Unlocking PhII 555 BE... fail?

[birthdaymonkey]

I just got a new motherboard to replace the three-year-old ASUS mATX in my HTPC/SC2 rig. The Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H was on sale for CAD 62.99 shipped, so I couldn't resist. My old board wasn't exactly feature-rich. It didn't have any ACC/core unlock functionality, for instance, and of course I was curious about the potential unlockability of the Phenom II 555 that I'd picked up a couple months back. A newer chipset plus the chance of unlocking to a quad seemed worth $60 to me.

So the first thing I tried after getting the system up and running (using the plug'n'pray method--old board out, new board in, let Win7 sort it out) was unlocking the extra cores. I enabled the "hybrid" firmware in my BIOS and held my breath... I was expecting to at least be able to run some Prime95 and have the extra cores produce errors, but the computer hung at the starting Windows logo screen.

I went back into the BIOS and disabled both extra cores while leaving the ACC/hybrid firmware enabled, and Windows still wouldn't load... exactly the same issue. So do you guys think the cores are faulty, or am I doin' it wrong? Is there any hope of an unlock here, or has Fortuna spun me down?

 

[fffblackmage]

Did you make sure the computer boots fine before trying to unlock? Something doesn't seem right if you locked the 2 extra cores and you're not able to boot.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Did you make sure the computer boots fine before trying to unlock?

Yep, the system runs great at 3.7GHz with two cores (an hour of Prime without going over 50C). I even managed an extra 100MHz more with the Gigabyte board than I could get with my old Asus M2A-VM... might be able to squeeze out a few more MHz too, but I haven't tried further. Of course, the chip wasn't OCed when I tried the unlock. What about Cool'n'Quiet and C1E? Should I try disabling those? Does that sort of thing matter for core unlocking?

Something doesn't seem right if you locked the 2 extra cores and you're not able to boot.

That was my thinking too, which is why I decided to post about it. If the extra cores had just failed under stress testing that would be one thing, but this is weird. I'm at work right now, but I'll probably try fiddling with it some more when I get home, or tomorrow evening... especially if anybody has any ideas.

 

[Sunny129]

Something doesn't seem right if you locked the 2 extra cores and you're not able to boot.

That was my thinking too, which is why I decided to post about it. If the extra cores had just failed under stress testing that would be one thing, but this is weird. I'm at work right now, but I'll probably try fiddling with it some more when I get home, or tomorrow evening... especially if anybody has any ideas.

hey OP, i was doing some research on core unlocking and found this thread. anyways, i'm not sure if you ever found a solution to your problem b/c the thread went dead. but in the event that you didn't yet solve your problem, you should check out THIS thread. it more or less talks about the inability to boot to windows with hybrid firmware still enabled, but 2 cores locked. the OP in that thread, through some troubleshooting, then ended up learning that one of the 2 cores left unlocked was the defective one, and that the other 3 cores were in fact unlockable, overclockable, and stable. you could get lucky and find the same thing. or you could alternatively find out that you do in fact have 2 faulty cores and that your CPU will only function reliably as an X2 Callisto. either way, since you had problems rebooting with ACC/hybrid firmware enabled and 2 cores disabled, i would at least check to see if windows will boot on at least 1 core. and if that's successful, try adding a core...and just keep going by process of elimination.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Thanks for the heads up... I will definitely read up out of curiosity. IT will be purely academic though, as I sold my 555 and got a 940 BE when newegg had them on for $99. It doesn't clock as high as my 555 did (sweet spot on the 940 is only 3.55GHz), but the four core sure do work.

EDIT: Read it... wish I'd thought of that at the time!

 

[Sunny129]

Thanks for the heads up... I will definitely read up out of curiosity. IT will be purely academic though, as I sold my 555 and got a 940 BE when newegg had them on for $99. It doesn't clock as high as my 555 did (sweet spot on the 940 is only 3.55GHz), but the four core sure do work.

EDIT: Read it... wish I'd thought of that at the time!

well here's the catch - if the guy in that other thread had 2 cores disabled (but left ACC/hybrid firmware enabled) and still had problems booting to windows, then we know right away that at least 1 of the 2 enabled cores are no good. it appears you were having the same exact problem - so it would just be a matter of figuring out which one of your 2 enabled cores was bad...and it could have very well been that both of the enabled cores were bad, and that the 2 disabled cores were in fact the good ones. so what i'm saying is that, at the very least you probably had 1 bad core, and quite possibly could have had 2 bad cores...which means that at best your X2 CPU would have become an X3 CPU. fortunately with the 940 BE you're guaranteed 4 good cores. so even if you had more success with the 555 BE you used to have, i think at best it would have unlocked to a X3 CPU.

i know this is all academic at this point...but its food for thought. anyways i'm glad you have 4 stable cores now, even if you had to purchase an X4 branded CPU.

 

[hondaf17]

Hey guys. I am "the guy" in that other thread. Read this thread and was going to link to mine, glad someone already did. Any follow up questions I'm happy to try and help, but Sunny you understand my problem exactly, and did a good job explaining it. Glad the OP here got a stable 4 core now.