10.I've heard of 'remarked' chips. How can I tell if mine is legitimate?

Unfortunately, with the enormous amount of money to be made these days in the sale of processors, some unscrupulous individuals have taken to remarking processors at higher than their rated speeds and selling them as faster chips.

Remarking is usually done by changing the exterior writing that indicates the processor speed. The end user then unknowingly sets the chip to run at a speed higher than the manufacturer intended.

There are some ways of telling whether your processor is remarked or not, though there's really no way to prove conclusively that the chip you have is genuine.

You can download the Processor Frequency ID Utility on Intel's Site, which was developed by Intel Corporation to enable consumers the ability to identify and, in some circumstances, determine if their Intel processor is operating at the correct and rated frequency intended by Intel Corporation. Beginning with the Pentium® processor, this utility provides consumers with the ability to determine standard CPU identification of Intel processors. In addition, supported processors can utilize the Frequency Test feature of the utility to help determine if a processor has been overclocked.

Version 3.5 of the Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility has been updated to support the new Pentium® 4, Pentium III, Mobile Pentium III with Intel SpeedStep™ technology, Pentium III Xeon™ and Intel Celeron™ processors with 66, 100, and 133 MHz system memory bus products, as well as adding new processor identification functionality (CPUID).