News ASRock unlocks extra cache and cores on Phenom II

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2009/03/20/asrock-unlocks-phenom-ii/1

ASRock says it can unlock the full 6MB of L3 cache on some Phenom II X4s, as well as the fourth core on some Phenom II X3s.

 

works on DFI lanparty jnr to
anyone know for sure which cpu batch no it works with?

 

It should be an enthusiast thing, if every moron will know it - what's the point?

 

If it means getting a 45nm quad chip for about £120, it looks like awesome value. I can't help thinking that AMD locked one of the cores for stability reasons or something.

 

I doubt there are enough CPU's with 1 dodgy core to meet demand....but then I have have no idea what the percentage of dodby cpu's they get per batch....but i still doubt it

 

Baically AMD disables one core on the x4's if there is a faulty one and sells it as a x3, due to the ususal higher market demand for lower priced cpus they also have to disable a core on some perfectly good x4's to meet x3 market demands. Anyway, I've tried to enable the 4th core on my 720BE / Gigabyte board and while it's cpu-z stable as soon as I try to apply any real load to the 4th core the system immediately bluescreens, but it's all down to luck if it works or not.

 

does AMD even know/care that motherboard manufacturers are doing this? This would be a good incentive to start selling black edition quads for this price. maybe even with a really high multiplier to make an OC version compete with core 2 quads....

 

too bad my nForce750a cannot do this. Oh well, it's not like one more core would help in games anyway ..

 

They are aware and they asked them to stop, but they can't really force anything since too many are doing it and the bios versions that allow it have already reached consumers.

 

if they released the batch numbers of chips that work!

 

The point is more bang for your buck and less artificial inflation of prices for higher-end CPU's.

Don't get elitist. It's why we end up paying a premium for the fastest CPU even though it is only marginally faster than the next in the line.

 

The X3 720 '0904' production chips seems to unlock well, whether they are stable enough to fully utilise, let alone overclock, seems to be down to luck::

 

Also, the average user is more terrified of the BIOS, than a venomous snake

 

my mom once thought she had the 'blue screen of death' when she accidentally brought up the BIOS..

 

Two of my 730s happily showed the fourth core (others are in mobos without the ACC), both are stable but one of them doesn't overclock - while stable on default clock, it crashes with even the slightest touch of OC. On the other hand, the second one runs fine @ 4.4Ghz (watercooled) crunching numbers 24/7 on all four cores. From what I've seen on the net, there are batches that can't use the fourth core, most can but are unstable, but about 10-20% of all are simply full-featured X4s with one (good) core disabled probably due to larger demand for cheaper X3s.

 

4+GHz 45nm quad core for £120, a lucky bargain of the year!!

 

it's really nothing new, as gigabyte already announced it 2 weeks ago:
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,180.0.html
there are 6 mobos from them which support this