Intel clocking software found on Web

Updated A piece of software that appears to alter clock speed settings on some Intel motherboards from the DOS prompt is now available on a hardware Web site. Hard OCP has the 27KB utility up on its site, while over at Anandtech, the existence of the utility has attracted a stack of interest in the forum section. Meanwhile, a source inside Intel has provided more details of the utility. He said: "Only unlocked CPUs will go any faster -- the ones with 'Intel Confidential' on them. "PIII/600 'confidentials' will run at 650MHz -- but not very reliably. Also note that the latest BIOS for the original Seattle is modified to prevent people putting a PIII/500 or above in it (the VRM would blow up) so it also prevents PII 450s being newspeeded up to 500MHz - you need to go back to an earlier rev of the BIOS to do this. "Incidentally, the latest Sun River BIOS allows setting a wide variety of clock speeds in the BIOS setup for "engineering sample processor evaluation" -- you don't need newspeed at all." Meanwhile, an Intel representative has confirmed the software was designed by the company. He said: "This is a pre-production piece of software for testing system configurations. Early samples of new microprocessors are controllable through that piece of software, but it only works with the early parts." He said that the software was intended for internal use only, and not intended to be publicly available. The Webmaster of HardOCP, as well as a myriad of other individuals, are busy running the utility through its paces, and attempting to understand its function. As revealed here exclusively yesterday, NEWSPEED.EXE is a piece of software designed by Intel and available only to its own staff and its OEM customers. Minutes after we posted the story, the utility started to pop up at sites all over the place. Over the weekend, we will collate the work the hardware techies have put together about the utility. There are messages on our forum about the utility. ® Related Stories Intel has software to overclock chips