Re: P5B Plus Q6600 only uses one core

Jim Krol wrote:
Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:f5pgj0$5ca$1@xxxxxxxx:

Jim Krol wrote:
I just set up a new system using the P5B Plus and a q6600 processor.
It appears that it is only using one of the cores on the processor.
Windows task manager only shows one window. The system runs slower
than the old 2.6G processor it was supposed to replace. Is the
processor bad or did I do something stupid in the setup or bios? I
did upgrade to the new bios 604, which didn't help.


This put me on the right track, but alas there is no joy in Mudville. When I try to set up HAL in the setup the only option I get is i486 c-
<something> None of the acpi options.WinXP x64 gives me the multi option but crashes when windows reboots to install. Is there something I have to set in bios to tell it to run multiprocessor mode.I took the default configuration in the bios. It looks like the bios is not telling windows that it has a multiprocessor installed.Do I need to RMA this board again! The first one would not even POST. I have always used the other "A" companies motherboards and never had a problem. People have always given great Kudos to Asus boards so I thought I'd try one. This experience has not endeared me to Asus. Even a cheapo ECS board i used came right up in multiprocessor mode. Any bios settings I should try??
Or, is there another 2 week RMA in my future.

Thanks,
JK


I cannot see anything too obvious. There is an "ACPI 2.0" setting
which is [Disabled] by default. I presume Windows can install with
a couple different values for that, so that probably isn't the problem.

The BIOS does pass a table of info, during POST, which is used by the
OS or OS installer, for setup. Maybe something is amiss there, but the
Asus CPUSupport page seems to show little reason to have to change the
BIOS version, to support the newest processors.

http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpu_support_right_master.aspx?type=1&name=P5B-Plus&SLanguage=en-us&cache=1

The download page lists a 0604 BIOS, with:

"Add new uCode to support new processors"

There was a microcode patch for Core2 released recently, and the
Microsoft microcode loader also received a copy of new microcode.
BIOS images have a microcode section in them, supporting multiple
family codes, and that is where a microcode patch would come from
during POST. For an OS like WinXP, Microsoft has their own microcode
loader. It tries to load a more recent microcode, if for example,
one was downloaded during Windows Update. The microcode loader would
be doing this when the desktop appears, so the most recent microcode
patch would be missing during the boot sequence.

I don't see a setting in the manual, for disabling cores, but maybe
there is one there somewhere. Since your install is detecting
some freaky looking HAL, there must be some problem with the tables
being passed from the BIOS.

If you are on broadband, you could get a copy of Knoppix (Knopper.net)
and burn the 700MB ISO to a CD. Boot from the CD and watch the boot
messages. See if four "Penguin" icons appear, as that suggests Linux
has picked up the four cores. The Linux boot sequence will display
text messages, and some of those will include little snippets about
the BIOS tables being passed and used. Possibly the "dmesg" command
could be used later, to review the bootup text messages.

DMI 2.3 present.
ACPI: RSDP (v000 PTLTD ) @ 0x000f7100
ACPI: RSDT (v001 PTLTD RSDT 0x06040000 LTP 0x00000000) @ 0x7fefcf28
ACPI: FADT (v001 AMD TECATE 0x06040000 PTL 0x000f4240) @ 0x7fefef2e
ACPI: MADT (v001 PTLTD APIC 0x06040000 LTP 0x00000000) @ 0x7fefefa2
ACPI: DSDT (v001 AMD AMDACPI 0x06040000 MSFT 0x0100000d) @ 0x00000000
Using ACPI (MADT) for SMP configuration information

If you run out of other things to try, then a BIOS update might be
a possible next step.

Paul
.

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