AMD Phenom II x2 555BE Overclocking or unlocking the cores

I'd try unlocking the cores and then OC'ing... seeing as there are plenty of multi-threaded applications now to make use of the 4 cores. It shouldn't make too much of a difference though in your overall clock speed. Like you said... maybe 4 GHz to 3.8.

I had a X3 720BE, and if I unlocked the 4th core, I would need to increase the voltage a tad, but nothing major. You'll just have to try the chip out for yourself, you might not even be able to unlock them.

Overall though... I'd take the extra cores with the minimal (if any) decrease in clock. I'd rather have a X4 @ 3.6 than X2 @ 4.0

Thanks very much for your quick reply, I will take your advice and I should be going for cores unlocking rather than 2 cores running at 4Ghz. Hope I can unlock all cores. Cant wait to get the beast on hands  

Good luck unlocking, hope it works out well!

Though 4GHz should be no trouble as a dual (assuming a reasonable cooler) 3.8 is alot more ambitious as a 4 core (still very possible). even at 3.2GHz the quad should be better than a dual @ 4GHz (except some games).