Friday, March 5th 2010
ASRock enables ACC on AMD 8-Series Chipsets to Unlock Disabled Cores
AMD ACC is a feature of the company's 7-Series chipsets which uses a debugging backchannel going from the Southbridge to the processor to change certain CPU aspects, one of them being the "disable cores" feature on modern AMD CPUs. This allows you to play the AMD Casino, go get a cheap triple core, unlock its fourth core and hope it works (it usually does).
As you can imagine, AMD is not all excited about this feature being used by most motherboard manufacturerers, so they left out the ACC interface in their 8-Series Southbridge, effectively disabling access to ACC. Now motherboard manufacturers found a solution to circumvent this limitation, they simply add a little chip to the motherboard that enables that functionality by providing its own ACC interface.
ASRock - well known for their price/performance optimized boards - went this route and a bit further. Unlike other solutions the feature can be enabled without a physical switch, ASRock's UCC feature can be controlled directly in the BIOS without any manual intervention by the user.
The option will be available on all their 8-Series motherboards: 890GX Extreme3, 890GMH/USB3, 880GMH/USB3. They also managed to add the same technology to their NVIDIA MCP62 based lineup.
ASRock - well known for their price/performance optimized boards - went this route and a bit further. Unlike other solutions the feature can be enabled without a physical switch, ASRock's UCC feature can be controlled directly in the BIOS without any manual intervention by the user.
The option will be available on all their 8-Series motherboards: 890GX Extreme3, 890GMH/USB3, 880GMH/USB3. They also managed to add the same technology to their NVIDIA MCP62 based lineup.
28 Comments on ASRock enables ACC on AMD 8-Series Chipsets to Unlock Disabled Cores
It makes me wonder why AMD hasn't changed the way they disable features on the processor though, if they hate up enabling them so much...
:confused:
EDIT:
Oh, helps to read entire posting, sooo sorry.:)
AMD=ACC
ASRock=UCC
www.asrock.com/feature/UCC/index.asp
ASRock mobos seems interesting, just that cheap look always say to me "stay away from that sh*t". :D Srry, but design is needed too.. Well and I dont like ASUS, but thats other thing and ASRock is quite different.. even if its only department..
[EDIT] Shit... 880G has a Realtek audio chip, 890GX has a VIA? Why? Uhg... I mean, I have a Creative XtremeGamer, but still, just having the VIA chip that's in my current ASUS board makes me feel like I'm getting worse sound quality! Realtek FTW.
www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=eCWbkolMf0DOW0IV&templete=2
"A core is a terrible thing to waste" :laugh:
I own a ASrock N68-S and used to own a ASrock X58 Extreme. The N68-S is perfect, it cost about $40 new, and I was able to overclock my Athlon X2 to 3GHZ. Not only that, but it supports AM3 processors (95W and less)
The X58 Extreme was perfect, it offered more features than any other motherboard in its price range ($180) and overclocked extremely well for the price. In fact at one point, it had 60+ 5 egg reviews on newegg, and THAT WAS ALL, NO 4 STAR, NO 3 STAR, ECT. I ended up selling it for $110 in a Christmas deal, the current owner loves the board. It would even be a good buy today, because although its lacking SATA 6GB/s and USB 3.0 the very last slot on the board is a PCI-E x16 slot (Runs at either x4/x8) which would be perfect to put a USB3SATA6 card.
When you think about it, the slot layout on the 890GX Extreme3 is perfect, because if you do Crossfire, you still have a PCI-E and PCI slot you can use, and if you do 3-way you still have a PCI-E slot you can use.
I assume the 790FXA was made to hold people off until 890FX drops.
Now i believe these board could be branded ASUS W/S and everyone would believe it!!!:toast::toast::toast:
sure they wear out before the high end brands, but thats to be expected - they use(d) cheaper capacitors n such back then. asrock are more midrange as opposed to low end these days.
It died after a month of use and I wrote it off since I bought it in the states and I am back in Israel now.
Yesterday I decided to get in touch with ASRock about an RMA since I had nothing to lose and they've been very quick and responsive, even forwarding my mail to a closer location so that I don't have to ship it that far.
Some of their newer boards are also really nice, they've been really picking up gear lately.
Liking that their starting to make their boards more aesthetically pleasing : ]
Asrock motherboards has improving substantially, but there quality leaves lot to be desired because they only have 1 year warranty VS Gigabayte, MSI, Asus, EVGA, Zontac 3 years warranty.
The quality equals warranty, the price difference between same models by different manufacturers is marginal as well as that majority of customers use same system over 2 - 3 years hence the importance of 3 year manufacturer - wholesaler warranty. ;)