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AMD FX-6200 - 3 cores? 6 cores? 1 core?

Tags:
  • Core
  • Bulldozer
  • Processors
  • CPUs
  • AMD
Last response: in CPUs
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August 27, 2013 5:34:21 AM

I recently bought myself a PC for gaming and equipped it with FX-6200 YES I KNOW IT'S A BAD CHOICE. Had I know the Bulldozer is bad back then, I'd go with 6300 and Piledriver, but oh well, it happened.

Anyway, my problem is that the amount of cores on this thing is extremely confusing.

The regular Windows Device Manager sees 6 cores. The Performance tab in the task manager has only 3 graphs of CPU usage though. It's like it has only 3 cores. And I remember that a while ago there were 6 graphs there. I installed Speccy a while ago and decided to see what it says. 3 cores and 3 threads. I'd understand if it was detected like 6 threads or something, but nope. And the weirdest thing is that apparently some games (Mass Effect 3's config tool on the bottom left) see it as a single core. I have no idea, what's up with all that. I checked my BIOS to see if everything is fine and I haven't found anything out of place. All CPU cores related options show 6 cores.

I wonder if this might be the reason for which Saints Row IV lags at some points - it just doesn't use this CPU as it should. Not to mention recording anything with Fraps, which is kind of my hobby.

Anyway, I'd appreciate any kind of explanation/help on how to "unlock" the other cores.

More about : amd 6200 cores cores core

a c 121 à CPUs
August 27, 2013 5:53:58 AM

Did you configure Task Manger to display One Graph Per CPU?
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August 27, 2013 6:06:53 AM

GhislainG said:
Did you configure Task Manger to display One Graph Per CPU?


I haven't changed that setting from when I saw 6 graphs. I just had a look and it is one graph per CPU. When I select the option for unified graph for all CPU's, it's just a single graph.

I just installed CPU-Z to make sure once again, and even this program says it's a 3-core and 3-thread processor. I am almost absolutely sure this is not supposed to be like that and it's annoying that my PC might be wasting half of its potential power.
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August 29, 2013 8:01:05 AM

It might be important, that the PC is running on the Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 motherboard. Just thought I'd give an update in case it changes anything. Oh, and if I go to MSconfig and try to change the amount of cores that the system will use to boot, the max is 3 cores as well.
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August 29, 2013 12:30:47 PM

Actually, I figured it out a few hours ago. Turns out it was because of MSconfig being set to 3 cores while booting. I heard that setting it like that would speed up the booting process and while it kinda did, it was also the reason for which I saw the incorrect amount of cores. Essentially, I just had to check off the "Number of cores" setting completely and everything is detected now correctly. Task Manager, CPU-Z, Speccy, everything... except ME3 config tool. Oh well, ME3 is weird I guess. Problem solved, though. Thanks for help, GhislainG :) 
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a c 121 à CPUs
August 29, 2013 7:06:13 PM

Glad you got it working properly.
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