Rumor Mill: AMD's Phenom II X3 Processors Have Four Working Cores

Earlier this month Sunnyvale, California-based AMD announced the introduction of new Phenom II processors, providing users with new quad-core and triple-core AMD chips. The Phenom II X3 710 and 720 models are the first of the company's triple-core offering that boasts the new 45nm process technology, providing users with a better performance and more overclocking potential. As some already know, the triple-core Phenom II processors are basically quad-core CPUs with a fourth core disabled. On that note, it now appears that users will have the ability to enable the fourth core by changing a setting in the motherboard's BIOS.

 

According to a recent article on Playwares, the Phenom II X3 710 processor can have its fourth core enabled, when installed on a Biostar TA790GX 128M motherboard. This allows the user to select Auto in the Advanced Clock Calibration BIOS setting, which will enable the system to detect a new processor, dubbed Phenom II X4 10, which has 4 cores instead of three, a feature that is also detected by CPU-Z under a Windows operating system. If the pictures made available on the aforementioned website are real, then users of at least some Phenom II X3 processors might be able to benefit from the computing power of a quad-core processor at the price of a triple-core processor.

 

The guys over at Playwares have also benchmarked the CPU, which was overclocked to 3.12 GHz. When the processor had only three cores, it managed to score 3795 in 3DMark06, while with four cores the score went up to 4776, which is rather impressive, given that you can boost the performance of you CPU with only a minor tweak in the system's BIOS, which will not affect the system's stability.

 

Even if the article is correct, users shouldn't be expecting their triple-core Phenom II processors to also be able to provide them with a fourth working core. It might be that the processor used in the demonstration was actually featured with four working cores when it was released from AMD's fabrication line.