A Suprising Discovery Inside The Steam Deck's APU - the LCD APU has multiple unused cores that were later removed for the OLED version - eviltoast
    • cron@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      Even if you managed to activate them, they would probably not be useful for a gaming handheld, as they were designed for image processing.

    • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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      10 months ago

      Maybe they are not hooked up to the board. Otherwise there probably would have been something to see in the drivers, I reckon.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      usually AMD nowadays severs the unused parts for core unlocking. AMD occasionally had parts between 2009-2013 which could be unlocked (e.g athlon tri cores to quad cores, 6950 to 6970, r9 290 to r9 290x) but hasnt really happened since then.

      • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
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        10 months ago

        You had to win the silicone lottery to do so though. Or the supply and demand lottery, I guess. Tri core CPUs started as quad core silicon where one of the cores was damaged during manufacturing, but as the manufacturing got better they started having fewer mistakes and started supplying the price bracket with perfectly working quads with one core disabled.

        • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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          10 months ago

          the 290 to 290x situation was basically the same. You had to get a cpu/gpu that was fully working, but artificially limited to to provide for the numbers of the lower tier product due to demand. with all of the unlockable chips, its was very specific time windows where it was possible to get a functional one.