Question regarding overclocking vs. unlocking

[mango123]

Hello all. I am the owner of a Athlon Phenom II x4 965 BE. I have it installed in a m4a88t-d evo am3 motherboard. My question is this...

I am planning on overclocking this to somewhere between 3.8-4.2 with a hyper 212.

I know that these processors are capable to being unlocked a lot of times, and my question is what should I do? What are the benefits of unlocking the processor, can it slow it down? Where do I go from here.

Thanks.

 

[dma0991]

You're confusing the term unlocking here. Some AMD models have cores that are disabled and sold. Quite common among the 3 core CPUs from AMD and the Phenom II X4 960T but other than that, I don't think that there are other models which is unlockable and AFAIK the AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE has nothing to be unlocked.

 

[KingFatty]

Unlocking is when you enable a core that was previously locked. But it looks like all your cores are already unlocked, so there is nothing else waiting to be unlocked.

But, each core will generate heat. So, if you are running all 4 cores full blast, they will make a lot of heat. Think how, if you disabled one of the cores, you would generate less heat.

So, if you are generating less heat, you might be able to overclock the remaining, cooler, cores a bit more. That's the convoluted way of saying how, if you unlocked all your cores, perhaps you might need to use a slightly slower speed for all the cores, because of how much heat they would make. Disable 3 of the 4 cores and just have one core left, and you might be able to overclock it a bit more than if all 4 are enabled. But with just one core running, the chip overall would be much less powerful even if it could squeeze out a few more mhz.

 

[Smoblikat]

Theres no such thing as an Athlon Phenom 2, I think youre thinking of just a phenom 2, in this case your processor doesnt unlock, since there is nothing to unlock.

 

[AtenRa]

Your AMD Phenom II 965BE is Multiplier Unlocked, meaning you can OverClock by raising the multiplier. Unlocking the cores of the CPU is another story, your CPU cannot unlock more cores.

 

[mango123]

OK because I had thought I had read somewhere stories of people unlocking 965 series into the 6 core 1000 series phenoms... Something about the cores were just inactive sitting on the die.

 

[MLSCrow]

OK because I had thought I had read somewhere stories of people unlocking 965 series into the 6 core 1000 series phenoms... Something about the cores were just inactive sitting on the die.

Sorry, but you are mistaking the 965 for the 960T. The 960T Thuban can unlock to 6 cores (if you're lucky), but the 965BE is only 4 cores, and the only thing unlocked on the 965BE is the multiplier for overclocking. You only have 4 cores, you'll only have 4 cores ever, but you can overclock those to possibly 4.0. I think 4.2 is pushing it with air, IMO.

 

[mango123]

THats where the confusion lied... the 960 is what I had thought I for some reason had... LOL