Saturday, April 25th 2009
Athlon X2 7750 BE Unlocked to Quad-Core
Earlier this year, a Korean source had pointed out an easy method to enable a fourth core on the Phenom II X3. This was made possible by the way AMD has been designing its triple-core and dual-core processors based on the K10 "Stars" architecture: by disabling one or two cores on the quad-core die. "Sloppy" BIOS coding lead to the Phenom II X3 anomaly. It looks like a somewhat similar mod enables not one, but two cores on the sub-$100 Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition. A Korean technology website GiggleHD.com has reported a successful unlock of two cores.
The method is similar to that of the Phenom II X3 unlock: using flaws in BIOS code to enable cores, by enabling the "Advanced Clock Calibration" feature in the BIOS setup. The OS, Windows XP SP3, was able to see the processor as a "AMD Phenom(tm) FX-7750", while CPU-Z reads the name string correctly and lists the core count as 4. The motherboard in use is an ASRock A790GX/128M.
Source:
Gigglehd.com
The method is similar to that of the Phenom II X3 unlock: using flaws in BIOS code to enable cores, by enabling the "Advanced Clock Calibration" feature in the BIOS setup. The OS, Windows XP SP3, was able to see the processor as a "AMD Phenom(tm) FX-7750", while CPU-Z reads the name string correctly and lists the core count as 4. The motherboard in use is an ASRock A790GX/128M.
109 Comments on Athlon X2 7750 BE Unlocked to Quad-Core
I would rather like to see more efficient native dual- and tricores in the future.
Seriously, think about it: AMD use all native-quads for their different lineups, and one day, slips a bios or some patch that unlocks dormant cores... if its true, AMD are w1zzards lol.
This gives their processors so much value, alot of heads (and wallets) will turn.
About what npp said: its all about volume. sell thousands of cheap parts, instead of hundreds of more expensive ones. if the average joe see the potential in buying a dual-core which is dirt-cheap, and unlocking it to tri or quad, he will sure be happy and buy loads of these chips. this has a good profit potential for AMD.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I got my gf a 7750, I bumped the voltage up a few ticks, uped the multi to 3.3ghz and bam, no one issue. Thats on a stock cooler. I lined some 120mm's up to blow on the HS and now it runs at 39c under load, gonna go for 3.4ghz or more 24/7 clocks, that would have been very difficult to pull off in the 9850 or 9950. So they strategy in my mind is working fantastically!
Just waiting on some confirmation
I know I can unlock my 720BE on the BIOS version before this one, which was the first to support PII, and now I can't on the newer one (the older version was so buggy it made overclocking a chore).
forums.vr-zone.com/news-around-the-web/423356-amd-athlon-64-x2-7750-can-unlocked-quad-core-update.html#post6666313
And oh make sure that hack is set for NV boards too;)
But still PII rules:rockout:
J.J Drangon did test in 3DMark for understand difference between Unlocked Kuma and Default Kuma.