No activity on thread 2,4,6 or 8 on my 2600k

[StewDMill]

So yea...

Before I start, I will say that I'm pretty up on the PC lark and I can normally solve hardware errors, but this 1has be a bit stuck =[


So about a week ago i got a random blue screen after some everyday use on my PC and after that, my PC kept freezing and dieing on me.
I got in touch with scan(.co.uk) and got an RMA on my CPU and after installing the 1 they sent me back, I'm getting the same symptoms as I did with my old CPU.

I've made this to show what I mean.

Has any1 else every had this, and are there any ideas what the problem is?


TL;DR?
CPU only runs on 4/8 threads. Why?

 

[esrever]

because the ones that aren't being used are the hyperthreaded cores and will not be used unless they have to.

the window scheduler purposely don't use them cause it is not efficient.

 

[StewDMill]

So the bluescreen + freezes were just coincidental?

If so, that puts me at ease. I was gonna go epic rage mode @ scan if they sent me another faulty CPU

 

[esrever]

I sure it was just coincidence. As long as things like prime95 can use them, they are there and working.

hyperthreading isn't really useful except in highly threaded applications with simple calculations such as rendering and transcoding. It is hardly used in gaming or everyday computing.