Q6600 with only single CPU in Activity Monitor

[BigReg]

I have an Acer Aspire M5630 desktop with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor. I have 10.5 up and running and the system is fairly stable. My issue is that I only have a single core being used as shown by the Activity Monitor application.

 

It doesn't matter which kernel I pick, I must include "cpus=1" or my system won't boot.

 

The kernel sees the processor correctly:

 

Feb  3 10:11:52 localhost kernel[0]: HTT: 1 core per package; 4 logical cpus per package
Feb  3 10:11:52 localhost kernel[0]: ACPI CA 20051117 [debug level=0 layer=0]
Feb  3 10:11:52 localhost kernel[0]: AppleACPICPU: ProcessorApicId=1 LocalApicId=0 Enabled
Feb  3 10:11:52 localhost kernel[0]: AppleACPICPU: ProcessorApicId=2 LocalApicId=1 Enabled
Feb  3 10:11:52 localhost kernel[0]: AppleACPICPU: ProcessorApicId=3 LocalApicId=2 Enabled
Feb  3 10:11:53 localhost kernel[0]: AppleACPICPU: ProcessorApicId=4 LocalApicId=3 Enabled

 

This happens with the speedstep kernel, vanilla, ToH, etc.

 

The motherboard is based on Intel 946GZ + ICH7DH.

 

Any clues? I'm hoping that I'm a super dork and overlooked something simple.

[Shrapnel]

Um... yes you did...

 

"cpus=1" tells OS X that you only want to use one core(cpu) on your system. If your system crashes unless you use it, then you must find another kernel that does work, wait for a fix later, or stick with it.

[BigReg]

Um... yes you did...

 

"cpus=1" tells OS X that you only want to use one core(cpu) on your system. If your system crashes unless you use it, then you must find another kernel that does work, wait for a fix later, or stick with it.

 

So cpus=1 refers to cores and not the actual "cpu?" People on the IRC channel have stated otherwise, but it certainly makes sense.

 

Hmmmm interesintg....

[verendus]

Q6600 should report as 1 CPU. It is a single CPU processor with 4 cores. I suggest you check in windows to see if it's an issue with the BIOS. My board had trouble recognizing all 4 cores, and I had to flash the bios. Let me know if that changes things.

[temna]

Hey BigRed.. There are a couple of us on this board that would LOVE to know what you did to get 10.5 installed on your Acer M5630.. What changes did you make to the BIOS and which install disk did you use? Any help would be appreciated..

[BigReg]

Hey BigRed.. There are a couple of us on this board that would LOVE to know what you did to get 10.5 installed on your Acer M5630.. What changes did you make to the BIOS and which install disk did you use? Any help would be appreciated..

 

Ok, he's a quick run down of what I did - props to Dense for helping me isolate kext files!

 

1) boot to installer with the Kalyway DVD - (use boot options -v -x -f cpus=1)

 

2) do an install and reboot

 

3) boot from the Kalyway DVD again with the same boot parameters "-v -x -f cpus=1"

 

4) launch the terminal from the menu

 

5) copy AppleACPIPlatform.kext, AppleAPIC.kext and AppleSMBIOS.kext from the Kalyway DVD to your freshly installed partition e.g. /Volumes/[your install disk name]/System/Library/Extensions

 

6) exit terminal

 

7) run disk utility from the menu, repair permissions on your installed disk

 

8) reboot

 

9) interrupt your boot from the disk with F8 and enter cpus=1 -v -f (hint: modify boot.plist to include these options)

 

I went through a bunch of different BIOS settings since our BIOS really SUCKS. You *must* enable ACPI but the other settings don't seem to make a difference.

 

Thats roughly what I did, but I basically spent 2-3 days dorkin' around with various things and may have missed something.

 

Give that a shot and let me know if anything doesn't work and we'll try to address it.

 

Good luck!

[temna]

Thanks BigReg.. I'm up and running.. Now I have to figure out the video and sound.. But atleast I'm running 10.5..

 

EDIT: It is amazing how a simple edit to get the video card working can FOOBAR the whole thing.. *sighs* Now I'm having major partition errors.. Calgon take me away..

[BigReg]

Thanks BigReg.. I'm up and running.. Now I have to figure out the video and sound.. But atleast I'm running 10.5.. EDIT: It is amazing how a simple edit to get the video card working can FOOBAR the whole thing.. *sighs* Now I'm having major partition errors.. Calgon take me away..

Awesome! I'm glad you are up and running. Are you running the Triakis kexts?

Q6600 should report as 1 CPU. It is a single CPU processor with 4 cores. I suggest you check in windows to see if it's an issue with the BIOS. My board had trouble recognizing all 4 cores, and I had to flash the bios. Let me know if that changes things.

I booted into Vista once before I blew the box away, it saw all four cores. I'm fairly certain the BIOS is the issue, but this is an OEM board so BIOS updates are non-existent (that would help that is).

[naddy69]

I have an Acer AM5620 Q6600 system, and I have the exact same issue. In fact I had to install the SSE2 kernel in order to work at all, and I must use cpus=1 also. Other than that, everything else works fine. QE/CI video with Radeon HD 2600 PRO using Triakis and 2600 PRO fix, 10 USB ports, Sound, LAN with an old 3COM PCI card installed (onboard Intel 82566DC does not work in OS X). I used Kalyway 10.5.1 also.

 

This machine runs great in 64 bit Vista - all 4 cores of course, see all 4 gigs RAM - no 3.3 gig limit, etc.

 

Agree about the crappy BIOS - there simply aren't enough settings here to make OS X run properly.

 

However, of all the things that can go wrong with OSX86, using only 1 core is the easiest to live with. Sound or LAN not working makes it useless, and no QE/CI makes it nearly useless as I'd be stuck with the wrong resolution on this 24" LCD - which makes for fuzzy, hard to read fonts that hurts my eyes.

 

With everything else working perfectly, I can live with 1 core out of 4 working. I'm not doing any heavy crunching in OS X so I don't really NEED all 4 cores anyway. I can always boot to Vista 64 for heavy duty stuff.

[BigReg]

I have an Acer AM5620 Q6600 system, and I have the exact same issue. In fact I had to install the SSE2 kernel in order to work at all, and I must use cpus=1 also. Other than that, everything else works fine. QE/CI video with Radeon HD 2600 PRO using Triakis and 2600 PRO fix, 10 USB ports, Sound, LAN with an old 3COM PCI card installed (onboard Intel 82566DC does not work in OS X). I used Kalyway 10.5.1 also.

 

This machine runs great in 64 bit Vista - all 4 cores of course, see all 4 gigs RAM - no 3.3 gig limit, etc.

 

Agree about the crappy BIOS - there simply aren't enough settings here to make OS X run properly.

 

However, of all the things that can go wrong with OSX86, using only 1 core is the easiest to live with. Sound or LAN not working makes it useless, and no QE/CI makes it nearly useless as I'd be stuck with the wrong resolution on this 24" LCD - which makes for fuzzy, hard to read fonts that hurts my eyes.

 

With everything else working perfectly, I can live with 1 core out of 4 working. I'm not doing any heavy crunching in OS X so I don't really NEED all 4 cores anyway. I can always boot to Vista 64 for heavy duty stuff.

I don't run Vista, I literally booted into Vista to create the restore DVDs and then I wiped the disk. I want all 4 cores since I've got a work MacBook Pro and a personal MacBook. I'm looking for ummpfh! There are a few things that I do that are CPU intensive currently running on my MacBook (Core Duo 1st Gen) and its struggling (EyeTV Clear QAM transcoding, HandBrake, on the fly H.264 transcoding DLNA server, etc).

 

I hope we can all get all 4 cores working sooner rather than later. I was || close to buying a motherboard to replace the piece of {censored} OEM board.

[naddy69]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I did - created the restore DVDs and driver/app CDs, then reformatted and installed 64 bit Vista Ultimate. Did you delete and reclaim the 10 gigs of drive space that the restore data uses?

 

Those 1st gen Core Duo Macbooks are dogs. I know someone who got one from the college she's attending, and it's a real POS.

 

I have a dual 1.25 Ghz G4 Mac tower machine here, so OSX86 is really just for playing with - and for the challenge of getting it running! My real work is done on Windows, and I spend 95% of my time on the Acer in 64 bit Vista, with XP and Server 2003 running in Virtual PC for work related stuff. The Acer is really a great Windows machine. Too bad the BIOS is so lame that it can't run OS X with all 4 cores running.

 

There are kernels available that purport to fix the "cpus=1" issue, but I haven't tried it yet. I have a stable install now, and really don't feel like messing around with it any longer. I already did about 15 installs over a weekend (about 2 months ago) to get what I have now. Getting sound, LAN and QE/CI working was more important than all 4 cores running. For what I need, it works fine.

 

I'll do another round when 10.5.2 or 10.5.3 comes out. Until then, I'm done!

[temna]

File this one under what not to do.. Everyone should read this and learn.. After they stop laughing at how stupid I was..

 

Ok.. Talk about going from awesome to hell in .3 seconds flat.. A true comedy of errors.. Atleast I might be laughing if it didn't happen to me..

 

I get 10.5.1 up and running.. Cool.. But I have a 24" Gateway monitor (1920x1200) hooked up to an EVGA nVidia 8600GTS 256MB Superclock video card.. And OSX was running at 1024x768.. Can you say ick? I can.. So I tried to force it to run at 1920x1200.. Then it locked up while booting up.. I'm thinking ok, wipe the partition and start over.. Learning process and all.. Won't quite wipe.. Go in with Hiran's Boot Disk and wipe the partition.. Think everything is cool and try to reinstall OSX.. Get the the last reboot, and I get an error.. {censored}.. Go back to Hiran.. umm.. Partition errors.. Fark.. For some reason even though the 500gb boot drive is in the first SATA port, all the disk utilities want to see the 750gb drive on SATA3 as the first disk.. I'm sure you can see where this is going.. I accidentally wipe the MBR on one of my full 750gb data drives.. :censored2:

 

Next I try to recover the :censored2: first 750gb drive.. It seems to come back, but somehow it's still corrupt, and the recovery blew out my second full 750gb drive.. Oh, did I mention the backup drives aren't scheduled to be delivered until Friday? Over a terabyte of data gone without a backup.. Now I can't boot on the machine due to massive problems with the boot drive.. The data is probably still on the two 750s, but the partition tables are hosed.. And I don't have any time to try to fix things until the weekend..

 

And I was trying to get away from Vista because of the issues I was having with the network dropping all the time.. Atleast the network was doing great under OSX for the 15 minutes I had it up and running.. Course, when I do it again I will have to get the sound and video to work without a repeat of this mistake..

 

Please excuse the overuse of smileys, but I have to amuse myself somehow after the nuclear meltdown that is my computer..

 

Ok naddy69, for future reference, what kernel are you talking about that fixes the cpus=1 issue? I figure if this thing cost me all that data, I better be able to get it up and running at full speed at somepoint this lifetime.. I do think I might replace the motherboard before I try this again..

[naddy69]

I don't know where they are. I read about it here. It was for Nforce chipset motherboards - they also need cpus=1 to boot correctly.

[muitommy]

never heard of intel having these issue ..

i only know it's cpus=1 for 680i ...

[naddy69]

Well, now you have! It's for real. It's not a chipset issue, it's BIOS issue. I have to use cpus=1 to even boot the Kalyway DVD. I had to install the SSE2 kernel, and I need cpus=1 to boot that.

[Vashypooh]

Make sure you have HPET and XD are on. This will resolve cpus=1 usually.

[temna]

Make sure you have HPET and XD are on. This will resolve cpus=1 usually.

 

On this motherboard?

[BigReg]

Make sure you have HPET and XD are on. This will resolve cpus=1 usually.

Unfortunately we don't have an HPET option and XD is on and it doesn't help.

[Vashypooh]

Id suggest looking to see if you have HPET. Everest will be able to tell you in windows. Without HPET, you wont get multi core with Vanilla.

[naddy69]

Both of those options are on in my BIOS. Makes no difference.

[temna]

Hey BigReg. If you ever figure out the quad core issue, let me know. I'm gonna wait on OSX until I replace the motherboard.

[BigReg]

Hey BigReg. If you ever figure out the quad core issue, let me know. I'm gonna wait on OSX until I replace the motherboard.

Problem solved, I bought another supported mATX motherboard and booted my installed system perfectly the first time. All four cores show up. Bought a GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L LGA 775 Intel G31 from newegg.com for $65, I should have done that out of the gate! I wasted a hell of a lot more than 65 bux of my time dorkin' around with something that will likely never work.

[temna]

I looked at that motherboard, and decided to pass.. I want one that has four RAM slots.. I am leaning towards the Asus P5E-VM.. I do kinda wonder if the onboard ethernet is supported though..

[iExplorer]

Hi everyone i want to know if this board can resolve the problem of 1 core?? Intel BOXDG33TLM LGA 775 Intel G33 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard can anybody thelp me with this?