Where has the unlocked core gone?
Last response: in CPUs
Hello friends,
Since I built my rig last summer, I am being continuously plagued by the following thought-
My Athlon II X3 440 of C3 revision and Deneb chip was unlocked by Asus M4A78LT-M and showed "4 cores are unlocked". The new name was 'Phenom II X4 B40'. However, after entering OS (Win7, XP, Ubuntu, Puppy linux) only 3 cores are shown with L3 cache. I thought it was a faulty statement by the motherboard that 4 cores are there. But some points caught my attention-
i) After unlocking, The CnQ (power management) doesn't work. Nor do the CPU fan and HDD access light go off after soft shut down. In fact the CPU overheats after shutdown to cause a plastic burning smell (if Vcore is not undervolted and left to auto) that I experienced in a fiasco during my first overclock session.
ii) All these problems disappear if I manually disable the 4th core from BIOS after unlocking; as if to announce that it was the 4th core that was physically there to cause those problems.
iii) Recently I got some interesting screenshots from PCwizard which I am sharing with you-
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Can anyone tell me what actually the status of the 4th core is? Is it physically disconnected in the die? Or am I able to somehow revive it?
Since I built my rig last summer, I am being continuously plagued by the following thought-
My Athlon II X3 440 of C3 revision and Deneb chip was unlocked by Asus M4A78LT-M and showed "4 cores are unlocked". The new name was 'Phenom II X4 B40'. However, after entering OS (Win7, XP, Ubuntu, Puppy linux) only 3 cores are shown with L3 cache. I thought it was a faulty statement by the motherboard that 4 cores are there. But some points caught my attention-
i) After unlocking, The CnQ (power management) doesn't work. Nor do the CPU fan and HDD access light go off after soft shut down. In fact the CPU overheats after shutdown to cause a plastic burning smell (if Vcore is not undervolted and left to auto) that I experienced in a fiasco during my first overclock session.
ii) All these problems disappear if I manually disable the 4th core from BIOS after unlocking; as if to announce that it was the 4th core that was physically there to cause those problems.
iii) Recently I got some interesting screenshots from PCwizard which I am sharing with you-
Can anyone tell me what actually the status of the 4th core is? Is it physically disconnected in the die? Or am I able to somehow revive it?
More about : unlocked core
Best solution
You have a three core processor that was made that way for a reason. There was a defect in the fourth core and it was disabled. When you buy a processor with deactivated cores there is no guarantee you'll be able to unlock those cores. That's your problem the fourth core is not stable and it will not run so you have to set it back to three cores and that's what you're stuck with.
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