[Solved] Overclock or unlock? perhaps both?!

Depends on your applications. If they don't need 4 cores, don't unlock the 4th core, since it will generate more heat, and lower your max OC. If tour apps can use the 4th core, by all means go that direction.

Try both see what you get I got 3.7GHz from my 550BE unlocked to a quad and could only get 3.8GHz as a dual, my brothers Athlon 440 could only run at 3GHz as a quad but got 3.7GHz as a triple. My brothers PC only had a cheap board that doesn't support processors over 95W though so its amazing it worked as a quad at all.

I've got my X3 720 unlocked and Oc'd to 3.3Ghz. for 24\7 usage and it has not had any problems -- really depends on the CPU you got -- some will OC better with the 4th core locked and others will run fine with both an unlock and OC -- so takes some testing to see what your chip handles best.

Mine would OC further as a triple core but I found for the uses I use it for the extra bit of OC was not as useful as the extra core so went with the combination of the 3.3 ghz. OC (from 2.8 stock) and the extra core.

Sounds like a pretty close system to what I have -- PII x3 720 @ 1.328v - Coolermaster TX3 cooler- Gigabyte 790GX MOBO - 4GB. DDR3 1333 RAM (7-7-7-21-1T) - Sapphire 5770 GPU - 22" ACER Monitor @1680x1050 res.

I found that for my uses running at 3.3 GHz. with the 4th core unlocked performs the best (OCing past 3.3 GHz. started to increase the CPU temps a bit more than I was comfortable with for every day usage for the added performance it gained ) - If I had a stronger GPU I might consider trying to up the OC a bit but for my system this seems to be the point that the CPU and GPU work together the best and the system runs at a good stable temp all around during heavy gaming usage etc. (seeing that I live in El Paso TX. and we get a lot of high temps in the summer heat is something that has to be watched)

You cannot read the core temps but the CPU temp remains correct in both CPU-Z's Hardware Monitor (on My Gigabyte board the CPU temp is TMPIN1 under temperatures ) and also in Gigabyte's Easy Tune 6 app reports the correct CPU temp as well --- AMD chips actually only have the 1 temp sensor anyway so the core temps always show the same temp --- On my system the cores always showed about 8-10 C below the reported CPU temp when locked to just a triple core but I use the reported CPU temp since it was always higher and also use that temp when the CPU is unlocked !

So you just need to figure out which of the TMPIN variables reports your CPU temp and you can use HWmonitor to track the CPU temp after unlocking ! -- Also in Everest the temp reported under CPU is correct it just always shows 0 for the individual cores but the overall CPU temp is correct.

well this is still an ongoing project. but above question was silly. i am tired and hungry. nomming, then catching some Z's. lata

Best answer selected by bravo delta.

Load temps look great --- you need to bump the vCore 0.125v if you are within spec voltage.

Sometimes you hit a ceiling or hole with the CPU multiplier - try 18.5x as an example.

Another poster has a motherboard similar to yours -- if you want to try an OC with the system clock see if any of this looks familiar ...

edit: AMD may spec the x3 740BE as the B75 HDXB75WFK3DGI with Voltages - 0.80-1.425v and
Max Temps at 73c.

Give 'er some volts, Capt'n

With the AMD Black Editions the OCing using the multiplier is all that is really needed - the reason people use the other settings is that many CPUs will have limited settings to choose from for the multiplier so the have to resort to other setting changes instead once they reach the MAX multiplier the chip supports. So in your case just using the multiplier and small voltage increaes is fine and much easier.