AMD's 890GX Chipset - Same Graphics, Better South Bridge
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 2, 2010 4:36 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Say Goodbye to ACC, Say Hello to ASUS
One thing AMD neglected to mention in its press presentation about the 8-series chipset was the fact that it removed support for Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC) from AMD’s BIOS. You may remember that ACC was the nifty tool that first let us overclock Phenom processors higher, but later allowed us to unlock disabled cores on Phenom II X2, X3 and Athlon II X3 processors. You heard it right, apparently ACC is gone.
Well, not exactly. Apparently ASUS has figured out a way to unlock cores despite not having easy access to whatever it is ACC did. And you have three ways to enable it:
1) Turn this switch on:
Technically it's the switch to the right of this one, but you get the point
2) Hold the “4” key during POST
3) Or enable it in the BIOS
Nifty. As far as I can tell, ASUS and ASRock are the only companies implementing ACC at this point. I suspect the rest will follow once they figure out how to do it.
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Calin - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
Intel has a much better platform than what it had two years ago - they crossed a huge chasm (from totally unplayable games and games running at 2 frames per second, to what seems like a decent enough integrated solution).StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
I agree.However been burned once by Intels Decelerators, and never again shall I touch them with a 40 foot pole.
Also I noticed a few mistakes in the review... It states that the Radeon 4290 is exactly the same as the 790GX (Radeon 3300) - However Anandtech, your missing a key point, and that's Direct X 10.1 vs Direct X 10.
And not to mention you forgot to add that the Radeon 4200 also supports Direct X 10.1 which is stated as Direct X 10.0 in the review.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
The fact ASUS added a damn switch on the board called CORE_UNLOCKER made me laugh out loud in the office, goddamnvol7ron - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
lol.san1s - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
I REALLY hope other motherboard manufacturers provide some way to unlock cores like this motherboard here.