Unlocking cores and L3 on X3 and X4 Athlon II CPU's
AMD this summer was launched Athlon II series of cheap quad and triple core CPU’s. However, many of them share the same origin like much more expensive Phenom II CPU’s.
Athlon II X3 and X4 was made at two different masks. Dependent of series, Athlon II 620, or 630 on their heatspreaders may have AADAC or AACYC stepping codes. Third character in this stepping mark means the origin of the core or mask. If you have character D, this is the Propus L3 cacheless core. If you are lucky enugh, and you chose character C, this core is from Deneb mask, and this Propus, or Rana is locked version of Phenom II. If you are lucky, and if you have SB710 or SB750 board, locked core and extra 6MB L3 cache can be unlocked.
However, also if you choose AACYC or familiar code, it may be case that you have unstable part, with defective L3 cache, and/or unlocked core.
Also if you get AADAC Athlon II X3, you can unlock fourth core, because it is Propus based X3.
This one has L3 cache:
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/7476/denebopn.png
and this one hasn’t:
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/640/propusopn.jpg
unlocking with GA770-UD3P board:
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/6...chybrid.th.jpg
die shot of Athlon II X3 with AACYC code:
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/9...thlonx3die.jpg
die shot of Propus based Athlon II X4 – AADAC code:
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/426...iix4die.th.jpg
cache influence on K10 uArchitecture:
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/4103/uticajkeshak10.png