ASUS M4A88T-M/USB3 & AMD Athlon II X3 Rana 460.

[SilvanNosty]

Wasn't sure if I should put this here or the CPU section. Anyway, I unlocked the 4th core in my Rana 460, and my PC booted into Win 7 64-bit. The temps reported by HWM were around 38c @ idle, and 55-60c under load. This is with a Hyper 212 Evo dual fan push+pull config. Are those normal? When running as an X3, it idles around 18-19c and has only hit so high as 40c ever.

Also, Windows Aero would not work. All my colors were set to the opaque classic-style. Windows could not troubleshoot why it wasn't working. On top of that, it also for some reason disabled the Asus EPU engine software, and it seemed like it had some harsh lag. My Documents wouldn't fully load for 3-5 seconds. It's typically instantly up, even with a high cpu-load. There was no L3 cache, either.

I disabled the 4th core before writing this. Since I don't know if it's stable and didn't want to test it further in Prime95. I'm perfectly content with my 3.4ghz X3. Just wondering about that 4th core.

 

[o1die]

Most are bad; that's why they're disabled in the first place. Three cores is plenty for most tasks and games. I prefer stability. If you want four cores, I would pay a little more next time you upgrade.