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Asked: 2021-12-04T23:45:54+00:00 In:

Unlocking 4th Core Athlon II X3 445

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Here is the setup. It is not used for gaming, but as an HTPC.

Gigabyte 970 Gaming mobo (latest BIOS F2)
Athlon II X3 445 (not overclocked) 3.1ghz
6 GB DDR3 1600
EVGA 600w psu
Radeon 6450HD 1GB
120GB AND 2TB SATA hdd’s
DVD-RW

I thought I’d unlocked the fourth core in the BIOS through Advanced CPU Options>Core Unlock>Enable. Now the BIOS is reporting the cpu as a Phenom II x4 B45. I can successfully boot into windows. Device Mgr shows 4 cpus, all Phenom x4. System Properties reports it as a Phenom x4. Now here’s where I get confused. When I run CPU-ID it reports it as a Phenom x4, but only 3 cores/3 threads. I ran Prime 95, it sees only 3 cores. Ive gone into MSConfig>Boot>Advanced>Number of Processors, it only allows a selection of 1-3.

Now I know AMD disables the cores for a reason, but Ive been able to boot into Windows successfully so I wanted to further test the stability. The BIOS feature needed to unlock hidden cores seems to exist on this motherboard, because it is reporting the temp and frequency of the 4th core.

Any suggestions on why the BIOS is seeing the 4th core, and some components of Windows are, while others are not?

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    1. Best Answer
      See if you can determine exactly what you have. Some Athlon II’s were Phenom II’s with a core (or 2) disabled plus the L3 cache disabled. Sometimes it was because the cores or L3 (or both) were defective; other times perfectly good cores & L3 were disabled. Newer Athlon II’s lack L3 altogether so obviously there’s nothing to re-enable. It’s not a true Phenom if there’s no L3.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlo…

      message edited by riider

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