ASUS claim to have unlocked Conroes multi upwards via BIOS update...

Richdog · 1 Oct 2006 at 20:19

Read this on another forum and hadn't seen it here so thought I may as well post it. http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2822

Even more exciting is that ASUS says they have found a way to unlock up or down most Conroe chips. This will be a significant new feature that is highly desired by many Core 2 Duo buyers. It didn't take but a few minutes for us to get the new BIOS flashed and a Core 2 Duo chip mounted to check this out.

Anand couldn't get it to work properly from what I can see but it shows there's hope if ASUS believe it can be done. Unlockable multi on an E6600 would be sweet...

kleox64 · 1 Oct 2006 at 20:56

I dont see how as the CPU's are physicaly locked, more likely its a workaround.

Jokester · 1 Oct 2006 at 21:00

That's an old article, they only unlock downwards as far as I'm aware. Certainly hasn't been anyone posting on the forum saying that this BIOS has fully unlocked their chip.

Jokester

Richdog · 1 Oct 2006 at 21:06

Jokester said:
That's an old article, they only unlock downwards as far as I'm aware. Certainly hasn't been anyone posting on the forum saying that this BIOS has fully unlocked their chip.

Jokester

Damn you're right I didn't check the date of it... my bad.

Guess it was just baloney.

marscay · 1 Oct 2006 at 21:26

yep there was premature ejaculations all around on XS awhile back (well more than normal

) but it's BS.

Phunky Phish · 2 Oct 2006 at 12:06

May I ask...

That write up says the 6800 is the only chip unlocked both up and down, and that all other chips are physically locked both up and down.

Now if this was the case, how come ASUS has manged to unlock the multiplier downward?

And if they can unlock a physically downward lock chip, surely its a matter of time until they unlock it upward?

OR, do you think Intel have sent a warning shot telling them not to unlock upward, as this would flaw their pricing structure and chips! I mean, they would not mind you buying a 9x multipler and lowering it to say 6x, as you have bought a more expensive chip and are running it at a lower chips speed!

But if you could unlock upward, then everyone would buy lower speed chips as they could run them at the high chips speed with ease, and at a cost to Intel!!!

Me thinks more political (and financial) than not possible!!!

Cob · 2 Oct 2006 at 12:08

All Core 2 Duo's are unlocked downwards to the x6 multiplier so that Speedstep can work.

Durzel · 2 Oct 2006 at 12:15

Phunky Phish said:
May I ask...

That write up says the 6800 is the only chip unlocked both up and down, and that all other chips are physically locked both up and down.

Now if this was the case, how come ASUS has manged to unlock the multiplier downward?

And if they can unlock a physically downward lock chip, surely its a matter of time until they unlock it upward?

Basically it works as follows...

6800XE is hardware unlocked upwards and downwards.

Everything else, including the Step 5 ES chips, are hardware locked. The Asus BIOS basically fudge the same register that controls SpeedStep, so all its basically doing is telling the CPU to run with a lower multiplier after it has POST'd.

Speedstep allows any Conroe CPU to change its multiplier on the fly downwards (only ever down) to save power. It will never go above the hardware multiplier inside the CPU regardless of what you try and set it to.

XE chip multipliers could be changed before these new BIOS updates had come out, so there is something fundamentally different about them internally.

Devious · 2 Oct 2006 at 12:37

Step 4 ES chips are fully unlocked too.

Durzel · 2 Oct 2006 at 13:14

Devious said:
Step 4 ES chips are fully unlocked too.