Oxymoron of the day: Journalistic Integrity
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AMD shouldn't kill core unlocking
ONE INTERSTING BIT that no one seems to have noticed recently centers around the AMD tri-core CPUs and unlocking. Last week it was revealed that you can unlock the fourth core on just about any Phenom with a BIOS setting.
The unwashed hordes soon bought out every three-core AMD product on the shelves, and the chipmaker is basically reporting that they are all sold out. The X3 720 Black CPU seems like a screamingly good deal right about now, and people are noticing.
This brings up two issues. One is a potential for marketing sillyness, the other simply funny. The marketing side is that AMD is sure to have noticed that people are able to unlock the tri-core Phenoms, and will be having a hand-wringing session on how to stop it. The short answer is that they shouldn't, at all... period.
The knee-jerk response is that it will cost them sales of quad-cores, and it may, but how many? It is the hot topic right now, but in a month, it will be forgotten about. The Best Buy set will not know or care about unlocking their chip, and the small number of enthusiasts who will do it are the people you want promoting your product to their friends.
The small amount of cannibalisation that occurs will be more than made up by word of mouth sales. Would you rather have one up-sell, or three new customers? Short story, let it be, and don't ever 'break' the hack in a later BIOS. 99 per cent won't ever do it, the other one per cent will be great ambassadors. All you will 'fix' by blocking this is their enthusiasm and pent-up good will.
That brings us to the funny part, the unlocked cores themselves. Remember the massive FUD campaigns about a broken core? By now there are thousands of people who have unlocked their three-core Phenoms, and the message boards are notably not filled with people complaining about the flaky fourth core. There may be one or two, but when I looked a few days ago, I couldn't find one.
This means that the fourth core is functional in all but a very small number of chips, and the chips are likely binned down to three cores for something other than work/fail. I would bet on power, but who knows? In any case, it might be interesting to see if you can plumb the chip yields with a web site poll on good/bad fourth cores.
Someone want to set it up? µ
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They just merged with ECS in 2005
The three core version exists so that MB Makers can use crappy 3phase supplies on their budget motherboards without the PS cooking.
Is PC-Chips still in business? Their boards were great when you wanted to find out if increased power demands would cook a MB.
Peter, there's a neat tool called "Prime95" that will find any problems in the newly-active core. Prime95 is really new and only just came out in 1996 which is why you may not have heard of it yet.
If all you're running is games, and you don't care about your e-mail and documents potentially being corrupted/incorrect/who knows what then play the unlocking game.
Until then, it's bullshit - your data should be more important than saving 50 quid. Unless, of course, Charlie has cast iron proof core disabling is due to something as (relatively) harmless as out of spec power consumption.
When people played the graphics card unlocking game they found some cards were unlockable, whilst others were genuinely broken. CPUs are working on real data, and not just images on a screen.. (ok, now CUDA et al is around, you shouldn't unlock graphics cards for the same reason..)
One more thing, and question dedicating to INQ. How about keeping Core disabled but enabling only Cache of fourth core, is it possible!?!, New FAT Cache AMD!!! which is in rumors.
Smart move to escape from "over cheap" a.k.a unfair business competition lawsuit. It was deliberate.
...I can see AMD phasing out the 3core chips pretty soon dual and quad is all you'll get.
Shame as I was quite set on a new 3core before all this came out. A mate asked why I didnt want to go i7, when I told hime I dont like paying over £200 for a motherboard he had to agree.
When they lock things up, I don't think they are worrying about enthusiasts but more about low-level white box seller misrepresenting their product. When it's a one time thing like this 3-4 unlock, it's probably ok but not so good when people just keep selling lower bin chip overclocked as if it's normal.
The same logical argument applies to multiplier locking. The vast majority of CPUs will end up used by ordinary punters in OEM machines with an OEM BIOS with no way to change the multi anyway, and the crazy overclockers are the best PR money can't buy. So quit locking the chips like a bunch of selfish crybabies!
this 4th core unlock is an accident on purpose! if y'know what it means!
Using Prime95 ought to test the CPU to it's limits. It will stress all 4 cores of the CPU to their maximum, if it falls over after a few runs, just go back into the BIOS and disable the 'hack'. If you want to be captain cautious, you can always set Prime95 to run for a number of hours and leave it running over night. It's used by benchmark-ers and overclockers the world over to see if their systems will stay stable, I can't see this instance being any different.
I'd be surprised if this "hack" wasn't a deliberatly left open back door in the first place.....seems way too easy to enable this feature and it's the first really positive AMD publicity I've heard since core 2 debuted. Maybe that's just coincidence and i'm way too cynical! Anyway don't these guys have tons of experience in irreversabily crippling graphics chips to create tiered markets to make an "error" like this?
Charlie this is about the best article I've EVER seen you write.
AMD listen up...this is some great advice.
This is not the time to screw ur customers...not now..not....now..
Any one know how you should check the 'enabled' cache of your CPU for errors?
and to test a CPU core for errors?
The fourth core is probably power hungry but you did get that one for free so no need to complain about it.
No point blaming M$ again if the buggy fourth core is to blame ;-)