Help unlocking 4th core on Asus m4a79xtd evo!

[Putoxtupido]

Hey guys,

My first post on tomshardware.co.uk so bare with me

After reading a fair bit about unlocking those sexy Phenom II x2 550 BE cpu's to quad, I decided to get myself one and risk it.

I wasn't disappointed. The POST info was now changed to "x4" and Windows 7's task manager had 4 threads - sweeeeeeet!

After rebooting my computer a few times, I started experiencing my issue. When the 'Windows 7' animation showed up, the computer froze and rebooted. Second time same thing. After the third time Windows booted up normally and everything seemed alright. Left Prime95 a go that night and found no errors either so I decided to try using my pc normally.

Until today, every time Windows 7 finally manages to boot, everything runs as smooth as silk - with no BSOD's or anything - but I still have to put up with having it rebooting several times. If I turn off the 4th core (3rd in BIOS) it boots to Windows ok every time.

My question is: if the 4th core works fine under stress when Windows boots, is the 4th core defective? Is there a way of making it boot (that's not fiddling around with ACC which I've tried)?


Thanks for the help,

Miguel

 

[saint19]

Hi newcomer and welcome to the Tom's hardware forum.

The "reboot" many times to boot right just means that the rig isn't stable with the 4 core enables come back to two cores enable only another core for get a tri core CPU and see what happen.

 

[Putoxtupido]

Hey saint19,

Thanks for the reply. It boots to Windows fine with only 3 cores enabled - already tested it! Is the 4th core defective then? Is there no way of getting it to work normally without all this hassle?

 

[saint19]

U won't see a very big difference with 3 o 4 cores because only few games can use the 4 cores.

I think that with tri cores u have more that enough for now like I say up the not normal boot means that exist some problem in the rig and specifically in the CPU.