Worth it to unlock Athlon II X3 435?

[allenk09]

I'm not entirely sure how unlocking works, but I just got a Athlon II X3 435 today and it apparently can be unlocked to have another core (It apparently turns it into a Phenom II X4 B35?).

I'm just wondering it it's worth switching over to this other motherboard I have that has the unlocking features, as my current motherboard doesn't have the unlocking features. Is it going to make that much of a difference that I should take an hour or two to switch the motherboard and reinstall drivers for the chipset and everything?

 

[veri745]

It depends on what you're expecting.

Yes, it's an extra core. Yes, it's free performance.

The real question is, do you need the performance? What applications are you hoping to speed up?

 

[IonusX]

I'm not entirely sure how unlocking works, but I just got a Athlon II X3 435 today and it apparently can be unlocked to have another core (It apparently turns it into a Phenom II X4 B35?).

I'm just wondering it it's worth switching over to this other motherboard I have that has the unlocking features, as my current motherboard doesn't have the unlocking features. Is it going to make that much of a difference that I should take an hour or two to switch the motherboard and reinstall drivers for the chipset and everything?

if your running windows 7 it wont take an hour to install a motherboard. vista and your SoL. XP and yeah 1 hour
preformance wise in things like games and multi-threaded apps youd be getting an athlon II x4 of similar clocks. not a phenom. athlon II's have no L3 cache

 

[allenk09]

It depends on what you're expecting.

Yes, it's an extra core. Yes, it's free performance.

The real question is, do you need the performance? What applications are you hoping to speed up?

I don't really game other than Xplane, but I have Software Defined Radio stuff that eats processor like nothing. 4 Million FFT window.

if your running windows 7 it wont take an hour to install a motherboard. vista and your SoL. XP and yeah 1 hour
preformance wise in things like games and multi-threaded apps youd be getting an athlon II x4 of similar clocks. not a phenom. athlon II's have no L3 cache

I'm running XP 64, any problems with that? I've been wanting to install Windows 7 but it's not available for me on my student MSDN for some reason so I can't get it.

 

[billyb0b]

Def unlock that 4th core.

 

[jumpncrash]

free cores ftw!

 

[Dark Shroud]

I would run Vista SP2 in a heart beat, it's a good OS, over XP 64.

But yes it's worth it to try unlocking. I have a Sempron that cost less than $40 unlocked into an Anthlon x2 and Win7 runs much smother.