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Ok - so what you are saying is that the BIOS I have already supports the Core 2 Quad. F.46 with the extra features unlocked.
I compared the pinouts of the X9100 and QX9300 to see what pins are recommended to be cut, and why. I have a few observations and some questions.
It's clear that there will be no temperature monitoring for the second core. Not really a big deal, but these C2Q processors are side by side, so it is possible for one to make better contact and be cooler than the other.
JTAG I/O pins for the second core will not be available. I don't think those are normally used anyway.
Breakpoint Monitoring for the second core won't be there either. I have no idea what that is used for.
GTLREF_CONTROL - The Quad Core book says Core 2 Duo has that pin RSVD, while the Core 2 book says it's ground. That pin can be used to turn the second core on and off. I am assuming grounded turns it on, otherwise it would have been recommended for removal.
D22 - GTLREF_2 - gets 2/3 VCCP (I/O voltage). I can see why it was suggested to get it from GTLREF on AD26. I don't know how much voltage drop would be by sharing it. GTLREF_1 should be 0.65
Either way, pending the Breakpoint Monitor, it's not a very difficult mod to do. I am going to try it out. In a bad case, I should be able to get the first 2 cores working, which would still be beneficial.
As it is, my 44 watt X9100 works fine, 2 cores of a QX9300 should only be using 22.5 watts, for a total of 45 with 4 cores working. If I can get 2 cores of an unlocked processor running at 22.5 watts, it is less than the 35 watts of the T9900. I could probably push it back to the 3.06GHz I have now at less power than the T9900 or X9100.
And at the very worse, I can cut the one tiny wire I added and put the X9100 back in.