Prime95 Crashes Immediately

[kajunchicken]

First off, I'm running a three year old Phenom II x2 550 and I unlocked the other two cores so it's really an x4.

I was playing around trying to overclock it but every time I tried to run prime95's blend test the computer would freeze... Even at stock clocks.

I tried disabling the two cores, no luck. Prime95 crashes the computer almost as soon as I start the blend test.

Since all the other tests work fine, I ran chkdsk and memtest86. Nothing seems amiss.

I have my RAM running at stock speeds: 1333Mhz 8-8-8-21

Does anyone know what's going on? Is my processor dead?

Other system info:
GPU: 650Ti Boost @ 1200/1600Mhz
HDD: 2 x 500Gb in RAID0

 

[4Ryan6]

First off, I'm running a three year old Phenom II x2 550 and I unlocked the other two cores so it's really an x4.

I was playing around trying to overclock it but every time I tried to run prime95's blend test the computer would freeze... Even at stock clocks.

I tried disabling the two cores, no luck. Prime95 crashes the computer almost as soon as I start the blend test.

Since all the other tests work fine, I ran chkdsk and memtest86. Nothing seems amiss.

I have my RAM running at stock speeds: 1333Mhz 8-8-8-21

Does anyone know what's going on? Is my processor dead?

Other system info:
GPU: 650Ti Boost @ 1200/1600Mhz
HDD: 2 x 500Gb in RAID0

P95 Blend Test crashing usually points to memory problems.

But that is usually with an un-manipulated CPU.

I'm curious as to the thinking behind getting something for nothing, did you ever consider maybe AMD closed thosed those cores for a good reason?

Why close two perfectly good cores when the CPU could have been sold as a quad for more money, if AMD is doing that, no wonder they're in the situation they are.

Maybe AMD closed those two cores because they were shooting errors, or maybe they failed to perform as well as the two they left open so they closed them.

That way the manufacturing of the CPU wasn't a total loss it could still be sold as a dual core, by closing off the other 2 cores.

Is any of this making any sense to you?

Sometimes it may be best not to open "Pandora"s Box", in the first place!

But you can take comfort in the fact you are not alone, there are many in the forum that have done the same as you, some of them with the same results as you, and some just got extremely lucky.

 

[kajunchicken]

To answer your questions. AMD was selling perfectly good quad cores as dual cores because the demand for the dual core chips was so high. I've had this CPU running stable for 3 years as a quad core though... When I first unlocked the other cores I did about 5 different tests to make sure that they weren't going to cause problems.

Also, I have continued my testing:

I ran Prime95 with one RAM stick in the first slot, and it worked fine.
I ran Prime95 with the other RAM stick and it quickly crashed.
I switched that RAM stick to the first slot and Prime 95 ran fine.
I switched both RAM sticks to the 3rd and 4th slots and Prime95 crashed again.

This puzzles me... Could the memory controller on the CPU be going bad?

 

[4Ryan6]

To answer your questions. AMD was selling perfectly good quad cores as dual cores because the demand for the dual core chips was so high.

I remember the Hooplah!

That does not mean AMD had an Easter Egg of a perfectly good quad core in every CPU box, they only guaranteed you a dual core.

No wonder AMD is so far behind Intel today with that kind of thinking!

That's kinda sad, I used to be a seriously loyal AMD user!

This puzzles me... Could the memory controller on the CPU be going bad?

Could be, or your memory modules are bad.

 

[kajunchicken]

Well, I got a ghetto fix up and running. I increased the RAM voltage to 1.605V and the North Bridge to 1.20V. Everything seems to run stable... for now. Hopefully This problem doesn't get progressively worse.