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Chance to unlock to a Quad for under £50

I have to say getting my 45nm Athlon X2 5000+ unlocked and stable was a right pain. Strictly for enthusiasts only I would say. I think a lot of people would have written it off as a bad chip (L3 cache at least). It's a really delicate balancing act getting the memory controller / CPU-NB/ HT and related voltages to behave. I'm not sure it would be possible to get stable on some motherboards that have less control in BIOS than my HA08 Combo. I could see some of boards with ACC but lacking some of the other controls this Jetway has (a few MSI boards spring to mind) getting the unlock and then being left with an unstable memory subsystem.

Edit: If I'd actually had a bad core I'd have been scuppered on the unlock. Unlike ASUS, the BIOS on this board doesn't allow selective core unlocking.

Anyway - finally got around to running a benchmark (apart from just stability testing purposes) last night. How's 13600 (ish) in 3dMark06 with a 4850 @ stock sound?
 
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Uriel said:
I have to say getting my 45nm Athlon X2 5000+ unlocked and stable was a right pain. Strictly for enthusiasts only I would say. I think a lot of people would have written it off as a bad chip (L3 cache at least). It's a really delicate balancing act getting the memory controller / CPU-NB/ HT and related voltages to behave. I'm not sure it would be possible to get stable on some motherboards that have less control in BIOS than my HA08 Combo. I could see some of boards with ACC but lacking some of the other controls this Jetway has (a few MSI boards spring to mind) getting the unlock and then being left with an unstable memory subsystem.

Edit: If I'd actually had a bad core I'd have been scuppered on the unlock. Unlike ASUS, the BIOS on this board doesn't allow selective core unlocking.

Anyway - finally got around to running a benchmark (apart from just stability testing purposes) last night. How's 13600 (ish) in 3dMark06 with a 4850 @ stock sound?
Click to expand...

Sounds ~15-20% faster than one of my previous builds which was e2200 OCed to nut crazy speeds and 4830 OCed to 4870.

Good value : O.
 
Just an update on this. The system still very occasionally drops a prime error on me. Usually fine running Prime alone but adding 3dMark06 looping at the same time sometimes brings out an extra error.

Also, even when OK in Prime / S&M etc, I'm getting warnings in Windows Event Viewer:
A corrected hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Corrected Machine Check
Error Type: Cache Hierarchy Error
Processor ID: 0

The details view of this entry contains further information.
Click to expand...

further details:

The erros point to l1 and l2 cache hierarchy on CPU core 0. I think I've probably worked out why this wasn't binned as a phenom II. Any thoughts?

Edit:

^^^
The above has turned into a mixed blessing. The thought that there is something genuinely wrong has found me some courage to push voltages etc. Just running Prime95 @ 3.3 GHz
 
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While messing about trying to see if I can kill that error (I couldn't), I seem to have found an extra couple of hundred mhz. Anything over 300MHz FSB and I get intermittent failures to POST though. Maybe that's the board limit?

Just working out what to do with this chip. I'm a bit nervous of running a chip that's generating cache errors in my main machine. Maybe the little beastie will be run as an Athlon X2 apart from when I want quad core for games or benchmarks.

It's simple to turn on and off. I just enable or disable ACC in the BIOS and make sure the machine's off for a few seconds between reboots, depending on which CPU I want.
4316911087_758e010492_o.jpg
 
Superewza said:
1.5v on 45nm?
Click to expand...

Yeah. Looks like I have a faulty core on (CPU0) and it takes some juice to get it stable. Was a right pain just to get it booting into Windows reliably (which it now does).

AMD's overclocking advice for Phenom II 940 is up to 1.55v on air. I don't fancy going as high as that. Temps staying below 55°C so should be OK.

As stated, I think most people would have written this particular chip off as an unlocker.
 
Uriel said:
While messing about trying to see if I can kill that error (I couldn't)
Click to expand...
looking promising :) . . . I think you need to get those temps down a bit maybe?

Superewza said:
1.5v on 45nm?
Click to expand...

AMD® Silicon On Insulator (SOI) is ok with that I believe? they certainly can run that without getting too warm! . . .

High-K Silicon is the one that some people worry about using high vCore with but a few of us have run INTEL® 1.45vCore with no obvious ill effect (so far!) :p

I think the new AMD® 32nm is gonna be High-K Silicon?

Don't know much more about this atm . . .
 
Big.Wayne said:
looking promising :) . . . I think you need to get those temps down a bit maybe?
Click to expand...

Well, I refuse to spend much on it, as it's only a cheap CPU. Using a Freezer Pro 64 and don't fancy spending on something that'll outperform it. The temps were pushing 60°C so used a new flat sieve frying pan cover thing (bought months ago from Wilkos for about £1.50 and unused). A bit of action with the pliers and there's a mesh vent where my plastic 5 1/2 inch bezels used to be. Should be fine enough to filter dust.

[Edit: this was my 2nd 5 1/2" bay mod to let a bit more air in. The first was just a masking tape job to hold a filter in place and this one should look a bit more professional when I've spray painted it).

Anyway - dropped load temps a good few degrees. It's 55° absolute max though. Been running Prime blend for an hour just now and it's sitting between 50-52°C. It actually goes lower if I loop with 3dmark as the PSU fan spins up and shifts a bit more air out of the case. I think that's fine.

Having said that, I do want to quieten the PC down anyway so I've ordered a PWM splitter cable and 2 PWM fans. My motherboard only has the one smart fan control on the CPU fan not the case or system ones. I'm using Antec Tricools on medium for my case fans now. With any luck the PWM fans should be quieter at idle and shift a bit more air under load.

Edit:
tested 3.3 GHz to 8 hours prime blend stable:
Uriel said:
OK - the one people have been mentioning:

Athlon X2 5000+ 45nm 2.2GHz (CAVC AC 0936BPEW) unlocked to Phenom FX-5000 (Deneb) and overclocked to 3.3GHz on a Jetway Ha08 Combo (Bios DDR2-A09) combined AM2/AM3 DDR2/DDR3 motherboard. Clearly binned as Athlon by AMD due to substandard cache on CPU0 - Now 8 hours prime blend stable:

4317758345_7c4c42f414_o.jpg


Just bought it as a stop-gap CPU to play with. Cost £36 delivered plus under £4 to mod my case for better temps with my existing Freezer Pro £64.

Please note that I still get warnings in Windows event viewer relating to l1 and l2 cache on CPU-0 even though the PC seems otherwise stable.
Click to expand...
 
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gamesaregood said:
I want to bring your attention to a new and very much quiet addition to the AMD product line which seems to have gone very much unnoticed.

19th Oct 2009
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Hey gamesaregood,

many thanks once again, you are indeed very clued up and I am grateful you bought these chips to our attention . . . If I had bigger **** I would have probably purchased one but knowing my luck I would have got one which didn't unock! :D

For the price though I am considering it as there is a lot to like . . . can't see anything really wrong with these chips at the low cost they are selling . . . even if it doesn't unlock . . . I suppose the only tiny negative is that they are AM2+ and won't be able to move into a newer AM3/DDR3 system but having said that I am using an AM2+/DDR2 motherboard so my own observation is almost a mOOt point heh! :D
 
Heh - well I have a DDR2 / DDR3 board. Mine will need a good home when I decide I need 8GB or DDR3. That might be a while off though.

I'll list BIOS settings in a while. Was definitely my RAM that was stopping me getting above 285 on the CPU/HT Clock (or FSB in traditional language). Extra RAM volts bought me headroom. Still playing with RAM settings trying to work out exactly what it takes for stability.
 
OK folks - BIOS settings for 3.3 GHz listed below. Usual warning. If anyone whacks these into their BIOS and it makes a mess of things - it's entirely your own fault.

Unfortunately I didn't write down the settings for my 8 hour Prime Blend run. Tried to drop voltages and came unstuck somewhere. At the moment I'm back up and running (Prime Blend about an hour and a half with a run or 2 of 3DMark06 over the top while I wasn't busy) with the following:
CnQ: Off
Memory timings: all slackened to RAM manufacturer's specified speed for DDR2 800. That's CAS 6 etc for mine. 2T
RAM Clock: 400 (i.e 1:1. I got 533 stable before but not sure I want to run RAM at the required voltage long term)
ACC: Auto
CPU/HT clock: 300
RAM Volts: 2.15 (2.10 is fine warm but seems to fail to POST cold sometimes)
NB-Core Voltage: 1.30
NB-PCIE Voltage: 1.20
HT Link Speed: 1.2GHz.
HT Link Width: 16 bit
CPU-NB multi: x6 (I think x7 is OK but x8 fails intelburn)
Click to expand...
Most other stuff is still set to auto. Onboard graphics are disabled.
 
Finally had a chance to do some gaming on this thing. With my old 65nm X2 5000+ @ 3GHz, Ghostbusters got rather jittery in outside areas. With the X2 5000+ 45nm @ Phenom FX-5000 3.3GHz it's perfectly smooth.

Happy days :).
 
Had a quick look on AMD's website yesterday and spotted these CPUs are now listed as EOL. They must have used up the remaining AM2+ Denebs but they're still available so if anyone wants to try one now would be the time to buy.

Mine's sitting at quad core, 3.3GHz (300x11 - not many motherboards will get that high), 2.1GHz NB and HT Link. I think that's good for 24/7 - been running that for a couple of weeks now.
 
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