Just unlocked my Phenom II X2 into an X4

VenomIreland

Words cannot describe how happy I feel

Running Prime95 now as a stress-test.

MunsterCycling

Sweet, must dig out the quad core I have and build the machine I got it for.

Solitaire

Lucky ****! :P Over half the cut-down CPUs have damaged cores and cant be unlocked, and many of the rest have stability issues!

VenomIreland

Yup

It passed the 8k test in Prime95, it if passes the 10k I'm going to leave it unlocked.

VenomIreland

Passed the 10k test, it's been going on for about 40 minutes, is that long enough?

Solitaire

Final stability test in Prime 95 is random Small FFTs on all cores for ~8 hours :P

slowlydownwards

Congrats! Which one did you get? Black Edition overclocks super easy, for extra . Got mine 4 cores roasting for 6 hours in prime95, no probs, even on standard bog amd cooler.

VenomIreland

slowlydownwards wrote: »

Congrats! Which one did you get? Black Edition overclocks super easy, for extra . Got mine 4 cores roasting for 6 hours in prime95, no probs, even on standard bog amd cooler.

Black Edition, but now the motherboard has decided to lock the cores again, gonna reboot and see if that fixes it.

VenomIreland

Nope, seems to be random when it decides to unlock it, gonna try updating the BIOS later through Q-Flash (before it loads BIOS)

VenomIreland

Updated to the latest BIOS revision and it's working fine now

Unregistered.

VenomIreland wrote: »

Passed the 10k test, it's been going on for about 40 minutes, is that long enough?

Do you only use your PC for 40 minutes at a time?

VenomIreland

DAMMIT! It won't unlock some times, soemtimes when I boot up it is unlocked, other times it's not.

At least with the latest BIOS update it's more often that it is unlocked

@Unregistered, I'll leave it on today for like, four hours then while I'm away. If it's unstable, what'll happen?

VenomIreland

Ok, this is starting to piss me off, after 5 shutdowns and boot-ups, it still won't unlock again.

Unregistered.

VenomIreland wrote: »

Ok, this is starting to piss me off, after 5 shutdowns and boot-ups, it still won't unlock again.

Are you trying to do too much, too soon by any chance?

massy086

VenomIreland wrote: »

DAMMIT! It won't unlock some times, soemtimes when I boot up it is unlocked, other times it's not.

At least with the latest BIOS update it's more often that it is unlocked

@Unregistered, I'll leave it on today for like, four hours then while I'm away. If it's unstable, what'll happen?

the program will just stop and kick back an error

VenomIreland

@ Unregistered: What do you mean>? I am not OC'ing at the same time if that's what you mean.

@Massy: Thanks

VenomIreland

Shot off a message to Gigabyte Customer Support, let's see what they have to say.

VenomIreland

So, GIGABYTE support gave me the latest Beta BIOS FDd, said to give it a shot.

VenomIreland

Did 5 boots with Core Unlocking enabled on Beta BIOS, 4 of them unlocked succesfully

VenomIreland

Well, it certainly unlocks FAR more often than it used to, still occasionally requires a few reboots though

Just checked in HWMonitor, I figured out the reason why this particular Quadcore was sold as a dualcore. It uses 178W of power

VenomIreland

Also, the max it reaches on Blend is 63C, did I put too much paste on? Should I take some off?

EDIT, that's TMPIN1 that reaches those temps, TMPIN2 reaches about 52.

VenomIreland

Sorry for posting 7 times in a row (!), but I got it running for 2 hours stable in Prime95 before I stopped it to go to bed and watch a movie, gonna give 3.6 a shot tomorrow.

u140acro3xs7dm

I unlocked mine too but i only get 3 cores working but they boot everytime. It idles about 25c cant remember what it is under pressure but its not high at all. i ran plenty of tests with prime95 and was fine, ive being using it as a tri-core now for months

VenomIreland

So, tried Prime95 when locked at stock speeds, TMPIN2 is a little below CORE temperature, but not far above it like TMPIN1.

I idle at like 30 and load at 41. Is this good for the V8? Or should I re-apply the thermal paste?

OK, TMPIN2 is nearly spot-on, unlike TMPIN1 which is like, 10 degrees above CORE. I can live with 55C unlocked

VenomIreland

Tried 3.6gHz, BSOD'd the first time, reset the PC the second with a slight voltage increase. The highest stable I tried is 3.4, I think I'll leave it at that

Hank Scorpio

why do they sell cpus with cores locked?

VenomIreland

nuxxx wrote: »

why do they sell cpus with cores locked?

Sometimes they don't work right, for instance, mine uses 178.2 watts of power, much more than they are designed for, And sometimes they lock them because of demand for dual-cores.

deceit

VenomIreland wrote: »

Sometimes they don't work right, for instance, mine uses 178.2 watts of power, much more than they are designed for, And sometimes they lock them because of demand for dual-cores.

With higher power comes extra heat, cant see how this chip hasnt melted when pulling that amount of power.

Solitaire

Put a slight OC on an i7-920 and see how fast it melts :pac:

The heat isn't an issue so long as you can shift it fast enough with the cooler

VenomIreland

Solitaire wrote: »

Put a slight OC on an i7-920 and see how fast it melts :pac:

The heat isn't an issue so long as you can shift it fast enough with the cooler

And with the V8 being an amazing air-cooler, I am seeing around 55C on load, at least, that's what TMPIN2 gets, because that was closest (about 20 degrees closer to Core than Temp1) to Core Temps when locked.

deceit

Solitaire wrote: »

Put a slight OC on an i7-920 and see how fast it melts :pac:

The heat isn't an issue so long as you can shift it fast enough with the cooler

I have my 930 up too 4.1ghz on a h50 and max on prime 95 is 66.

With the x2 chip being designed to draw alot less power than that, I would have presumed would have heated really quickly as I would have expected the extra watts to cause alot more heat, wonder how it would go on standard clocked unlocked on a standard cooler.