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AMD Blocks Phenom II Unlock
Posted by Regeneration on June 9th, 2009, 01:15 AM

As many already know, it's possible to unlock the disabled cores on recent Phenom II processors, allowing you to get up to 4 cores working. Many who have tried this say that they gain some considerable speed, but there's a risk. The cores are disabled for a reason: they don't work properly. Because of this, AMD will, for example, sell a 4-core processor at 2-cores, for a much cheaper price.

AMD announced that it would release new microcode for motherboard BIOS updates that will disable the core-unlocking feature, preventing people from going to 4-cores if they purchased say a dual-core Phenom II. The solution is not to upgrade your motherboard's BIOS if you have a board that can unlock cores.

But what if your motherboard maker releases BIOS updates that add or fix features? You would have to choose. Do you want fixes and improvements or do you want to stick with the ability to unlock CPU cores?

Gigabyte says you don't have to on its motherboards with Dual-BIOS technology.

Essentially, Gigabyte said that it will store the old microcode in the secondary BIOS chip, and allow you to do normal BIOS updates on the primary chip. Does this mean that you can't have a backup firmware of your latest BIOS should the first chip corrupt? Gigabyte told us no. The company has upgraded its BIOS chips to be able to store extra information.

Read the entire article at Tom's Hardware.

11 Comments
Posted by Regeneration on June 9th, 2009, 01:16 AM
Another bad decision from AMD.
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Posted by blindartist on June 9th, 2009, 02:27 AM
well god thing i was gonna go gigabyte for my next board anyways, assuming i ever get enough money to build the system, ugh
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Posted by Zamoldac on June 9th, 2009, 11:35 AM
not necessarily a bad decision think about all the n00bs that will unlock & oc the dual and triple cores then complain about instability issues is more of a foul proof decision, the users that know what they are doing will stick to current bios-es or use the dual bios functions provided by gigabyte's solutions.
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Posted by Basty on June 10th, 2009, 09:51 AM
but.. since then.. is there at least a guy complain about instability issue from unlock cores ? without the test proof... we cannot say it's instability
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Posted by Unregistered on June 11th, 2009, 09:14 AM
One problem that can and probably will arise is system assemblers starting to sell these chips as if they were real X4s and charging likewise. For someone in the know disabling ACC and checking is easy but the problem is a ton of people just dont have a clue what a BIOS even is. So if problems arise for these people its perceived as AMD's fault.

On regards to stabilty I read somewhere about how ACC does a check everytime and sets several parameters in order to have a stable system, so basicly a good core gets set to performance A and a not so good core gets set for performance B.
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Posted by IModIntel on June 13th, 2009, 02:36 AM
I think it's a good move. Unless you're sure that your product is not 100% stable by your own standards, blocking any unlocking is logical to me.
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Posted by blindartist on June 13th, 2009, 03:22 AM
see i dont think its really a case of them not wanting people to experience unstable operation because the cores probably work fine but more of a case of them trying to make money.

Simply, if people buy the cheap triple and dual core cpu's and turm them into quads then their not selling their expensive quad core cpu's
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Posted by Unixlord on June 13th, 2009, 01:13 PM
Posted by Unregistered on June 14th, 2009, 07:18 PM
Agree with IModIntel. Think about it. If the cores actually worked properly with exactly the same parameters used in other cores, why would AMD sell you -- basically GIVE you -- perfectly good die for a lot less money? It's disabled because it doesn't work 100% ! It may work 95% of time.. or even 99% of the time but that's still not good enough.

blindartist, you are assuming that the cost of the quad core is basically the cost of the dual and triple core (what they would sell for) and that's simply not the case. It's actually the reverse: the triple core is as expensive to produce as the quad core. BUT when the quad core tests show that one core does not pass, why throw the entire chip away? That just wastes money. Selling the triple cores and phenom based dual cores is AMD's way of trying to recoup money from inevitable die flaws.
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Posted by blindartist on June 15th, 2009, 12:50 AM
same reasony why intel sold the celeron which was a p4(or p3? i dont remember anymore) with the cache disabled, the probably come off of the same line.

Though I havent tried it myself but i have a feeling that the cores work just fine, it alot cheaper for amd to hammer off cpu's off of the same line and just disable a core and sell it for less then it does to have seperate lines for each thing.

Do you think that one chip costs more to make then another? that the 955 costs more to make then the 820? it all costs pretty much thesame they just sell it at different price points to apeal to different people and caputre a larger percentage of the market.

Last edited by blindartist; June 15th, 2009 at 05:33 AM..
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Posted by Unregistered on June 26th, 2009, 07:30 AM
chip manufacturers have been known to relable/re-bin processors to fill wholes in the market where their compeditors are selling. they dont' go off and say, this wafer will be 2.4ghz, this wafer will be 2.6ghz. they make one wafer and get what they get, as they get better, clock speeds increase. you pay more for faster chips because they are not as abundant. supply and demand.

there is definitely the possibility that some wafers could have had issues with 1 or more cores, or a cache. but its probably the fact that AMD is a business and needs to sell products to make money and stay in business. if they have a ton of quad cores and they notice that crap loads of people are buying entry level duals from intel, what do you think they are going to do with all their extra chips that suppliers aren't buying? re-bin.
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