AMD is making a habit out of launching crippled CPUs that can easily be unlocked to provide access to a disabled core. We saw it with triple-cores, and now it appears you can get an extra core on the new Sempron 140 as well.

The Sempron 140 is a cheap single-core part, based on the Sargas core, which is in fact a crippled Regor dual-core. You just need a motherboard with an AMD SB710 or SB750 sourthbridge with support for the Advanced Clock Calibration and you should be able to turn your Sempron 140 into an Athlon II X2.

This basically means you can get a dual 45nm processor clocked at 2.7GHz for $39/€29, which is truly great value, especially considering it's rather OC friendly.

You can find some screenshots here.