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I have a AMD Phenom II X4 960T processor on an Asus M4A78LT-M-LE (BIOS 0803) motherboard.

CPU-Z screenshot:

enter image description here

I am trying to unlock all the 6 cores of this CPU by enabling advanced clock calibration in the BIOS. After the BIOS settings are saved the system restarts and a BSOD is shown when Windows 7 begins loading with the following error:

CI.dll  
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

The BIOS also has options to turn a particular core On or Off. So I turned on the first 5 cores and turned off the 6th core. Everything works perfectly in this case and Windows 7 detects all 5 cores.

I tried turning off cores 2-5 and turning on core #6 but it causes the same BSOD.

Do I need to increase the voltage of the processor for the sixth core to work?

Is there anything else to be done to make all six core work?

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    Its entirely possible they binned that processor as a quad core because the 6th core was borked, and AMD dosen't sell 5 core processors. In short, you're probably seeing the reason its a quad core.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Aug 7, 2014 at 13:58
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    Congratulations, you have officially created the only 5-core processor to ever exist. Submit your specs to Steam; you'll show up in the hardware survey as the only guy with 5 cores! Aug 7, 2014 at 14:02
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    technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd348642%28v=ws.10%29.aspx seems to be related. I wonder what would happen if you boot linux. Once again, this is probably indicative of a problem, but things get strange and interesting at this point. Maybe you could use a blue screen analysis tool (I favour whocrashed and blue screen view) for more insights into what's going on.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Aug 7, 2014 at 14:06
  • This is AMD's version of the Pentium... or Pentagram however you want to word it.
    – Sun
    Sep 13, 2014 at 0:30

1 Answer 1

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I have researched this a lot and have found that in production your processor was originally made to be a 6 core proc, it was discovered that one or more cores were unstable or non usable so instead of trashing the die they locked the cores and sold it as a IIx4. They would not sell it as a 5 core and thus selling it as a 4 core proc. I would recommend using it as 5 core but if you see any problems revert back to quad. There ins't a significant performance increase to warrant the headache. Also most of the time when unlocking cores they produce more heat and depending on if you are going to overclock you might need to run @ a lower speed because of the extra core. Its a huge can of worms my friend.

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