My Phenom II X3 720 (Heka core, 2.8 GHZ) Black Edition is now running with all 4 cores in Ubuntu. I purchased a new motherboard, ram and the X3 all at the same time last month. Some of the older steppings of this processor may not allow this procedure. My CPU has a product number (OPN) of HDZ720WFGIBOX. The serial number should begin with a 9. It is Socket AM3.
The motherboard is a Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H. It has a dual bios built in. It also allows you to image the bios to disk (make sure you have an NTFS or FAT32 partition) so you can easily undo this if problems arise.
Here’s how to do it.
Restart your computer and enter the BIOS. Look for a setting called Advanced Clock Calibration. My board uses an Award BIOS and I found it in the MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.) menus. It so happens it is the first item selectable in the M.I.T.
Open Advanced Clock Calibration. There you will find the two pertinent options, EC Firmware Selection and Advanced Clock Calibration again. To enable the fourth core, change EC Firmware Selection to Hybrid (normal is default) and Advanced Clock Calibration needs to be set to All Cores (disabled is default).
That’s all there is to it. Back out by pressing esc until you get back to the Main Menu. Select Save & Exit Setup, answer Y to save your changes and the system will reboot.
This procedure will work with some other motherboards as well. Just do your research. There is reported success unlocking additional cores with the Phenom II 550 BE as well.
Next, we have the latest release of Ubuntu, Karmic Koala, 9.10. While at first I had problems on older hardware, it turns out the best thing to do is get your best kit and have a go at upgrading. Better yet, if you can, do a clean install, as Ubuntu now supports the Ext4 filesystem by default. Upgrades will retain their Ext3 filesystems.
I was a little leery of Ubuntu 9.10. Previous experience with the last intermediate release before a new Long Term Support release was no fun. When they rolled out previous intermediates, I had the impression it was really an extension of beta testing. I’ve had my share of things “breaking” with these. In one case I got rid of the Ubuntu install and installed the latest stable Debian. But then I got tired of Debian being so slow to offer improvements and went back to Ubuntu.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wrote a piece back on October 2 and I responded to his article with what you read in the previous paragraph. But Canonical has evidently improved its process and has made a technological leap with this release. Even though it’s six months until the release of Lucid Lynx, the next LTS release set for next April, it looks to be the finest Linux release ever in my estimation. Karmic promised much and delivered as long as you are running relatively new hardware. Canonical is positioning itself as a major supplier of modern operating system software.
But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. If you’re running windows, you can install Ubuntu and, if need be, remove as you do any other Windows application. Use Wubi to do this. Or download the live CD from Ubuntu. You won’t believe what you can get for no more than the effort of a download.
If you don’t have broadband access, you can purchase a full set of the release. Make sure you understand the upgrade process before you do though. It may make more sense to wait until next April for the release of Ubuntu 10.4.
Posted by d.j. 