Trevorq243

Can I just say - it's totally wild to me that a setting in Windows was able to affect how the chip showed up in BIOS. I'm glad you found a solution, but I'm also glad I learned something today. Never in a million years would I have suspected that Windows settings could trump what the BIOS shows. The more you know, eh?

That is... exactly what the linked post did. Great timing, and glad it's fixed! Augh, sorry to keep blowing you up, but I found this on Tom's Hardware that might help. https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/task-manager-not-showing-right-amount-of-cores.2666193/ Surprise, a setting somewhere got tweaked. My gut tells me it might not do it since the issue is happening in BIOS too, but what the heck. Might still be worth a try. Just make sure all cores are enabled in BIOS before you try it.

Alright, now we're getting somewhere. That is odd - CPUs don't just adopt each others' core counts. I don't know if this will help or not, but I'd try jumping into the BIOS, disabling hyperthreading, booting to Windows, seeing what that does, then going back into the BIOS and re-enabling hyperthreading. It really does sound to me like there might be something up with the chip/board, but poking it by enabling/disabling stuff might do something. Otherwise I'm at a loss. Where did the CPU come from? Also, more to @Benji's point, there may be some compatibility hiccups with the board/chip combo. There's always a chance that the board doesn't officially support the chip; Intel likes to play games with socket compatibility. Just because it fits doesn't mean it works, unfortunately, and there may be something in the board preventing the Xeon from working to its full capacity. I just don't want to make that assumption right out the gate, you know?

Quick jump in - some googling around is turning up that some Xeon chips will automatically shut stuff off in low-power consumption situations. I don't know if it does that in Windows or not, but what happens if you load the chip? Say, run a game or a CPU benchmark and see if the core count changes? Total shot in the dark.

Alright, so that's some aging hardware for certain. Someone more knowledgeable than I could speculate on if that matters or not, but for now, maybe some circumstance surrounding the issue would help. Is this a "new" build from old parts laying around, a system you bought and built new and is only having trouble now..? I doubt software changes could set off the issue. One thing I'm not seeing in your build list is the PSU. If it's as old as the rest of the build, there's a chance it's on its way out. I don't know for certain if that would cause the issue, but dying PSUs create all sorts of weird problems that are tough to track down. Maybe the CPU is detecting that it can't get all the juice it needs and is automatically turning off cores? Pure speculation, take it with a grain of salt, but if this is a new issue there has to be something that changed recently to make it happen.

Quick disclaimer: I haven't played through much of the story. Just did the mission "Down on the Street", so that's where I'm at. If I made an incorrect assumption about content below, that's why. There exists a contract between Reeves and CDPR. I don't know the details, I don't work there, but Reeves didn't just walk in and say, "Hey, put me in your game I'll do whatever you say." In that contract, which, if CDPR has half a legal brain, there are many rules and stipulations about what can and cannot happen with Reeves' likeness. I'm willing to bet, since as far as I know, there isn't much Silverhand nudity (yet, could be wrong there) that contract includes not having Reeve's digital dong waving around, much less depicting intercourse with anyone. If that's true, then there's a good chance that CDPR could technically face trouble for breaching that contract if they don't stop the mod. It depends on the legalese of the contract but think of it this way; if a person puts their likeness and identity into a game on the condition that their character will never, ever, under any circumstances, juggle while riding a unicycle, the person will not be happy to see that anyone has modified the game to have them juggling on a unicycle. The person has little to no technical knowledge, all they see is that CDPR isn't holding up their end of the bargain since people are making them do the specific thing they were told would not happen. In other words, if CDPR agreed that there'd be no Silverhand sexuality in their game, it wouldn't matter much that it was a mod or not, it's still happening. CDPR is most likely just trying to cover their assets here, because if there's nastiness for a breach of contract, CDPR can say "We tried our best to stop it but it simply isn't in our control" and hope that the courts agree. That will all come down to legal precedent, and I'm no lawyer, so... yeah. All of that to say, does CDPR have the right to take down the mod? No idea. Could they get in trouble because of the mod? Absolutely, and they're probably just trying to avoid that.

Did you get the chip on Ebay? If so, we might have some bad news for you... If not, there's a chance some cores got disabled. I suggest nosing around in the BIOS, especially around advanced features pertaining to the CPU, to see if any cores are disabled/parked. I've been tinkering in my BIOS myself recently and the number of unfamiliar CPU acronyms is staggering... just make sure you haven't turned off anything important. Google is your friend there! Also, it'd help a lot if we had more info on your build. Post full specs here, and/or put them in your profile so we have something to go on. Good luck!

I recently made the jump from a fun car to a hybrid myself and am regretting it a lot less that I thought I would! What exactly is it about the Volt that you like? I ask because I was cross-shopping the mainstream hybrids and settled on something totally different. Word is that the seats in the Volt are not great for longer trips and my wife and I regularly drive 6+ hours to see friends, family etc. The test drive was fine, but it was just that. Fine. Nothing to write home about, though that is more or less what one would expect. Especially because I came from a FoST haha

You know what, just the thought of dealing with that stupid cooler is making me lean towards splurging a bit and getting a nice Noctua cooler just for the quiet. Besides, I'm looking at a new build in 6 months or so anyway and will need a cooler, since if I'm understanding the market correctly, high-end chips don't come with coolers anymore anyways.

That is true. I hope to avoid a nuke-and-pave, but if all else fails I might end up doing it. I'll throw some good thermal paste on there and see what happens. Thanks for the help!

That's a good point, though a full reinstall is closer to the "Everything's on fire and there's no hope" end of the troubleshooting spectrum for me. I like to avoid it if possible, unless things have changed and it's not a huge PITA anymore. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I've been out of the hardcore PC game for a while, though my build specs probably gave that away. I do recall a video with Anthony that revolved around de-crapifying Win10, maybe I should give that another watch.

So, repaste, try to run something, see what happens. There's just no getting around the max utilization I guess, but if I can keep it cool at least it'll run faster. Gonna keep an ear out for other software optimizations as well. It's quite possible all my fiddling over the years has broken something somewhere and made the whole machine run inefficiently.

Ooh, good point. Didn't even think it might be the thermal paste. Do you think it'll make a difference (noise notwithstanding) using the stock vs. a more robust cooler?

Unsurprisingly, the almost 5 year old quad-core powering my gaming/work machine is just not up to the task anymore. The upgrade path isn't great for my B150 chipset and I just need this thing to hang in there for a few more months while I save for a new build. Gaming, or even running more than a few Chrome windows at once, has the thing pegged at 100% almost full time and temps with the stock cooler are hanging out between 80 and 85 after a few hours. I'm impressed with how long it can crank out those numbers but I'm also noticing that it is not coming even close to max turbo speeds, usually hanging out at 3.3Ghz instead of 3.6. Lately, it's causing stuttering and stupid load times, and my GTX 2070S is being bottlenecked so badly it's about to go on strike. I know overclocking isn't in the cards, between a processor that won't allow it and a chipset that couldn't handle it even if I could convince it to try, I'm thinking that my best bet is probably to throw a better cooler on and hope for higher turbo. That, or scrounge up the newest compatible i7/i9 for my socket and cross my fingers that throwing more cores at it will at least keep it from being pegged at 100% all the time. Is there anything else I can do? Is it even worth spending the ~$30 on a Hyper 212 Evo? I've already disabled a bunch of startup nonsense, run Malwarebytes, et cetera. As far as I can tell there's nothing nefarious going on, right now the CPU is chilling at ~10%. It's only when I have multiple programs open or am trying to game that it starts to fall apart. Specs are below: Asus B150 Motherboard i5 6500 (stock cooler) 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz EVGA RTX 2070 Super KO (got it from a 1070ti RMA, <3 u EVGA) Thermaltake 1200W PSU (Gold) Thanks y'all!

So 2 980s couldn't do it... How about 4? Or Titan Xs, whenever Linus can get his hands on them? At this point I'm kind of curious if there's anything, even something impossibly expensive and impractical, that could game at 5K right now.