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
i am wondering if the unlock works on this mainboard, its one of the cheapest with onboard video and the needed SB710
also the differences between 760g and 780g chipset only really matter if you using any sort of 3D apps right?
trying to come up with the best bang for the buck for folks to build :)
But it looks like most 770s are ATX.
Well, the price difference on a 780G and a 760G isn't much anyways, I will always go 780G just for the sake of it.
You could probably add in watching a DVD and not see over 25% CPU usage.
That is the beauty of the way computers work, they are able to prioritize foreground processes over background processes, so single core processor are able to function.
phenom II x3 720 ------ unlock to phenom II 920
athelon II x2 --------- unlock to 4 cores too , and become like phenom
and now sempron 140 ------ Unlocks to Athlon II X2
so which chips AMD made and disable them cores , and how much real cost for this cpu's to make AMD disable them cores and sell it in less price
Only thing worth some money and bragging rights are X3/X4 Athlons cause they're really cheap and sometime with just as little as 15% price up over some X2 240 you can get X3 425 and possibility to unlock the fourth core (or even in rare cases some PII X4). Well at least you get extra core and same ~3.6G OC for virtually same price.Unfortunatly these are not an old Athlon64 nor have anything to do withthem even old Athlon64 6500(B2)/7750/7850 were based on first generation Phenomsand latr two were just released after nobodyeven wanted 65nm Phenom after 45nm 920/940 and in fact to populate Am2 borads when AM3 was released. And many of them easily unlocks to X4 Phenoms.
And for the sake of today AthlonII line theyrre based on same C2 revision as current PhenomII just lacking that huge L3 on die, and AII X2 have fused two inactive cores and their working L2 cache has been given to active ones (2x512MB per core) so any dormant core unlock is impossible. While Semprons 140 are same thing as AII X2 hat just didnt pass some other core QC.
While some rare bigger bro X3/X4 Athlons are even based on full Deneb core with possible L3 unlock, and AII X3 based on Denebs most certainly unlocks 4th core but AII X3 based on Propus (original AthlonII core w/o L3 on die) dont unlock dead core for now (AII cores have much thorough binning procedures as you might see cause demand is greater for cheaper Athlon chips), and probably wont cause C2 and Athlon II line is going to be disband in Q1 in favor of C3 and even that will only be in limited X4 965/975, Thuban and X4 820 series while all other available will be based on old binning while stock lasts
As for voltage goes. I think even these insane 1.55V are safe for these 45nm chips. The weirdest thing is that all Athlon64 could handle such a high voltges ever since F2&F3 @90nm which were real 140W burners to these 45nm chips. It's strange for me too but this is something that K8/K8L architecture on SOI easily handles and after they uncore NB they can scale a hellawa better than before cause NB runs below 3Ghz and cores can easily reach 4GHz and beyond on air and even reducing number of active cores doesnt hep OCing much just reduces power consumption and that's so unfairly non-linear for 2-3 cores with L3 cache which is huge power consumer and doesn't support some of PowerNow for itself.