cores can be disable on PII x4 cpu's

gareth170 · 5 Aug 2009 at 19:07

hi

did anyone knew that cores can be disable on PII x4 cpu's? i was looking in my bios and i found a option to disable cores.

single core

dual core

tri core

quad core

im wondering if i run it as a dual core maybe it'll overclock more. what u guys think?

cavemanoc · 5 Aug 2009 at 19:12

Sweet find - guess you'll have to play with all of them to see which clocks the fastest - sounds like fun!

gareth170 · 5 Aug 2009 at 19:19

yeah it will be fun. tbh dual core feels quicker, im guessing because the L3 is only shared with 2 core..

Jokester · 5 Aug 2009 at 19:24

gareth170 said:
yeah it will be fun. tbh dual core feels quicker, im guessing because the L3 is only shared with 2 core..

Can you run Superpi with only 1 core enabled and then with all 4?

Aod · 5 Aug 2009 at 19:26

Jokester said:
Can you run Superpi with only 1 core enabled and then with all 4?

but superpi's only a one-core benchmark. also, running with only one core will hamper bench-performance because windows tasks will consume processing power.

Hades · 5 Aug 2009 at 19:26

Doesn't surprise me. With some motherboards you can re-enable disabled cores on tri core processors. Nice find though.

gareth170 · 5 Aug 2009 at 19:27

Jokester said:
Can you run Superpi with only 1 core enabled and then with all 4?

yep. i will do now... 1M test?

Jokester · 5 Aug 2009 at 19:31

Aod said:
but superpi's only a one-core benchmark. also, running with only one core will hamper bench-performance because windows tasks will consume processing power.

Depends on what the cache does between 1 core and 4 cores.

gareth170 · 5 Aug 2009 at 19:48

Jokester said:
Can you run Superpi with only 1 core enabled and then with all 4?

single core

quad core

gareth170 · 5 Aug 2009 at 20:10

i just tryed overclocking alittle more in dual core mode, i only get 100mhz extra on the same voltage.

milkinc13 · 5 Aug 2009 at 20:23

y would you want to disable cores? defeats the point of having a quad if you only need a dual

gareth170 · 5 Aug 2009 at 20:32

milkinc13 said:
y would you want to disable cores? defeats the point of having a quad if you only need a dual

because the L3 cache is shared by 4 cores but by disableing cores it frees up the L3 cache to only the cores thats enabled which should be better performance in gaming.

then when u wanna use encoding software just put it in quad core mode.

Monkeynut · 5 Aug 2009 at 20:51

gareth170 said:
because the L3 cache is shared by 4 cores but by disableing cores it frees up the L3 cache to only the cores thats enabled which should be better performance in gaming.

then when u wanna use encoding software just put it in quad core mode.

Don't the cores only use the L3 they need to though? So the unused two will barley be consuming L3?

gareth170 · 5 Aug 2009 at 21:09

Monkeynut said:
Don't the cores only use the L3 they need to though? So the unused two will barley be consuming L3?

yes but most of the time all of the cores are doing something. cores never stay at 0% even when your doing nothing. so being able to disable 1 or 2 cores would give that little bit more to the other cores.

'Wes · 5 Aug 2009 at 21:28

Interesting...But i'd never do it.

Hades · 5 Aug 2009 at 21:28

gareth170 said:
yes but most of the time all of the cores are doing something. cores never stay at 0% even when your doing nothing. so being able to disable 1 or 2 cores would give that little bit more to the other cores.

Another advantage could be that you may have one weaker core which reduces your overclocking ability. For games which don't need multiple cores you could disable the weaker cores and leave just one or two of the best cores running... then clock the nuts off it

Meeeellar · 5 Aug 2009 at 21:33

gareth170 said:
hi

did anyone knew that cores can be disable on PII x4 cpu's? i was looking in my bios and i found a option to disable cores.

im wondering if i run it as a dual core maybe it'll overclock more. what u guys think?

Yea, i've got that option too. Found out about it almost immediately after i had done a bois update and was searching through for any changes.

I had a little go with it... didn't do anything with it though as i didn't really see the point in it... i mean changing the amount of cores just to do curtain things... for me i dont see the point/cant be bothered to change it all the time... but for someone that has the patience then yea... why not.

If anyone finds anything interesting then i would like to know

Ch3m1c4L · 6 Aug 2009 at 08:54

this is a well old feature....Even early quad boards had it iirc, or is it just new to AMD?

gareth170 · 6 Aug 2009 at 09:53

Ch3m1c4L said:
this is a well old feature....Even early quad boards had it iirc, or is it just new to AMD?

new to amd.
not all amd boards as this feature, i think only afew.

maybe its a well old feature for intel. but could u turn off just one core and run the intel quad as a 3 core? i don't think so because the qxxxx are 2 dual cores put together.

cavemanoc · 6 Aug 2009 at 12:29

I thought this was actually supposed to be the future - as part of the drive to 'efficiency' the next gen chips were supposed to be able to switch off cores when not required to save power - the natural successor to the 'cool'n'quiet' idea - be pretty sweet if we got on the fly, windows based control without having to mess about in the bios - especially if it were tied into AMD's overdrive - you could have application based profiles the way we currently do for our GFX cards