPUs and jacking the Celeron using the 66-to-100 MHz jump is firmly part of overclocking lore. Unfortunately, the relative instability of the AMD 751 chipset made running the Athlon at >100 MHz bus speeds a difficult proposition at best. While FIC and MSI offered FSB overclocking options, the ASUS K7M motherboard turned out to be the best of the lot, but even it did not guarantee greater than a 110 MHz FSB. Until a new AMD Athlon chipset appears, increasing the FSB is not going to be the panacea that many thought.