AMD X2s are unlockable too
REMEMBER THE FUSS about AMD X3 chips and the ability to unlock them? Well, it seems like AMD did the right thing, or didn't do the wrong thing, and the dual cores are unlockable as well.
You might recall there was some fuss about unlocking the X3s to X4s with a BIOS change. It wasn't a huge technical leap, just knowing the right obscure setting to change, and in no time, you had a fourth core. From what we are told, it still works, and that is the crux of the next step in this saga.
Early on, people were FUDing about the fourth core being there because of manufacturing defects. Hundreds if not thousands of unlocked X3s later, we have not heard one reliable report of a defective core. Four digit sample sizes are not conclusive, but to me, they are a good bet if you are spending three digits on a CPU. AMD took a beating, and now they are backhanding back.
The real debate was happening behind the scenes. AMD was considering hard locking enthusiasts out of the unlock. We have said this was a bad idea. The number of people unlocking versus the sales gain was a clear win for AMD. Two months later, no one at the local MicroCenter even remembered the unlock ability, so the number of unlocked cores will fade in short order. All blocking the ability now would do is bring it back in a negative way - imagine the headlines of "AMD cuts enthusiasts out". Luckily, this is not the case, and we hear sanity prevailed. There will be no official squashing of the fun, but it won't be endorsed or supported either.
Why is this important now? There is an X2 coming soon, but it is not a new die, it is an X4-2. The best news? According to the Korean site GiggleHD (translation here), these too can be unlocked. If this keeps up, we could see a resurgence in enthusiasm not seen since Intel started hard locking multipliers to save us from ourselves.
With any luck, such unlocking will continue, and instead of locking chips down to prevent [insert paranoid excuse here], both AMD and Intel will simply hard encode chips with their name and part number. This would prevent the selling of remarked, unlocked or whatnot chips, while still allowing enthusiasts to have their fun too. That would be a win-win for all. µ
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May I kindly remind the gentleman from Lá Inq of said article - http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/unlock-phenom-ii,review-31556.html
Free lunch? X2 for the price of X4? I think not.
is an Athlon X2, the 7750, not the Callisto dualie. The AMD blog post was good though. Chuckled while reading it.
@Someone Special,
I'm running a 720BE QUAD CORE at 3.2Ghz on the stock cooler, in the miserably hot tropical summer. You can't hang AMD for not giving you a quad for the price of a triple core. You get a quad, lucky you, you don't, you've still got a stonker of a processor that defeats the competition (E7500/E8400) pretty nicely at that price point.
Oh and that Phenom FX 7750 branding(refer screenshot in the giggleHD l'inq) sounds verry tempting. Bring it on AMD!
I really do hope that AMD keep this up. Sure a few enthusiasts will unlock the chips and gain the extra cores (be it 1 or 2 extra cores) but I dare say the majority of these chips sold will be sold in bargain PCs anyway to people who wouldn't consider overclocking.
But if they do keep this option open to enthusiasts then hopefully it'll drive a whole load of people back to AMD and in the end increase the profits a little bit.
My next build is going to be an AMD system. Sods law being an AMD reseller I was offered a complete Dragon system (Phenom 2 X4 920 or 940, motherboard and video card for about £200 including delivery - the CPU was free) but I didn't have the funds. Still I can't complain, I took up the offer of a free Phenom X4 last year and sold a few extra Phenom systems because of it.
Hopefully my next build when funds allow will be an AM3 Phenom on an AM2+ board (I have a stack of DDR2 memory sitting around) and then I'll be able to upgrade to a AM3 board and DDR3 when prices come down a little. Sod buying a Core i7, sure they may be the fastest thing out there but I can't warrant spending in the region of £500 on a board and CPU right now.
Rob
It sounds like Bo making case to get good deal open small one up. Yet, actual reason, if you remember debate at time, was that core 4 was almost never used(15%). Waste of Monies. So almost exact same performance with X3, apparently.
Now with more sophisticated Cross Bars/s fastest Pace Internally & better software caching, More Cores May Be Useful result. XUseable Cores. drashek
We received two X3 samples from AMD for our video on the new Phenom II AM3 lineup. The 720 BE didn't unlock but the 710 did (and overclocked to boot).
You've implied in your article that unlocking is a guarantee, but applying ACC to the 720BE that we have results in no POST, then disabling it again causes it to work fine again.
Linus: yeah, the X3s that unlock come from a specific week in February this year, I think. AMD probably fixed the problem long before this article was even typed up.
Are you the guy from NCIX Tech Tips? The one that broke the pin on one of the chips :)
Great videos :)
These unlocks are great for AMD. They'll get a few enthusiasts back to the AM2+/AM3 platform with the budget x2/x3, with a chance they'll stay with the platform and swap in a speedier x4 as a quick upgrade later on.
I will never trust anything processed using that defective core. They disabled that part for a reason, so it's only logical that i leave it alone. Think if they were perfect, AMD themselves could have charged more for it and sell as a 4 core chip, but instead, when certain tests corrupted data or something, they decided to block that part and sell as a lesser 3 core chip.
Maybe for gaming and while messing around it might be worth it but when it comes to serious work, work that you can't/won't be able to repeat, you must stay on a sure bet. Or otherwise if you're desperate or don't give a sh_t for your data then you can take the risk, I can't be bothered repeating - life's just too short.
Sony said they'll do the same to the 8-core cell... and something about, getting all 8 cores to come out perfect from the factory was not possible and so they decided to disable the defective 1 core and did that even to the perfect 8-core cell to keep it compatible with all the 7-core defective cells. So 1 PS3 won't be faster than the other. And anything below the minimum 7-core, they were going to put a few of these together and sell it as some workstation or something like that.... how far have they gone with the plan? I'm not sure. The point is when you have multiple chips on one piece of silicone the chances are you are not going to get 100% of them perfect, probably why intel used 2 dual-cores in their quad.
Bye. Jon.
I have read many accounts of unlocking not being successful, the fourth cpu was defective and made the system unstable.
I think there is a bios update coming to make unlocking no longer possible.
There is also a claim that the cache in some of the 4mb cpus is unlockable.
Don't expect to benefit from unlocking.
I wonder if Charlie would consider this "ability" to be poor design or deceiving marketing if the green team or intel had done this. Not like this is an important comment but neither are most of charlies flame articles so I feel entitled to throw in my two-cents.
Hey "They lock it for a reason"Jon - your FUD would have a little more credibility if you hadn't said " The point is when you have multiple chips on one piece of silicone the chances are you are not going to get 100% of them perfect"…
… If you spent more time studying the chemical element siliCON and less time trying to eat your dinner off the stuff they put in women's tits, I might have believed you.