This one is right up there with the strangest problems I’ve ever seen.
We bought the parts for and built four new machines, each with a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 motherboard, Intel Core 2 Quad (Q6600) processor, 8 gigabytes of RAM. Three of them are working fine. One of them (mine, unfortunately), exhibits a rather odd flaw: Windows Task Manager reports that there are only two CPUs. On the others, it reports four CPUs. Other than that, the computer seems to run just fine.
I tried all the obvious things: re-seating the CPU, reducing the overclocking (back to 2.4 GHz processor from the 2.8 GHz we had it at), and finally swapping the processor with one of the other machines. No dice. The other machine reports four CPUs and mine still reports just two CPUs.
The problem is almost certainly with the motherboard, but I can’t prove that yet. Is it possible that I have four cores all running, and Windows is reporting the wrong thing? We ran CPU-Z, which also reports only two cores, but I don’t know if it’s getting information from the hardware or from Windows.
The really odd thing here is that I’ve never heard of a partial failure like this. That is, if the motherboard was faulty, wouldn’t the dang thing just not work at all?
In any case, I’m looking for a program that I can boot and have it tell me about the CPU: what type, how fast, and how many cores are actually running. Does such a thing exist? I downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD, but the tools on that disk don’t support the Core 2 Quad. Nor do they appear to identify how many cores are actually functioning.
If you know of a utility I can download and burn to a bootable CD so that I can test the CPU outside of Windows, I’d really like to hear about it. Leave a comment here on the blog, or drop me mail: jim at mischel.com.
You might try Ubuntu. It’s a popular Linux distribution, and it does support quad core processors. I don’t remember the Linux command that outputs processor information to the console but I know that one does exist – sorry, I’m still pretty new to Linux. However there is an Ubuntu support IRC channel that you might try asking in, I think it’s irc.freenode.net port 6667 channel #ubuntu (or maybe ##ubuntu, try single-# first).
I’m not sure how familiar to Linux and IRC you are, if any of this post puzzled you then just drop me an e-mail and I’ll give you simpler steps and explanations. But you seem like a pretty tech-savvy guy to me. Give it a try and update everyone on how well it works (or doesn’t work) and also, if you find it, the command to display the processor information.
Other than this (or using a different Linux distro) I can’t think of another way to check the processor. But I agree with you, it’s probably a motherboard problem. I heard the quad core processors are really just two dual cores put together basically, so maybe the reason it half-works is cause the motherboard is communicating with one side but not the other? I mean, if that’s true, if it really is just two dual cores on one chip then I guess that would make sense.
Anywho, I’m rambling, so I’ll just stop and leave room for other comments. :) Hope this helps!!
-Ricky C.
Jim
This might help
-txt=report Launch CPU-Z in ghost mode : no interface appears, the register dump (report.txt) is automatically created.
Example :
cpuz.exe -txt=c:\mydirectory\mysystem : runs CPU-Z in ghost mode. Report file mysystem.txt is automatically generated in directory c:\mydirectory.
-html=report Same as “-txt” but generates the html report file.
-core=id Displays clock speed of core #id (id can be set from 0 to “Number of cores minus one”). It is then possible to check the speed of each core by running as many instances of CPU-Z as necessary, using batch files for example :
cpuz0.bat : cpuz.exe -core=0
cpuz1.bat : cpuz.exe -core=1
Note that the current core can be dynamically selected by right-clicking in the CPU page, and select the target core. This feature is available from version 1.42.
-console Generates output in a command prompt (Windows XP only).
Did you check to make sure they all have the same BIOS version? Looks like they added 45nm support in October, maybe this could have something to do with it?
Another program that you can use as a substitute to CPU-Z and in many ways it’s better than CPU-Z is CrystalCpuID. So try that out see if that works.
Is all your drivers up to date? Or does your Bios need flashing? I use Driver agent to see if I’m missing any vital drivers. They’ll give you a free scan but they’ll charge you for downloading them from their site. I personnally find out what I’m missing and just get them myself.
Regarding to what Ricky C said about quad cores just being two dual cores stuck together. He’s absolutely right. The main problem with that is all the 4 CPU cores don’t share the L2 cache between them. A true quad core would.
Anyway good luck Jim and I hope you sort your little dilemma out.
James
How to overclock your CPU