Athlon II X3 435: Fourth Core?

[aaron_c]

Hey guys, I was talking to a guy today who 'seemed' to know what he was talking about, but we all know how that can go. He told me that with a triple core, there are four physical cores and that it is relatively easy to unlock the fourth core. Is this true? If so, is it dangerous and is it hard to do?

thanks

 

[jennyh]

AMD don't deliberately make 3-core cpu's. All of these are quad cores that had one 'faulty' core disabled.

It can be done, it's being done a lot and has been for the past year. There are no guarantees however - if you get one that really had a bad 4th core then too bad.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

It is possible, but there is no guarantee that you can unlock a 4th core.
Even if you do unlock the 4th core, there is no guarantee that it will run stable or at the same clock speed as the other cores.

The risk for unlocking the last core on a triple core is less than trying to unlock 2 cores on a defective quad that they turned into a dual core.

If you want a quad core, get a quad core - the gamble for dual/triple cores don't always pay off. If the price different is really great, then get the triple and try your luck at unlocking.

 

[caamsa]

I have the X3 425 and I was able to unlock the 4th core and the L3 cache but you can only do it on some mother boards that have ACC and then you need to get lucky. Mine seemed to work fine but after I turned the computer off and then tried to turn it on again later that day I had to push the power button a couple times to get it to fire up so I set it back to default. I have not played with it since. But I have heard stores about people who run theirs with 4 cores unlocked all the time.

 

[aaron_c]

Sounds risky and sketchy, I think I'll just leave it alone. Thanks for the replies!

 

[Herr_Koos]

I have the X3 425 and I was able to unlock the 4th core and the L3 cache but you can only do it on some mother boards that have ACC and then you need to get lucky. Mine seemed to work fine but after I turned the computer off and then tried to turn it on again later that day I had to push the power button a couple times to get it to fire up so I set it back to default. I have not played with it since. But I have heard stores about people who run theirs with 4 cores unlocked all the time.

The Athlon isn't supposed to have any L3 cache.... Yours must be a very early model, because on the latest ones the L3 simply isn't there.

 

[megamanx00]

^+1

Yeah, the ones with L3 are simply crippled Phenoms. It's possible it had an L3 bug and was thus turned into an Athlon II X3.

Anyway, you may or may not be able to unlock the core. Like the others have said, there was a reason that it was deactivated. It may be that your CPU simply needs more voltage to run all four cores stable, or the 4th core could simply be defective and produce incorrect results. You won't know until you try it and test it. Even if you don't unlock the core, you may just want to overclock it to get some extra performance out of it ^_^

 

[aaron_c]

What program do I need to overclock it, and how much is still pretty safe?

 

[padlius]

Ye, how do you do it, I want to do with mine.

 

[green300]

You need a motherboard with a 750 or 710 Southbridge to unlock cores. What motherboard do you have ?

 

[simon12]

Sounds risky and sketchy, I think I'll just leave it alone. Thanks for the replies!

Its not really risky the worst that can happen is it doesn't work. Also when i read into it before I did it it looks like you are more likely to unlock the extra cores on a dual (550 or 555) than a triple.