Good deal on possible upgrade?

[MajorMayhem]

Hello all,

Sorry I haven't posted in while. Just too darn busy going crazy with life. I was thinking of upgrading my machine soon and had read that the Phenom II 710 2.6GHZ triple core could have the 4th core unlocked using a Biostar TA790GX 128M motherboard. At 124 bucks for the chip and a little over 100 for the motherboard I'd say that paired with 4 gigs of DDR2 1066 you can get some serious bang for your buck. All in total for mobo, cpu, and mem we're talking 238 dollars with free shipping. If I understand correctly and from the searching I've done it seems like pretty much everyone has sucessfully unlocked the 4th core with 0 defects. What do you all think of this? Or should I wait for prices to drop?

[Caradhras]

Stick to DD2-800 RAM, you wont ever see a difference.

ANd dont try to hack with the triple core, the best what can happen to you is that the the core was deactivated for a reason (defective). Then it will screw up all your data and throw weird exceptions at you.

[SwiftSpear]

As I understand it the triple core chips are ones that don't pass quality checks in 1 of the 4 cores. That doesn't mean that the core won't work, and it doesn't mean that you'll ever have any problems with a unlocked setup... but the chance of some problem arising in relation to the CPU is much higher.

I suppose it's up to you weather you feel the cost advantage offsets the risk level.

It definitely sounds like a fun project though. If I had a couple hundred bucks to spend on a nonessential wingman machine I might give it a go.

[Caradhras]

As an experimental fun machine, yay why not? But a machine used for productive work, do not do this!

[SwiftSpear]

As an experimental fun machine, yay why not? But a machine used for productive work, do not do this!

Meh, any machine that runs can be used for productive work. It's really more an issue of backups and essentiality. If this is going to be your goto workhorse machine for the next 4 years, you don't want to risk a buggered processor. What you don't want to have happen, is the machine fails and you don't have a backup option... or otherwise, your machine somehow corrupts your HDD data. Both things aren't an issue if you do proper backups and have another machine to take up the load, like I say, it would make a good wingman machine, run downloads, play local multiplayer with friends, do work while you're running AV/defrags/repairs on your main machine... but it's a basket you don't want to throw all your eggs in.

[imbaczek]

a defective cpu core isn't something you want in any more than half-serious box. you can expect everything from random lockups to silent data corruption; all bets are off.

[MajorMayhem]

It is not necessarily true that cores are disabled because of defect. Often time, especially with graphics cards a manufacturer has miscalculated and produced too many of a certain GPU version which is not selling as they expected. In these cases they will disable x amount of pixel piplelines or cores or what have you and turn them into more of their lower grade cards. True, if they have a chip with a defect that can be disabled and sold as a lower end gpu they will of course want to recoupe some money, but they do not produce their amounts of lower end gpu versions based soley on defects. They may estimate defect rates and hence estimate approximate numbers that will be used for lower end gpus but I assume they would not usually have enough defects to satisfy customer demand for lower end cards especially if the card are flying off the store shelves.

Another thing to consider is that chip manufactures usually only design x amount of chips for a given series. It cost them a lot of money in research and developement not to mention production. If you are going to make 2 different chips this means either having 2 different labs so to speak or having one lab produce so much and then switch the labs process over to produce the other product. This is time comsuming and risky at the same time. Anytime you make major changes to your process you risk a screwup. It is better to have one lab producing one product for most of that products run life.

When they make chips, they make standard chip of the highest grade product they intend to sell. It really doesn't cost them anything more to produce a quad core as apposed to a triple core once the process is in place. As a matter of fact what would cost more is to have 2 separate designs. I feel confident in stating that probably all triple cores started out as quds unless power consumption or heat was a factor. After all we are talking about tiny amount of sand basically, producing ingots, slicing them and then etching the dies.

Did you know that the AMD X2 Kuma dual core is really just a phenom quad core with 2 of the cores disabled? This doesn't mean that they are defective necessarily. Sometimes a laser will be used to sever the connection physically on the chip and make it impossible to ever re enable the cores but they don't always do it this way.

It is sort of like the diamond industry, only releasing so many diamonds each year to keep the cost up. In actuallity diamond are not quite as rare as they make them out to be.

The same thing goes for chips. If you make 500,000 quad cores chips and want to sell them for top market dollar you have 2 things to consider. First not everyone can afford your asking price but you still want to sell product and you have all these chips you've made or intend to make that may or may not be selling to as many high end customers as you initially thought. See you don't want to produce too little because if someone really wants that AMD for instance and you run out of product may not wait and go with Intel. But you also don't want to produce too much because if they don't sell this is wasteful. Basically you want to hit all the comsumer demographics but you also want to simplify and streamline you manufacturing cost and processes as much as possible while cutting down on waste. If you release all 500,00 quad cores and they are not selling the price falls. If you release half and then use a laser to cut off two if the cores in the remaining chips (The connections are not always cut this way) you are now justified in selling them at a reduced cost because of reduced performance, but the customers, lower price range can still get many of the benefits of the new chips design features (more cache, improved microcode, 3dnow and SSE verison, lower power consumption, overclockability, etc). This turns out to be a win win situation because you have kept the supply vs. demand ratio favorable for your high end chips, you have sold the lower end version and made money and you have kept your cost and processes down and simple. Let's not forget also that as stated the chips produced with a core defect now don't have to be a total loss and can also fill in the numbers in the lower end market.

The story goes that AMD wanted to crush Intel in the numbers and was actually accused by Intel (I have heard at least) of doing this triple core quad core thing on purpose hoping to sell more chips without totally blowing the ability to demand higher prices for higher end performer. Basically if AMD had sold the quad core phenom IIs right now at 150 bucks it makes it hard to justify why prices are so high. But if you sort of seek it out there, and you sell enough extra chips to the tweakers/overclockers you are taking quad core sales away from Intel. I know it sounds screwy at first but this is the story I have heard and if you think about it, it does make some sense.

Sorry to be so long winded. I went an got a AMD Kuma 2.7 gig dual core black edition with 4 gigs of G skills DDR2 1066 and a foxconn mobo for 183 buck. Not to shabby and this thing flies.

[Forboding Angel]

foxconn? Enjoy the capacitors blowing out in a year

[MajorMayhem]

Ok, first off let me tell you this, Foxconn is one of the largest OEM distributers in the world. If you have ever owned a Dell for instance, it has a Foxconn motherboard. I know this personally as I am sitting in a Dell plant right now where I work as a robotics consultant. Secondly, the caps while not solid are Panasonics if I remember correctly and it really doesn't get much better. Secondly, if I were to have a cap failure in the future it wouldn't be the first time I have sucessfully rescued a mobo by removing an replacing all the caps on the board with superior grade equivalent value caps, assuming it didn't take out the CPU but that is rare in my experience. If I were to replace the caps, once again I would be using Panasonics as these are my personal favorites. Besides caps don't usually just blow, they go bad over time and usually show signs of a problem before they fail, usually. And as I said, Dells are foxconn, they are just relabled with a Dell stencil and usually have one of the power wires switched around although I don't know if they still do the latter as I have heard of a lot of backlash because of people trying to replace a Dell motherboard with another brand and blowing it up because while the motherboard 20 or 24 pin connector is the same and will fit the actual pinouts are rearanged.

Check my motherboard here, it has been the most stable machine I have ever owned so far after 6 months, and I have built countless machines over the past 20+ years.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813186147

[Societal]

For anyone using a Phenom II I highly recommend getting a dual-plane motherboard for new purchases. The TA790GX 128M mentioned above has been superseded by the TA790GXE 128M. I believe X2 and X3s won't unlock with the newer board though so that's a matter of personal taste. Even then you are limited to a specific BIOS revision as the ability was removed in subsequent revisions at the request of AMD. Supposedly some Asus board continues to allow it in new BIOS revisions but I don't know about that as the correspondence from Biostar says it was necessary or they would lose AMD's "support". As to what that means exactly I don't know but I am expecting the selection of motherboards that unlock cores to diminish over time. Also, there is a new X3 740 coming out to replace the 720BE.

[aegis]

it would probably be more cost/time-effective to just get a better mobo than replace all the caps on a crappy mobo

people complain about overclocking, and the nic, ide, and sata on that foxconn.
it only has two ram slots, one pci-e 16x slot, and realtek onboard sound (which has been known to cause issues)

I'm more than satisfied with my $200 motherboard purchase.
it has heat spreaders/sinks for the important parts, four ram slots, dual gigabit, tons of usb, awesome layout, sweet extras, and has supported a wonderful overclock on air cooling

and the foxconn seems to be only 95w? you probably want 125w for a quad.

[Caydr]

Buy Asus, everything else is for soccer moms.

[aegis]

asus, xfx, gigabyte, evga, and msi are the amd mobo manufacturers worth buying iirc

[Caydr]

OK, maybe gigabyte too.

[MajorMayhem]

Hum, that's funny, caps blowing out in a year. If you are still thinking back to the great capacitor debacle or the PIII era when the stolen dielectric formula was flawed and used by so many cap manufactures, It was a huge problem that lingered for years and years but that is pretty much history. I did give electrolytic caps a bad rep though. Besides that, what caps do you think they use in your monitor, or power supply, or big screen tv for that matter. I know there are solid caps now but that doesn't mean the electrolytic types aren't still sound. Besides you will be replacing your hardware WAY before those solid caps ever come into play. Not to mention just cause they are solid doesn't mean they can't fail. Just that the dielectric won't leak. Which really isn't a problem with electrolytic caps when it' made correctly. The other funny thing is I have seen many Asus board fail and the ones that don't often have comparability issues. Heck, I had an Asus mobo that had a conflict with an Asus video card, and that just ain't right.

[Neddie]

I buy Gigabyte and MSI.

[Forboding Angel]

Gigabyte boards are 100% solid. Asus has kind of lost favor with me over the years, and MSI boards sometimes have issues with the chipset, but yes, if I were forced to buy something other than gigabyte, I'd probably go with MSI; asus being the runner up.

Foxconn, biostar, pcchips, oxford... Doesn't matter how long they've been in business. They make crappy boards with cheap hardware. As a result, I'll repeat myself.

Enjoy the capacitors blowing out in a year.

P.S. the fact that you are sitting in a dell plant atm gives you less credibility, not more. You honestly thing that dell isn't cutting corners? All one has to do is open up a dell case and it's immediately clear where they cut corners, and the first indication is the proprietary mobo. Dells aren't any different than any other premade comp. You can make yourself believe what you like, that's fine, but we aren't lying to you or just trying to make you feel bad.

P.S.S. Lolshrouds! xD

[aegis]

MSI boards sometimes have issues with the chipset

chipset is generally amd, nvidia, intel, via, not specific to the motherboard...

[MajorMayhem]

I'll let you know in a year when the caps blow. Funny thing is it's pretty much been one of if not the most stable machine I have ever owned which was what I was going for stability. Don't get me wrong, it flies too. Not really trying to argue with you here but over 25 years I have seen problems with all manufactures. The major cap problems were all pretty much related to a flawed JPCON formula. To paraphrase the opinions of the author of the Toronto Star article* , the faulty capacitors are suspected to have been rooted in the theft of an aqueous electrolyte formula which was not copied correctly. If you were to open up a capacitor you would find thin sheets of paper and metal rolled up together. The entire assembly is then wetted with an aqueous electrolyte solution. However, if the formula is not correctly mixed up, hydrogen gas can apparently build up in the aluminum can with time. I can point you to several Asus boards right now that are receiving sub par reviews. My opinion, I have used many Asus board in the past and didn't find them to be the cats meow of motherbaords. My experiences with Asus and the experiences of other I have seen cause me not to buy Asus anymore. I have had much better experiences with other manufactures. DFI in particular is excellent in my opinion but once again you can't say that all designs from a certain company are going to be solid. There are too many variables from component placement to wave soldering processes to what the mexican or chinese guy who last touched it ate for lunch or if he was having a bad day or not. I think it's more a design issue then a manufacturing issue. Some designs are just more solid then others no matter who makes them. Asus makes nice video card I use them all the time but won't buy another motherboard from them. And the quality of the thousands of separate components, all from different manufactures, all from separate batches, cannot be verified. Like I said caps have gotten a bad name from flawed formula that circulated several years ago with many of the bad components lingering in the sector for several years after. It's funny how people always talk about caps going bad. If all I ever had to do to fix a piece of electronic equipment was change the caps I would be a rich man. Oh and I can and have replaced caps in motherboards before for several people, it's actually fun and rewarding. For me anyways. Matter of fact I was given a Acer that was a couple of years old that wasn't working. I replaced I bad cap and got a free machine out of it so doesn't bother me none.

[Neddie]

I do have a warning about Gigabyte, for 1066 DDR2 RAM 8 to 16 GB you might need to raise the Northbridge voltage to be stable. It doesn't autodetect correctly.