ASUS Core Unlocker - Real Time Unlocking of an X3 720 on the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,324 words · ~6 min read
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So, I actually did a dedicated video on core unlocking quite some time ago on my
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NCIXCOM channel, but ASUS has actually
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recently updated their core unlocker utility to make it even simpler. So,
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Core Unlocking is basically taking processors such as the
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X3720, which AMD has um what they've
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done is they've actually Okay, I'm going to drop the camera here for a minute so that I can break the seal on the CPU box
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here. What AMD has actually done is they
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have physically disabled well not physically but through kind of a a
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software trick they have disabled the uh
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one of the cores in the CPU. So they've
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actually got dual cores that are also unlock or locked quad cores as well as
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the triple cores. So the 720 today basically okay here I'm going to sort of
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stop rambling. The point of this video is to show you in real time how quickly
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you can unlock the core of a CP of a CPU
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in order to get better performance out of it. So today I'm going to be using the M4A889 GTD Pro USB 3 from ASUS using
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their core unlocker. So ASUS has simplified the whole process down to one
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button, a switch that you hit on the motherboard that will automatically
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unlock any available extra cores for you. So here's my uh my retail 720. Just
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going to install it in the socket here. So, lift up the lever. All right.
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Where's my little triangle? I think it's going to be in that corner. Yep, there
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we go. Okay. So, install that. Now, I'm
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just doing a quick demo here, so I'm not going to bother Oh, my batter is dying.
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That's going to make this a far less effective demonstration in real time.
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Hopefully, it lasts long enough for me to get some thermal compound on here and
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boot this thing up. So, I'm just going to apply a little bit of thermal
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compound on the CPU and then I'm just going to throw a heat sink on top of it
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rather than actually hook it up properly because um I don't have a whole lot of
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time here. So, here we go. Just going to plug in the fan. Okay, so the Coron
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locker has been simplified right down to a and we're back. Hate it when the uh
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battery dies on my camera, but what can you do? Okay, so I was just showing the
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core unlocking button that ASUS has added to their motherboard. Well,
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motherboards, some of them. So, you can see there's a little arrow here that
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points to where the core unlocker button is. You press that button, the light
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goes red, and then in theory, there are
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four cores on this triple core CPU.
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Now there's a lot of uh misconceptions about uh you know there being dangers
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involved in unlocking cores like your system's going to be unstable and that
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may be true but you got to understand that AMD unlocks cores for any number of
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different reasons. Some of them are unlocks them locks them seals them off
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for any number of different reasons. So press F1 to go into setup. Okay. F10
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enter. And so those reasons could be anything ranging from the core being
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actually physically defective to maybe it not meeting their target power
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envelope to maybe it being stable but
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you know only uh only within not quite within their tolerances because almost
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all CPUs will actually run faster than what they're spec by at least a little
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bit. Okay. So as long as you run the
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proper stability test. Oh, there you go. Four cores are activated. That was easy.
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As long as you run the necessary stability tests on your CPU, which means
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just, you know, Prime 95 for 24 to 48 hours, if the CPU doesn't make a math
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error, then it's stable. And this one
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appears to be not
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stable. That's too bad. I mean, there
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you go. I just pulled sort of any random any random retail CPU. And uh this one
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happens to not be stable with the core
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unlocker. I'm going to give it sort of one more try. I'm going to load the
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defaults in the setup here and I'm going to
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cuz h that's kind of disappointing. I've
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actually had pretty good success myself unlocking CPUs and I had hoped that this
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just sort of random one would work for me here. So far, no success. But that's
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the whole point of doing this kind of thing on camera so that everyone can
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learn and have new experiences. Maybe
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I'll have some of my V8 juice.
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Hopefully we don't get a blue screen this time. Blue screens are bad. Okay.
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No, let's just start Windows
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normally. H I wonder if it's to do with AHCI mode.
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Could be something like
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that. Well, I guess you're along for the
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ride now. I'm not about to stop the video now. If
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you're interested, you can keep watching. And if you're not, then you
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can always not watch anymore. So, I'm going to go into the onboard devices
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configuration. I'm going to set the serial serial port. No, I'm going to set
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the onboard. No.
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Hey, where are my uh where are my SATA
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ports? North bridge configuration.
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No. No. This is stupid.
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H.
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Well, I might have to give up at some point here. Can't figure out how to
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set RAID on this motherboard. Normally,
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it's here, but I don't see it here. So,
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I I actually don't have any uh any ideas
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beyond that.
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Oh, wonder if that's a problem. I'm going to do
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this. Probably not, but you never know.
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Maybe I'll just show you the test bench some more. So, there's that little light that
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says in theory everything should be
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working. I didn't turn on turbo key, so it's not the uh it's not the automated
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overclocking that's causing any problems here. Okay, we'll try that one more
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time.
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Oh, wouldn't it be funny if that had been
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it? How about that? So, there you go. We
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figured out how to get the system booted up. Well, we I guess I Well, you were
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here, too. Okay. No, we we figured out how to get the system booted up. I have
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Catalyst Control Center installed, which is completely unnecessary when you're
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running a NVIDIA video card. So, I'm just going to go ahead and exit that.
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So, let's uh let's fire up CPUZ to see
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whether we have four cores running or not. So, I'm just going to go ahead and
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do that. And it looks like we have four cores, four threads. They're running at
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stock speed of 2.8 GHz. So, we'll go into the task manager here. So, yeah,
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you can see that task manager has 1 2 3 four CPUs. And then we Okay, this is
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what I was saying before. You will need to run Prime 95 and I recommend small
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FFTs for I'd say a minimum of 24 hours
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and then I'd run it anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to ensure that your triple core
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CPU is stable with four cores enabled.
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And then you can actually even sometimes overclock triple cores unlocked to quad
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core and get even even more performance out of them. But there you go. That was
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my core unlocking uh tutorial and we
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figured out what the problem was and thank you for checking it out.