opteron acting like single-core

[sluggo]

I'm using an NF4 Ultra-D with an Opteron 165. The problem is on all the benchmarks I've run, even those that support multiple cores, it responds like a single-core FX-57. Sandra, for instance, doesn't recognize it as a multi-core processor. I'm using the 0406 BIOS. Is there something I'm missing?

[ollietwinam]

Did you do a Windows reinstall after you installed it?

[sluggo]

Did you do a Windows reinstall after you installed it?

 

No, I didn't. I think Windows correctly identified the new processor and loaded drivers. Device Manager, under Processors, shows two entries for Dual Core AMD Opteron Processor 165, driver version 5.1.2600.0, with one having a Device_Instance_ID of 0 while the other has a 1.

 

Would I still need to re-install?

 

EDIT: Boogers. I took a look in the Device Manager/Computer and I'm still using a standard HAL. ACPI single processor version. MS says I have to reload to change HAL's - is there no way around this?

[MalibuSS]

Make sure your running Service Pack 2.

 

You can change HALs but, I don't think the correct one is available without SP2.

 

I'm pretty sure that before SP2, windows didn't recognize Dual-core chips as ACPI-Multiprocessor.

 

 

-MalibuSS

[sluggo]

Got it solved. Whatever hal you load is copied into /system32 and is renamed hal.dll, which in my case was the single-processor dll. I deleted hal.dll, copied halaacpi.dll into /system32 and renamed it hal.dll. Halaacpi is called the "Uniprocessor HAL" and supports both single and multi-processor machines. One reboot later and all is well with my Opteron and the benchies went up by close to 2x.

 

As far as I can tell, brute-forcing it like this is the only way to change hal's on the fly.

[corpsejockey]

Nice