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Phenom II X4 960T ''Zosma'' Unlock to Phenom II X6

That's not too bad.. Both boards have Thuban bios's so either will work. If you want less expensive, go for it. :)

What would I be missing out on if I went the microcenter board vs the newegg board, out of curiosity?
 
880G board, w/IGP, less pci-e, vs 890FX, max pci-e, no IGP.

890FX is better for overclocking.
 
880G board, w/IGP, less pci-e, vs 890FX, max pci-e, no IGP.

890FX is better for overclocking.

I'm not going to be doing any overclocking, just want to unlock the cores if possible and possibly use the turbo function if it doesn't decrease the life span of the CPU.
 
I'm not going to be doing any overclocking, just want to unlock the cores if possible and possibly use the turbo function if it doesn't decrease the life span of the CPU.

The CPUs are designed to run turbo straight away with no fiddling thus running it won't decrease the life span.






By the way, assuming CPU is 3ghz turbo will net you a 16.5% increase not 50%.
 
I'm not going to be doing any overclocking, just want to unlock the cores if possible and possibly use the turbo function if it doesn't decrease the life span of the CPU.

When it comes to unlocking cores, you need to get a motherboard that supports unlocking, as the unlock hardware in 790FX is not present in the 800-series chipsets. ASUS and gigabyte have added thier own hardware to unlock, while MSI relies on software to unlock.

I'd like to explore how that works, so this chip is very interesting to me. So much so..I'll give you 965BE for it.
 
I'd like to explore how that works, so this chip is very interesting to me. So much so..I'll give you 965BE for it.

Even though a trade for a 965BE is an amazing offer, I imagine he's received quite a few pm'ed offers for that chip by now :laugh:
 
Even though a trade for a 965BE is an amazing offer, I imagine he's received quite a few pm'ed offers for that chip by now :laugh:

Not sure why though. It's nothing really spectacular...same as 940BE, but with turbo. IT would be quite a bit slower than 965BE...I'm just interested in investigating the differences between MSi's software unlock, and the hardware solution provided by the other two.

So really, I don't REALLY want it ...playing with it might be fun. But it might be NOT fun too...:laugh:..the chip might NOT unlock.
 
If he does decide to trade with you, I'd be very curious to know what your results are. :rockout:
 
Why would you run it stock speed anyway ? :laugh:

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I pretty much run stock 24/7 because of my environment, and temps(using stock cooler, even). Seems Crossfire needs an OC, but really, I think that's asinine. I think i might be making a change in Intel very soon...only thing holding me back ATM is my 4x2gb mem...cost too much for me to buy another set for 1366. Problably won't be able to find another set of hypers.

I'm also interested in how Turbo, at stock, might affect Crossfire performance.
 

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Oh right, just used to everyone busting crazy clocks on every bit of kit they have XD
 
http://forums.techpowerup.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=37878&stc=1&d=1283701737


I pretty much run stock 24/7 because of my environment, and temps(using stock cooler, even). Seems Crossfire needs an OC, but really, I think that's asinine. I think i might be making a change in Intel very soon...only thing holding me back ATM is my 4x2gb mem...cost too much for me to buy another set for 1366. Problably won't be able to find another set of hypers.

I'm also interested in how Turbo, at stock, might affect Crossfire performance.

OT, but you could probably lower that Vcore :D
 
OT, but you could probably lower that Vcore :D

Actually, no, I cannot. Load temps are 65c under P95, far too hot for any volt drops.

Once colder, sure, 1.275v, no problem, but need to keep load under 48c.

:banghead:

Hence me willing to play with other chips...what I've got now is absolute crap, in my house.


Thanks for the advice, but trust me...I definately know what to do when it comes to overclocking. Probably moreso than most, given my "skills" in memory tweaking. I can't even got 3500mhz outta this chip on the stock cooler, and stock volts. It being a 965BE really has no reflection on how good the chip might be.
 
I was just making an observation and offering up an opinion not judging your abilities, so you can save the skills and 'I know more than you' talk for someone else.

Must suck to have such a crappy chip, I'd have gotten rid of it by now.
 
It's actually not so bad...4ghz @ 1.475. Just need good cooling for it to scale.

Overclocking is something I lost interest in some time ago. Unfortunately, testing shows that 965BE @ stock is not sufficient to push 5870 Crossfire, but learning that was well worth any "crappyness" that this chip may have.

And sry, you posted OT, just to try to give advice, to someone that doesn't need it. I'm not bragging, just stating a fact. Anyone that spends some decent time tweaking can do that same, hence the quotations aorund "skill"..I do not see it as any skill. It's really not hard to change a setting, and test the effects. you may think it's me bragging, when really, any "skill" in overclocking, to me, is a joke.

But in the end, yes, because this cpu isn't a "stellar" chip, my interest in 960T remains fairly high. I don't think it will offer the performacne the rest of my system needs...and unfortunately, it seems no AMD chip, at stock, will meet the needs of 5870 Crossfire.
 
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well the 960T where its thuban probably has a much better IMC ive seen many THubans getting over 3000mhz NB with relative ease with good cooling where as 955 965 need extreme volts to do the same thing and as you mentioned the higher the NB the better CF seemed to scale so id say its worth it due to bandwidth and latency drop
 
Yeah, my thoughts exactly, and hence my interest...need to see if it pans out that way or not...

I have 1090T here, have for many months now...still waiting for the CH4Extreme, as I mentioned earlier...maybe that might be better...but...I'd much rather have the direct compare of a Deneb vs Thuban, @ natural 4core. Also, the compare of how disabled cores affects performacne, might be interesting too.

Seems kinda odd that they have named it 960T, given the clockspeeds, too...IMHO should be called 940T.

ya gotta wonder about the binning process too...is it downbinned for bad cores...or maybe bad IMC...or NB? Quite an interesting chip, to me.
 
or most likely they could be 1090T derivatives that didnt make the cut thus lower speeds all around if say 1 core is truly faulty then it couldnt be a 1055t or a 1035t oem so my guess is the 960T has at least 1 bad core good thing about core unlocking tho u dont need to unlock ALL the cores a 5 core cpu might be pretty interesting as well :roll:
 
or most likely they could be 1090T derivatives that didnt make the cut thus lower speeds all around if say 1 core is truly faulty then it couldnt be a 1055t or a 1035t oem so my guess is the 960T has at least 1 bad core good thing about core unlocking tho u dont need to unlock ALL the cores a 5 core cpu might be pretty interesting as well :roll:

Well I was planning on seeing if I could unlock the cores, but not sure how to do it.

Any guides on this?

Probably going to get the microcenter motherboard today since it's close by.

I don't want to do anything that can possibly damage the CPU at all though.

I have a couple people interested in it and I don't see the need to keep it unless it's actually capable of unlocking to 6 cores (or 5 even like you said)

edit: probably getting this, since it's 15 minutes away

http://www.frys.com/product/6250080?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

MSI 870A-G54 AMD 870 AM3 Motherboard

$90 after rebate

"OC Genie and Unlock CPU Core"

"stable core unlock function, overclocking capability"

should do the trick, yeah?
 
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i prefer the asus M4A785 TD V evo since i can pretty much jump into the bios and manually set what core to unlock in under 20 seconds i had 2 athlon II x3 440s unlock to Quads with L3 about a week ago on those boards surprisingly enough they were C2 variants so extremely rare they unlocked with L3 but cpuz and the benchmarks didnt lie

not sure if it supports turbo or not etc etc tho
 
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