The ability to unlock the disabled core on Phenom II X3 processor draws parallels with the days when one could soft-mod a NV40-based GeForce 6800 XT to higher models. An article by Korean website Playwares made waves on the internet yesterday, which suggested a very easy method to unlock the disabled core on Phenom II X3. Several users have been able to verify and confirm the method works. While Playwares used a Biostar-made motherboard, people with ACC-supportive motherboards from several makes have been able to get the mod to work. Motherboard vendors performed their own testing to confirm this method, and have had some success so far.

The success of this mod however, depends on a few factors:

• The disabled core AMD notes to be "unstable", should be fit-enough to be at least enabled and working
• The motherboard should support the Advanced Clock Calibration feature, which currently only motherboards with AMD's SB750 southbridge chip support
• The Phenom II X3 processor should belong to the 0904 manufacturing batch, these should be some of the initial batches of the processor, and may still be found with retailers

Considering AMD doesn't have an AM3-socket CPU featuring 6 MB of L3 cache out in the market yet, this opens up a good opportunity to get a taste of Phenom II X4 AM3 chips at a lesser price, but then again, you might need some luck to get the chip belonging to the right batch.