AMD Phenom II X4 965BE Extra cores?

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Robert Cook

Robert Cook

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I have a wonderful Phenom II X4 which some of you might know has reached 5.1 GHz. I have always wanted to get my hands on a 1100T, but have not had the time or money. While fooling around in my bios trying to lower voltages as much as possible as I was bored, I stumbled across unleashing mode. it claims to unlock full power. as I was bored, I enabled it, figuring the worst that would happen was a need for a clear CMOS. It booted up just fine, but then the BIOS detected six cores.

I know there are X2 and X3 ones that can unlock to a X4 and the 960T which can unlock to a X6, but as I looked around I have not found anything of a 965 even having those two other cores in its design.

The only thing that mentions an unlock is some sketchy account saying that they unlock to six, but that windows cannot detect it but somehow benchmarks and other tasks do.

Temps in the BIOS never went up with the "extra cores" and all I know is that it is less stable when I overclock with the six core there.

I have some half corrupted ubuntu version 14. something (cannot afford windows 10), and cannot install any bench marks to test these "cores"

I know for a fact that we have some very AMD wise people, and thus I ask out to those people, what do you think of this whole rather of\dd case?

Specs are seen in my profile in the Phenom build.
 
Solution
ajhockey3
Late in its life cycle the 965 was actually known to unlock to x6 in some rare cases. not just the 960T. It make sense that its harder/less stable with the 6th core, There is a reason it was nerfed to a 4-core. Some bios's had the option to unlock select cores, ie unlock to a 5 core I think only a couple motherboards did that, Cannot remember.
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ajhockey3

ajhockey3

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Late in its life cycle the 965 was actually known to unlock to x6 in some rare cases. not just the 960T. It make sense that its harder/less stable with the 6th core, There is a reason it was nerfed to a 4-core. Some bios's had the option to unlock select cores, ie unlock to a 5 core I think only a couple motherboards did that, Cannot remember.
 
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Robert Cook

Robert Cook

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So they might be real cores? I understand why it is less stable, but I find it odd that the heat did not go up. I have a lame arctic 7 freezer pro triple heat pipe thing. I feel I should notice the difference.
I guess this means I might want to re install ubuntu... fifth time is the charm?
 
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Robert Cook

Robert Cook

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yeah That chip was a junk find, but it should be framed on a wall. I am pretty sure I should LN2 that chip, even though voltage as a rather high 1.7 I feel with motherboard that does not cap out at 1.7 volts ( and at that 1.7 volts I noticed big fans make it unstable implying a weak power delivery system), an easy 6 GHz or more is doable. I think it falls in the top 10% of phenoms of that make.
 
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ajhockey3

ajhockey3

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Yes its possible it was a rare occurence for this to unlock to a 6 core. Generally that Phenom 965's that showed a TDP of 140w (when the standard was 125W) would be the most likely of the unlikely it would unlock. Sometimes bios's would bullshit people with there core unlockers, Say you would put in a true duel core athlon the bios would say "Oh duel core athlon! sometimes those can unlock to four cores so we will say there is four cores that could be unlocked" and without trying to boot into an OS and test a core you wouldn't know there isn't a damn core there. When the Athlon II and phenoms came out I had a small addiction with buying CPU's trying to unlock them and selling them as cpus that could unlock to make a couple extra bucks. I never bought a phenom 965 because when I was regularly doing this the Phenom was the BEST amd cpu and couldn't unlock. When amd dropped the 6 core phenoms they would occasioanlly have a dud and make it a 965.

When this first came out it was awesome. I used to work AMD a looong time ago. I still have a couple of friends who work there. And they told me that AMD doesn't do this to cpus (hiding cores) but they do this regularly to GPU's but now they make them non unlockable for the most part as they didn't want this to happen again.
 
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ajhockey3

ajhockey3

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Yeah I heard about that. Normally they laser cut/isolate GPU core blocks, My guess was they were scared to laser around the HBM.
 
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Robert Cook

Robert Cook

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I just realized, if there is a six core that is not stable enough the worst two cores get disabled leaving four very good cores, unless more than two were bad.
If that is so, then that might explain the crazy performance on my chip. as it has the four best cores. after all just one bad core could mean demotion, and then one more would be turned off as well. so.... if that is so, then this seems rather likely...
Factor in the fact that my motherboard is rated for up to 140W, the instability at 1.7 volts across the system could mean that the chip is pulling more power naturally implying it could be a 140 Watt chip...
This does make some sense, as that is a pretty good board, and it should not be struggling like that...
I can feel the hype...
 
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ajhockey3

ajhockey3

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If I remember correctly the lowest clock PhenomX6 was 2.8Ghz. I would try enabling all 6 at that speed with more then average voltage and see if its stable. But I'm going to be real here. A unlocked phenom 965 to a 6 core would produce enough heat to heat my house for the winter if overclocked. You may get better proformance with 4 cores clocked at your stupid high 5GHz then 6 cores at even 3-3.5GHz
 
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Robert Cook

Robert Cook

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oh yes quite aware, but just think of the odds...
but sadly I cannot test until I get silly ubuntu fixed, and I am fed up with lines of code just to install java and what not.
great when you only have to do it once or twice, but after three times it get sickening.
I am sure in a month or so I'll give it a go, my classes should let up around then for thanksgiving break.

I agree 5.0GHz is best described as Stupid especially when on air. :)
 
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ajhockey3

ajhockey3

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I'm jelly of your 5Ghz overclock. My daily CPU is an Athlon 640 with unlocked l3 cache (was a phenom 965 I think as the 640 is a black edition skew) I just run mine on a Hyper T4 and I run stable at 3.8ghz. I think it was binned to be an Athlon because it takes a good amount of voltage. I had a H100 before the pump died, And with that I got it to 4ghz but then my system sounded like a leaf blower.

If you had discovered your's can reach 5Ghz on air when that CPU was new, You would have offers from people wanting to buy it all over the place.
 
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Gam3r01

Gam3r01

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Oh I am well aware as to why I leveled off, the board cost me 60 bucks at the time and I dont have the budget to change my system.
 
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ajhockey3

ajhockey3

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I'm never too lucky with second hand stuff. Never had a dead second hand item but never got mind blowing deals.
Best deal I have ever gotten was an Acer desktop (Aspire AM3400) Athlon 635 10GB DDR3 1TB HDD and on board 4250 GPU.for $80 CAD ($60 US). Because the owner reformatted for selling and installed 32 bit windows and was confused and thought his computer was broken.
 
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