Dead 4th core on a Athlon II X3 435?

[imaurer269]

Just bought a Athlon II X3 435 and Biostar A880G+ mobo. Tried using the ACC feature on auto, no luck. Upped the cpu vcore .05 and then .1 no luck there. Then tried to up the CPU NB voltage the first couple of increments and still no luck. Tried switching ACC to manual and tried various combination's of +/- 2 to 8% per core with and without CPU vcore and CPU NB added voltage. Can't get PC to post with ACC on auto or manual. Think I just got unlucky and have a dud. This is my 1st attempt to unlock a core and wondering if anyone has anything else I could try or if I'm doing it wrong. Haven't updated the BIOS, would that do anything for me? Also wondering how to attempt to unlock L3 cache if I can with that mobo. Thanks!

 

[simon12]

Updating the bios has an outside chance but theres not much to try. If you use the active core control and just run the 3 working cores you may get L3 cache as a 3 core but its rare.

 

[henydiah]

Sometime unlock core not succes, many people not lucky like you. For better forget unlock core and try overclock your cpu to get max sytem speed and performance!

 

[tomate2]

sometimes what makes a athlon ii x3 a triple core is precisely because it has a dead or disabled 4th core....
if u really wanted a quad core u should have just went for the athlon ii x4

+1 to henydiah... just overclock your cpu

 

[imaurer269]

Well all I really needed was a dual core for a couple builds I was doing but newegg had a promo going on the X3 435 so it was only 5 bucks more than the cheapest X2. I have heard that sometime you can get lucky and unlock a core or 2 and possibly the L3 cache wanted to see for myself. Still have one more X3 435 to try this time around and next time I will probably test out the X2's. I did overclock the X3 435 up to 3.2GHz on the stock cooler

 

[imaurer269]

Best answer selected by imaurer269.