Tuesday, August 11th 2009
Sempron 140 Unlocks to Athlon II X2
It has been done over and over again, and each time new AMD processors successfully unlock disabled cores (dubbed "defective"), it only makes us wonder if it is a deliberate attempt by the company to make buying its cheaper processors potentially rewarding. It has been discovered that AMD's recently announced Sempron 140 single-core processor can be transformed into a dual-core Athlon II X2 series processor with a simple, well-known trick. This comes as no surprise, as the "Sargas" core the processor is based on, is made by disabling one core on the Regor dual-core die.
The trick requires a motherboard with AMD SB710 or SB750 southbridge that supports the Advanced Clock Calibration feature. Not all motherboards, however, support this mod. By simply enabling the feature in the BIOS setup program, the system will be able to address both processor cores, with the complete feature-set of Athlon II X2. The staff behind the feat over at Thai techsite VModTech tested for the unlocked core's stability with much success. At 3.71 GHz (13.5 x 275 MHz @ 1.536 V), the processor stood SuperPi, WPrime, and WinRAR bandwidth tests. Validation can be found here. At around $40, here's the cheapest ticket to a dual-core processor that looks $80 Intel processors in the eye.
Source:
VModTech
The trick requires a motherboard with AMD SB710 or SB750 southbridge that supports the Advanced Clock Calibration feature. Not all motherboards, however, support this mod. By simply enabling the feature in the BIOS setup program, the system will be able to address both processor cores, with the complete feature-set of Athlon II X2. The staff behind the feat over at Thai techsite VModTech tested for the unlocked core's stability with much success. At 3.71 GHz (13.5 x 275 MHz @ 1.536 V), the processor stood SuperPi, WPrime, and WinRAR bandwidth tests. Validation can be found here. At around $40, here's the cheapest ticket to a dual-core processor that looks $80 Intel processors in the eye.
65 Comments on Sempron 140 Unlocks to Athlon II X2
we were discussing this in another thread here on TPU, and it made me all sad that my media PC's board only has SB700 :(
for basic stuff this would be good is is guaranteed an unlock tho?
Have an Phenom II X2 BE + Biostar 790GX board unopened sitting on my desk. Not sure if the BE will unlock to 4 cores, what batch should it belong to?
may be I should try this sempron lol.
hmm... I think I might be going AMD next time around :P.
here = a good list of batches, and people successes and failures with unlocking boards/chips/batch
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103698&Tpk=Sempron%20140
:P