Hack an extra core into your Phenom II

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

cores
It’s an improvement worthy of the greatest trick of all time, the 9800 Pro pencil mod — and probably just as boneheaded of an idea to try. This little hack enables the latent fourth core on certain Phenom processors, assuming you’ve got a certain type of Biostar mobo. Of course, there’s probably a little more to it than that, so I’d hold off on this unless you’re feeling really adventurous.

Essentially, you just need a motherboard with the “Advanced Clock Calibration” option in the BIOS setup screen, which you set to “auto,” and like magic it detects and starts using that fourth core. Apparently it gets detected and used by Windows, though there’s no telling what mischief may come of this kind of behavior.

[via Tom's Hardware]

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