I have a quad core processor. AMD Phenom II x4 965 3.4 MHz Which is about a year old. It has never been overheated and has never really been stressed for any long periods of time. I don't think I've seen the usage get over 50% even when doing heavy computing.
When my Motherboard boots up it always says how many cores it loaded. Recently it is now only loading 3.
It states roughly "3x cores loaded (0,1,2)"
I am also monitoring my CPU temps with windows 7 gadgets and that too now only picks up 3 cores?
What would have caused a core to vanish all of a sudden? Do I need to update BIOS and what do I risk in doing that?