Incorrect CPU cores

[Lawbringer_Prime]

Hey y'all,

 

I recently watched one of Linus Tech Tips videos about purchasing an old Dell Optiplex for cheap PC gaming. The PC originally came with a dual core CPU. He recommended that we'd upgrade to an Intel Quad core Q6600. I bought it cheap from eBay from a local seller, installed it today and was worried to find that there are still only two cores when the processor I bought was supposed to be a quad core. I even tried looking for updates but to no avail. Was a possibly scammed or is this PC possibly not recognizing the other two cores?

[AHaskin14]

Hmm. It reads as a Q6600 so it definitely has 4 cores somewhere. Can you boot into the BIOS and see what it reads there?

[wirs]

Right click the graph

Click "Change Graph to"

Select "Logical processors"

Profit

[dDave64]

A Q6600 is so cheap it’s not even worth scamming someone.

 

One thing you might try is unparking the cores. No promises that they are parked or that parking them would make them disappear but this is something I had to do on my 1st gen i7 years ago (it was a laptop and I think this was a power saving feature)

 

look it up. Easy to do.

[Mira Yurizaki]

9 minutes ago, Lawbringer_Prime said:

Hey y'all,

 

I recently watched one of Linus Tech Tips videos about purchasing an old Dell Optiplex for cheap PC gaming. The PC originally came with a dual core CPU. He recommended that we'd upgrade to an Intel Quad core Q6600. I bought it cheap from eBay from a local seller, installed it today and was worried to find that there are still only two cores when the processor I bought was supposed to be a quad core. I even tried looking for updates but to no avail. Was a possibly scammed or is this PC possibly not recognizing the other two cores?

Make sure BIOS isn't limiting things. I don't know why someone would set it to do so, but it wouldn't hurt to check (or better yet, just reset BIOS). Also open up msconfig, then go to the Boot tab, Advanced settings, and make sure cores aren't being limited there either.

 

6 minutes ago, wirs said:

Right click the graph

Click "Change Graph to"

Select "Logical processors"

Profit

The list of specs on the bottom right says there's two cores available. That's the issue.

[DildorTheDecent]

Reset the BIOS.

 

Always reset the BIOS before a hardware change. It can help with things like this.

[unclewebb]

@Mira Yurizaki  - Wise advice!

 

Run msconfig, go to the Boot tab and then click on Advanced Options...

 

Make sure Number of Processors is not checked and then reboot so Windows can find all of your cores.  This is a common problem when swapping CPUs.