Korean techsite
Playwares claim to have successfully unlocked the missing core on a new
Phenom II X3 710. Using a Biostar TA790GX motherboard with an SB750 south
bridge, the site claims enabling the fourth core was as easy as changing an
Advanced Clock Calibration setting in the BIOS. More specifically, Playwares set
ACC to "Auto." Back in Windows, the site took screenshots of stress testing with
four Prime95 instances, each one running on a separate core. Power consumption
testing showed a 24W difference at full load when the extra core was enabled. Of
course, even if this is genuine, unlocking Phenom II X3 cores might be risky
business-depending on its binning policies, AMD could simply sell chips with a
defective fourth core as triple-core Phenoms. It seems likely that Biostar will
patch future BIOS releases so the ACC setting no longer enables an extra core.
In any case, four 3.12GHz cores definitely isn't a bad deal for $119. (source:
TecHReport).
