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Core Unlocker

Stephan

Stephan

Stephan

Associate
Joined
28 Feb 2010
Posts
16
Location
Carrickfergus; NI
Hi

I thought buying Mobo Asus M4A87TD Evo AMD 870 and a AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 635 2.90GHz. But somebody told me I should buy a AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 555 3.20GHz Black Edition and unlock the 2 cores ? Is this easy with the mobo I was planing to buy ?

Stephan
 
Hello Stephan,

if you opted for an AMD® Phenom™ II X2 and it was a good chip that can be unlocked then the process of doing this is very simple . . . the problem comes from the fact not all chips can unlock . . . and then those lucky chips which can unlock are not guaranteed to run stably . . . It has worked fine for lots of people and has caused problems for some others . . . it's a total gamble and one that needs consideration . . .

I've been in this scenario before and have seen a lot of people happy because they got lucky and obtained a cheap quad . . . I've also seen some people unhappy because the chip either wouldn't unlock or run stably if it did . . .

I don't want this to sound like I am advising you *not* to consider taking the unlock gamble but instead just to re-inforce the reality it may not work . . . I don't even have a probability % that I could offer up . . . as said it works fine for some while doesn't work for others . . . do you feel lucky? . . . . do you really need more than a Dual-Core? . . .

For arguements sake the information below compares performance between the guaranteed Athlon™ II QuadCore against either a lucky AMD® Phenom™ II X2 that has unlocked fine *or* assumes you don;t like to gamble, really want a BE chip and have splurged the extra cash . . . . the financial figures are relevant to the latter . . . .

If you would be most unhappy by making a bad dice roll and having your expectations dashed by receiving a bad chip that won't unlock then I would advise either sticking with the AMD® Athlon™ II X4 635 or examining if it is worth you paying out the extra cash for a bona fide AMD® Phenom™ II X4 . . .



£80.99 inc vs £128.99 inc (+59.2% ££)



They overclock pretty good too! :D

Athlon™ II X4 630 (stock 2.8GHz)


Click for stability . . . 30 hour "Blend"
 
coreunlocker2.jpg


Hello again Stephan,

I'd be interested to know your thoughts a bit more . . . you originally were gonna go for the Athlon™ II X4 but then "someone" informed you that perhaps grabbing a Phenom™ II X2 and unlocking it was a better choice . . . above we covered the basic in and outs of whats involved in unlocking and the fact it wasn't guaranteed, we then looked at some performance results showing how the Athlon™ II X4 compared vs a successful unlock on a Phenom™ II X2 (to X4) or a premium splurge on a guaranteed Phenom™ II X4

For the sake of thoroughness I thought it may be prudent to also include a straight up comparison between the Athlon™ II X4 635 vs a Phenom™ II X2 555 . . . this assumes that you tried the Deneb "Gamble" but got unlucky and the extra cores wouldn't unlock or at least run stably . . .



Phenom™ II X2 has a 10.3% stock clock speed advantage, a 6MB slab of L3-cache yet on the overall average is outperformed by the Athlon™ II X4 635 by a tasty +34.4% . . . zoning in on just the gaming tests show the X2 555's added clock speed and cache are worth on average an extra 3.8% performance vs the Propus X4 . . . 3.8%? :confused: . . . this would have been a +9.3% framerate advantage but we see something unexpected happen in the Dragon Age Origins results where the Athlon™ II X4 635 with its extra cores suddenly comes to life and now commands a very respectable +41.3% performance advantage! :eek:

This leads me to believe that the advantages of a sucessful unlock (+16.6% Deneb X4) are kinda outweighed to some extent by the potential downside of a failed unlock . . . i.e the Propus X4 costs £3.00 less and is guaranteed to perform on average 34.4% faster than a Deneb X2 . . . of course this is task specific but working with the above data it would seem that the Phenom™ II X2 at £83.99 is OverPriced and probably needs a decent price slash to once again make it a compelling choice for the bang-for-buck brigade! :D

Happy to discuss, share thoughts etc :cool:
 
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honesty if u really want a quad core u should buy a real quad cpu. if your wanting a dual core get a dual core, unlocking is a bonus..

don't buy a dual core if u really want a quad core. because you'll feel disappointed if the dual core doesn't unlock
 
I'd recommend against the Asus board that Wayne just recommended. For only £20 more you could get the Asus M4A89GTD Evo or the Gigabyte GPA890-UD3H.

Personally I'd recommend the Gigabyte. I've seen better reviews of overclocking and the Asus has some wierd new RAM slots which are pretty problematic apparantly.

£20 more and you get USB3 and Sata3, seems worth it to me... :p

I'd also recommend the Athlon Wayne did. You could buy that, overclock it and it will be a good CPU for a while, but it does mean you saved £60 over a 965/1055T, which can be put toward a bulldozer chip which these 890 boards will support apparantly. Then you'll be set with a fast 8 core CPU, SATA3 and USB3, and it should last for a good few years before you need an upgrade.
 
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Something worth knowing, unless it's changed recently is that Gigabyte boards disable Cool & Quiet when overclocking with the multiplier, wheras Asus boards don't.
This means that IF you get Phenom II rather than an Athlon II AND IF you overlock it with the multiplier, the Gigabyte board will consume more electricity than it needs to.
For this reason, I don't overlock my Phenom 955. Fortunately I'm happy with it's stock performance.
 
Quixote said:
Something worth knowing, unless it's changed recently is that Gigabyte boards disable Cool & Quiet when overclocking with the multiplier,
Click to expand...
with a beta bios for the 1090T my old 790fx gigabyte board was able it to allow Cool & Quiet to work when overclocking with the multiplier
 
For an un biased review of unlockable am3 boards on a budget check this review out, also shows the strength of the phenom 2 555 :)

another thing to look at, why not buy a phenom 2 x2 second hand that's a prove unlocker?
 
Well it seems back to the drawing board but Im wiser now thanks to all your input. I have another question about memory but I will open a new thread
 
I've just used the 'unlocker switch' on my M4A88TD-V EVO and now apparently have an Phenom II X4 B40! I unlocked a £61 Athlon II X3 440.
 
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