Sempron 140 unlocked to X2

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think that scaryjim will be interested in this one:

http://www.techpowerup.com/101389/Se...lon_II_X2.html

[s3ds]

what i cant get my head around is sempron + 790 board = £90 ish
a Athlon II X2 240 + GA-MA74GM-S2H = £84

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

what i cant get my head around is sempron + 790 board = £90 ish
a Athlon II X2 240 + GA-MA74GM-S2H = £84

You can get a 770 based motherboard with the SB710 for between £50 to £60 which can unlock AMD CPUs.

Also the the 760G comes with the SB710 and more 780 series motherboards have the SB710 too. The new 785G based motherboards also have the SB710.

[scaryjim]

Already seen this actually, CAT Hence my insistence on an SB710 / SB750 for the new HTPC

s3ds - don't forget that the 790GX mobos have significantly better Graphical performance than even the 780G / 785G, let alone against the aging X1250 in the 740G chipset. Besides, some people won't care enough about the second core to spend the extra on an Athlon II X2 - it's just a nice bonus if you can get it. For my purposes (HTPC which will mostly be playing ordinary DVDs, plus some light gaming at 1280 x 768) the featureset and performance of the iGPU is more important (plus the ASUS EVO board I'm planning on getting allows overclocking of both the iGPU and the Sideport memory!). Don't know if they've enabled ACC unlocking in the BIOS though - will report back once Scan have sorted my free shipping!

[scaryjim]

Right, I've just ordered a Sempron 140 + ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO as the rebuild for my HTPC. I'll let you know how unlocking it goes

[shbris]

cat-the-fifth, news master

[s3ds]

I was able to unlock the extra core on a 720 with a 790 board although i did not leave it unlocked
I never think of playing games on a HTPC so an X1250 is fine lol

[scaryjim]

I never think of playing games on a HTPC so an X1250 is fine lol

*shrug* we get a lot of use out of our living room (comes of having children!) so the more versatile the HTPC the better! And while the 785G won't play the latest games at the highest settings, it'll play most games at moderate settings at that resolution (particularly if I push the GPU clock speed a little... ).

[s3ds]

I have 3 kids but they have a pc each the living room has a HTPC , Wii , Ps2 and Sky if you want to use you gotta book in advance !
lol

[scaryjim]

Right, bits arrived and were put together on Monday, Windows 7 installed on Tuesday (after a few issues with a dead hard drive), Sempron 140 unlocked to "Athlon X2 4400e" a few minutes later

So far I've played Thief - Deadly Shadow and DragonShard with everything on high (looks very pretty ) without overclocking the GPU and using *just* the Sideport memory. The Sempron is stable as a single core with a 0.12v undervoltage: I intend to drop this as far as possible while maintaining stability (remember that the whole point of building this was to reduce my power usage from a Q6600 / 8800GTX!) once I've bought a plug-in power meter!

The packaging for the Sempron claims it is a "true single core design"... curious how it unlocks to a dual core, then...

[mnms]

First of all, sorry for digging this thread up, I hope I'm on topic.

Right, I've just ordered a Sempron 140 + ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO as the rebuild for my HTPC. I'll let you know how unlocking it goes

Right, bits arrived and were put together on Monday, Windows 7 installed on Tuesday (after a few issues with a dead hard drive), Sempron 140 unlocked to "Athlon X2 4400e" a few minutes later

I'm thinking trying to unlock my Sempron 140. Mind if I ask you a few questions, scaryjim?

Now, the motherboard that I have is the same as you do. In the BIOS (version is 0410) it has the ACC option; I've heard that people just change this to Auto with the Cool 'n' Quiet option turned off and that's it. But there's yet the Unleash Mode option. This last option seems to be specific for unlocking dual cores to triple and quad, so one should not use this option with a Sempron, I guess. Telling the BIOS that the system should use three or four cores when there's only two physical ones with a potential bad one doesn't seem like a good thing to do.

So, now I have two main questions - what settings did you tweak on the BIOS to successfully unlock your Sempron and if you can remember, which version was your BIOS at the time of the unlock?

[Terbinator]

I got my Sempron on Thursday, just wondering what board to pip for - the MSI 785G on Scan says its support unlocking on its product page so i may go for that.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I got my Sempron on Thursday, just wondering what board to pip for - the MSI 785G on Scan says its support unlocking on its product page so i may go for that.

If you have some DDR2 and have an ATX case get the Asus M3A78-T as it is only around £52 this weekend on Scan:

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx

This motherboard was originally around £100 when first released.

[Terbinator]

If you have some DDR2 and have an ATX case get the Asus M3A78-T as it is only around £52 this weekend on Scan:

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx

This motherboard was originally around £100 when first released.

I've only got DDR3 spare

[Ulti]

MSI 785G works brilliantly in unlocking it, I bought mine from Ebuyer and had to update the BIOS to support core unlocking, with 1.45v core voltage, the CPU is stable at 3.6ghz unlocked as a dual core to Athlon II 440/4400e. I haven't tried undervolting it but the CPU had a VID of about 1.325V IIRC and it was stable as a dual core on stock voltage and stock speeds too.

The board doesn't have sideport memory though so it might suffer in games but I doubt you're gonna be some hardcore gamer with integrated graphics lol.

[Terbinator]

Well I won't be overclocking as its going to have a pretty anaemic use as it is, but the extra core should help with the majority of stuff!