Another good reason to get a Gigabyte mobo for your Phen II

Was reading THG and came across this AMD Blocks Unlock; Gigabyte Fights Back.

As some of you may recall I tried unlocking the 4th core of my 720BE when I got it and had no luck, which was not the reason I got the trike, it was the price and the fact that I really don't need 3 cores let alone 4 as I rarely use 3 let alone 4 .

After reading this I thought I'll give it another go.

Into bios F5A I went of my MA790X-UD4P and there is a new option under ACC which is "Hybrid". So I set ACC to auto and left the Hybrid at normal. Boot windows and no joy, 3 cores as always. So back into bios and changed normal to hybrid, save, exit (note: it takes a while for the bios to change this setting and it will power down and auto restart). Boot windows and OMG there be 4 cores here Captain . So I am testing stability currently and so far 3.5Ghz is lookin real good at 1.35V. Suffice to say I am really liking this mobo .

Will update testing results when I have a chance to explore this "new" core.

Side note CPUz and Bios report a AMD Phenom II X4 20 Processor, not 720 or 920, just 20.

so you have a new bios, but are using the features of the old one at the same time?
im kinda confused ^^

I don't fully understand it either but basically the mobo is using the latest bios except for the old acc microcode which is stored in the backup bios, atleast that is my understanding.

Yeah it sounds like they store just the 'unlock microcode' in the secondary BIOS chip along with a backup of the current BIOS, and then add or 'inject' that microcode to the main BIOS. Pretty neato, I wonder if there will be any Phenom x2 unlocks.

Well 3.5Ghz @ 1.35V was a no go, tried 1.375V and heat is a problem with a Tuniq tower (>55C). So it's currently at 230x15=3.45Ghz @ 1.35V CPU->NB 2.3Ghz @ default voltage and seems fully stable thus far with all 4 cores enabled.

Asus motherboards now have the "unleashing mode" in the latest bios updates that open up cores as well. I have not tried it yet on my 810 to see if it also opens up cache, but I sure will later this week.