Asus refines AMD core unlocking

Asus has revealed a new BIOS update for no less than 17 of it's AMD motherboards that will have Phenom II X2 owners falling over themselves to get at it. The update will allow AMD Phenom II dual cores to allow the choice of not only unlocking an extra one or two cores, but also which core will be unlocked.

This is a massive benefit for Phenom II X2, X3 and even Sempron 140 owners that have hidden cores because AMD uses one standard Agena die for its quad, triple and dual Phenom IIs. Often unlocking BOTH of these hidden cores will cause instability if everything isn't 100 per cent working, as AMD sometimes uses duff inventory to fill lower rated products.

Asus' advantage is that if you have just one bad core, you can specify the BIOS to unlock a single, specific core to give you a free triple core that's far more likely to be stable and overclockable. Plus, it's a completely free update: what's not to like!


To enable it, in the BIOS, go to the Advanced tab - CPU configuration and set ACC to Auto before enabling "Unleashing Mode". This opens up another option underneath that allows the user to specify which cores they want unlocked, providing more than one is hidden.


All AMD motherboards are supported that include ACC (Advanced Clock Calibration) on the SB710 or SB750 southbridge:

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