Unlocking A Fourth Core On Phenom II X3 CPUs?

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What if you could take your triple core Phenom II X3 and turn it into a quad-core CPU? According to some sources, this is actually possible, providing you have the right chip and motherboard. Using the Advanced Clock Calibration setting in the BIOS, it seems that some boards will detect and use a previously disabled fourth core. Of course, there is no guarantee that even if you have a chip that will co-operate that the fourth core will be stable enough to be usable. That would make sense considering it likely AMD's process for binning X3 CPUs wouldn't leave many (if any) with four operable cores. We'll keep an eye on developments to see if anyone manages get four cores working normally.

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Andrewr05 on February 25, 2009 03:16AM I always figured this would be possible, of course you'd have to underclock the other three cores to the stable 4th cores speed but to some it might work out pretty good... reply to this

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