(AMD)Unlocking Cores/Stability and Sluggish

Finally got my new system built up and took the gamble and was able to unlock the extra two cores on an AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition @3.2GHZ now (X4) and when its running this thing is blazing fast!!! But randomly it starts to slow down tremendously. This meaning, text will appear a few secs. after I enter it, my pointer blinks across the screen, and programs will take a while to start up. And sometimes after a few minutes it goes back to regular fast speed. Could this be a problem due to unlock the extra cores or something else?

SPECS:
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO Mobo
AMD Phenom II X2 (X4) Black Edition 555 CPU
4GB (2x2) G. Skill Rip Jaw Memory at 1600 Mhz
Coolermaster V8 Heatsink (When I have it cranked up says its only going 700-800 RPM even though max is supposed to be 1800?)
BFG Tech. 550 watt PSU (Maybe too low?)
nVidia 9800 GTX+ 1gb grphics card
Seagate 1TB HHD @ 7200 rpm/ 500gb WD HDD at 7200 RPM

As always, thanks for any and all help or tips!

Hello Demokid,

Have you tried re-locking the cores to find out.

I have been reading that the cores are usually locked for a reason. Depending on the amount locked, in your case it was 2, the locked cores are usually duds.

So while on the packaging it states 'x2' it really started out as a 'x4' but the locked cores have issues like stability.

I will try and have a look for the thread, its somewhere on this forum.


But as i said, try re-locking those cores.

Was the PC like this before you unlocked.

Lucky

EDIT:: Like i said, here is the thread - http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/124855-2-new-upgrades-what-do-you-guys-think.html

I unlocked the cores my second start up after I checked if it would even post the first boot. But good advice, I disabled the other 2 so Ill see if the problem reoccurs.

Note. everytime you open or lock a core the cpu name changes

pretty wierd huh ?

my quad when i lock down cores will go to a different name scheme because of the set up i think it is pretty crazy how that works

I'd say those cores were locked for a reason, and if you want or need a quad that was the one you should have bought in the first place.

parabellum said:

I'd say those cores were locked for a reason, and if you want or need a quad that was the one you should have bought in the first place.

Click to expand...

Well this is very true from aside the cost of damaging something a extra 50 to 100 bucks could get you the desired performance

Still occurring with stock settings. Its whenever the CPU usage is high it starts to slow.

in a black edition cpu there is no need to unlock the cores, they are already unlocked, I have the same motherboard, with an AMD black edition X6 1090T - to make sure you have all your cores usable, follow these steps

1. type msconfig in the search bar (or run bar) off the start button.
2. go to the boot tab.
3. Click the advanced options button
4. Uncheck everything
5. Click ok twice and you should be good to go.

ghost said:

in a black edition cpu there is no need to unlock the cores, they are already unlocked, I have the same motherboard, with an AMD black edition X6 1090T - to make sure you have all your cores usable, follow these steps

1. type msconfig in the search bar (or run bar) off the start button.
2. go to the boot tab.
3. Click the advanced options button
4. Uncheck everything
5. Click ok twice and you should be good to go.

Click to expand...

Alright thanks man. I gave that a go (everything was already unchecked) and I'll see how it goes.
I know this board has built in graphics, did you have to disable anything to make your GTS250 compatible and have no conflicts with the on board graphics?
And lastly, my DDR3 is rated at 1600MHz, should I set that speed specifically in the BIOS (Is the CPU compatible with 1600) or 1333 or just let it go on [auto]?

To run the memory at 1600Hz, your motherboard needs to support it and you'll need to set it manually.

That it does! Supports 1066,1333, and 2000 (O.C.) and all speeds in between as I was told in another post

The look in the manual for the options, set the divider, overclock and reboot.

I did what Ghost suggested and its been working for the longest period with out the problem occurring!! Hope I dont jinx it, but I think I may be good! Thanks guys!

Hey, glad you are working, I had to disable the gpu overclocking feature in BIOS before the nvidia worked properly, but I was having other issues at the time, nevertheless I left it disbaled and had no problems
I set my RAM manually in the BIOS but the auto setting should work fine. I did find that had to upgrade the BIOS to version 1702 to improve stability tho. funny thing is - the BIOS was not showing in ASUS update, I had to go and manually download from the site then use the updater to flash from a file ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-

Eh, its still occurring flashed the BIOS to the lastest version I saw on their site (1606), downloaded all drivers, reinstalled OS. Don't know what else to try! The entire system and all its process slow down. For example I was downloading a file at 1.9 mb/s then when this "lag" kicked in the speeds down to 80 kb/s, framerate drops to 0, programs take minutes to respond. Ijust don't know!

Thanks to a guide over on msfn.org, I was able to diagnose the problem. I was able to find the cause of high cpu usage through DPC/Interrupt. So now that I've got the results, anyone know what they mean or how to treat them, lol?

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/410/lolxb.png

Looks like the biggest problem causers are ataport.SYS, HDAudBus.sys, and ndis.sys. But USBPORT.sys, dxgkrnl.sys and ACPI.sys popped up durring the interrupt too.