Asus M2NVP-VM Unlock Phenom II X2

I've ordered a Phenom II X2 555 to put into an Asus M2NVP-VM (5005
BIOS). I've done some reading about how to unlock this CPU to an
X3/X4 but not sure this BIOS is going to have the options to do so.
Will have to wait and see but wanted to get some ideas before hand...

1 - Has anyone used this mobo to unlock an X2 to an X3/X4?

2 - Does anyone know if it is possible to use a pin-mod to unlock the
cores? (like years ago when you could select different voltages on
celerons by jumpering pins on the CPU)

3 - Anyone know where to find a pinout of the AM3 CPUs yet? Looks
like AMD is not releasing this info to the general public from what
I've read.


Thanks for any help you can toss out!

The cpu might not be able to unlock the extra cores and be stable and you just use the bios to unlock the core but again do it one at a time and check stability with the extra cores.. Check out you tube man...

I doubt that board has the right hardware on it to unlock cores - but I've been wrong before.

Still doing more research and looks like you need to have an AMD southbridge SB710 or SB750 to have the option in the BIOS (missed this little tidbit of info before). This board has an NVIDIA nForce 430 southbridge. Most likely out of luck.

Anandtech - Unlocking the Phenom II X2 555

Still hoping there may be some sort of pin jumper mod that can be done on the CPU itself. Doesn't look like many overclockers go to these extremes anymore, spoiled by all the BIOS settings nowadays.

Oh well, guess I'll just be glad AMD gives the option of using newer AM3 CPUs in the old AM2 boards. Eventually upgrading mobo at a later date then can unlock the 2 additional cores (if they work).

Core unlocking is done through some modification of ACC. In fact, the original unlocking of cores came about by accident when using ACC on a Phenom II CPU, which has built-in ACC. The ACC signal comes from the SB, which is why only some of them can do it. I doubt a pin-out of the CPU would help.

New CPU installed and running this morning. Did a little playing around with overclocking the CPU. Was able to hit 4Ghz pretty easily! Stock retail cooler. I could not find a way to adjust the CPU voltage on this board, settings are really limited. Was pleasantly surprised. The odd thing is I could not change the multiplier to more than 19x, probably a BIOS glitch since it would jump to 5x when I selected 19.5x. So I bumped the FSB after that. It would actually post at 4200Mhz but lock right after BIOS screen. 4050Mhz got into windows boot but locked before reaching desktop. I'm sure with some fancy cooling and more voltage it could probably go a little higher. Maybe dig out the old water cooler thats been sitting in a box for the past 6 yrs.

Someday when I need the extra power and more programs take better advantage of multicore CPUs I'll replace the mobo with something a little more OC friendly and unlock the extra cores.

Thanks again for the info...