Bill Hillman wrote:
First let me say it's been a very very long time since I've walked
these grounds. Hoping there are still some experts floating around
that can answer my questions....

I've ordered a Phenom II X2 555 to put into an Asus M2NVP-VM (5005
BIOS). I've done some reading about how to unlock the this CPU to an
X3/X4 but not sure this BIOS is going to have the options to do so.
Will have to wait and see but wanted to get some ideas before hand...

1 - Has anyone used this mobo to unlock an X2 to an X3/X4?

2 - Does anyone know if it is possible to use a pin-mod to unlock the
cores? (like years ago when you could select different voltages on
celerons by jumpering pins on the CPU)

3 - Anyone know where to find a pinout of the AM3 CPUs yet? Looks
like AMD is not releasing this info to the general public from what
I've read.

Thanks for any help you can toss out!
Bill Hillman

The information available on the mechanism, is pretty sketchy.
The memo here, indicates a set of GPIO pins on the Southbridge,
are used to tune something on the processor. This makes it sound
like the scheme is more complicated than some static signal levels
(such as you'd get with a pin mod). Nvidia claimed to be adding
the function to a couple of their chipsets, in the form of a
JTAG serial bus. Which would account for four of seven pins. So
perhaps four of the signals, are programmed in BIOS code, to
emulate JTAG protocol (serial clock and data) ?

http://ixbtlabs.com/news.html?10/63/37

In terms of the BIOS release notes for your M2NPV-VM motherboard
go, there is a two year gap, between 1401 release and 5005 release.
The 5005 release covers AM3 processors, so you might need that installed,
before you try your new processor. But once that is done, I suspect
your motherboard is of a generation before that tuning interface
was in usage. It's probably not even hooked up. You're looking for
a motherboard with SB710/SB750/MCP72/MCP78 as a Southbridge, or
looking for one of the newer motherboards that claim to feature
a "core unlocker" switch or BIOS module.

Paul