Another attempt to unlock my 555

[v1ks_]

Hi there!

Seeking some advice. I'll try to keep the long story... slightly less longer.
Here goes.

When I bought my 555 one of the first things I tried to do was to unlock it, obviously. This forum helped me a lot, but in the end I just gave up and did not manage to get it stable. It pretty much boiled down to the following symptoms. I would POST, boot into Windows and then Windows Explorer and Catalyst would crash, but otherwise everything would run OK(-ish). I would pass 48hrs of Prime95 in blend without errors, hell, I could even OC the unlocked CPU to 3.9 and run Prime95 perfectly fine, while making some rhymes... anyhow, after numerous multi, voltage, NB settings, I just gave up, as two cores where just fine with me, considering the OC I got out of them.

Now, today I randomly started thinking over the symptoms and what I tried to do back then and I got some questions.

Would it be possible that the actual culprit is not the CPU, but something to do with memory? Obviously, I first tried to OC/unlock the CPU before fiddling with RAM, so everything with done @ stock speed and timings.

At the moment, I'm sitting with unlocked cores, Prime95 is running fine, as it did... however, just like the last time, explorer crashed on boot, then Catalyst crashed, this time I can't start Firefox, but Chrome runs without a problem.

I'd really like to hear some input/advice on the issues. Some wild ideas that I might try

Many thanks and sorry for my English Almost silly o'clock and a beer or two too many

 

[johan851]

I guess it could be memory related, or memory controller related. What test are you doing in Prime95? Have you tried running memtest86+ with the cores unlocked?

 

[v1ks_]

I guess it could be memory related, or memory controller related. What test are you doing in Prime95? Have you tried running memtest86+ with the cores unlocked?

Running blend in p95, I do recall that SuperPi gave me no problems either... as for memtest, no, that's something I haven't tried.

The Firefox issues puzzles me though. What does it have that Chrome doesn't, or vice versa... Firefox refuses to open all together, but Chrome works fine.

I'll leave Prime running overnight and start memtest tomorrow morning, when I leave for work. Theoretically, that should either confirm or cancel the suspected memory issues, right? Although it still could be the controller, no?

Cheers!

 

[johan851]

Memtest86+ should tell you something informative. But it's weird that some programs don't work and others work fine. That makes me very suspicious...

 

[v1ks_]

Memtest86+ should tell you something informative. But it's weird that some programs don't work and others work fine. That makes me very suspicious...

Indeed, which is why I'm back to the drawing board so to speak. Perhaps I can have me a quad core after all!

 

[RGone]

Humh? Logical investigation.

1. Running with the cores as spec'd as the cpu was sold, brings about no problems.

2. Unlock the disabled cores and then certain applications do crash.

3. I still have the same ram in the board that works fine in spec'd mode, so it is not likely a ram related app crash when cpu cores unlocked.

4. Not sure if one area of the IMC is disabled along with the cores. If enabling the cores brings back a section of the memory controller that was previously disabled, then that section of the memory controller may exhibit errors depending on how an app makes memory calls.

5. If upping the Vcore to about 1.475 volts (even at stock speed) and upping the CPU/NB to 1.25 volts does not fix the problem with certain apps crashing, then I would say the cores were locked/disabled for good reason when AMD was binning that cpu.

 

[johan851]

5. If upping the Vcore to about 1.475 volts (even at stock speed) and upping the CPU/NB to 1.25 volts does not fix the problem with certain apps crashing, then I would say the cores were locked/disabled for good reason when AMD was binning that cpu.

That's a good way to summarize.

The only other thing I might mention is that if you're feeling super bored and adventurous, you could always try to reinstall the OS (or install a new OS on a separate disk) to take that out of the equation. Maybe the OS doesn't like the CPU being unlocked underneath it? It's unlikely, but Windows can be finicky sometimes.