The word from the manufacturers here in Taipei is that the reason AMD dropped the core unlocking capacity were fears over its reputation. Users and system integrators were buying the CPUs, unlocking them then blaming AMD if they found the resulting system was unstable or simply didn’t work. AMD decided this wasn't good for its reputation - and we also suspect grey market activity in predominantly developing countries played a part in the decision too.While core unlocking is not an official feature of the 8-series chipsets, many motherboards will still support it as manufacturers have developed workarounds.
Multiple motherboard companies told us they were highly critical of this decision prior to the launch of the 8-series chipsets, and decided to continue to engineer workarounds.
AMD removed core unlocking over reputation fears
Posted on Tuesday, April 13 2010 @ 19:33 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck