Mini Review:  Only months after their introduction, there are now quite a few Athlon overclocking cards (Golden Finger Devices) available.  One thing that differentiates Innovatek's "Tweeking Device2" (yes, it is spelled "tweeking") is that it does not require power input. It's also very small, just over 1 inch square.

  We received a sample of version 2.0 of the TD2 from  highspeedpc.com and put it through our usual tests. I used a 550MHz retail Athlon (0.25 micron type) with an Alpha Cooler which we keep around for testing Athlon motherboards and OC cards. This CPU is known to overclock to 700MHz with full stability at 1.75 volts. It will run at 750MHz and 1.8 volts, but stability is not perfect.  The test setup included an Abit KA7 motherboard, 128MB of NEC PC-133 SDRAM (CAS3), and a Voodoo5 5500 video card.

Features:  The TD2 has settings for multipliers ranging from 5x to 10.5x, and core voltage adjustments from 1.60v to 2.05v.  

  Setup with the TD2 is simple, you adjust 8 DIP switches in a single bank, to set the CPU multiplier and core voltage.  The card sticks up vertically from the golden finger connector, but due to it's small size, you don't need to worry about how much clearance you have in your case. I set the DIP switches to 700MHz at 1.70 volts, and the system booted into Win98SE without a hitch.  Stability was very good at these settings.  I tried 750MHz at both 1.75v and 1.8 v, and while I could reliably boot into Windows, the system would hang during benchmarking.  The system was completely stable at 1.70 volts and 700MHz.

Quick Benchmarks: Athlon overclocking has been studied to death, so there's no need to go into detailed benchmarking. I was more interested in stability, and how well the TD2 worked at different settings.

Speed:       550MHz    600MHz     650MHz    700MHz

Norton        271.3        294.9        318.7       339.3
Rating 

3D Mark       3017         3184         3323       3400
2000

  Overclocking the system from 550MHz to 700MHz increased D3D performance by 12.5%, while CPU performance was increased 25%.  The system never hung or exhibited any signs of instability at any of these settings. 

Summary:  The Tweeking Device2 is a nice low cost version of a Golden Finger Athlon overclock card.  The small size is helpful if you have a small case, and the lack of a power connector can be helpful if you have lots of devices, and are running out of plugs.  The TD2 worked as well as any of the more expensive Athlon overclock devices, at a lower cost, and smaller size.  If you are putting together a low-cost, overclocked Athlon system, the TD2 is worth a look.

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