Disabling a core

[Smartazz]

I've heard of people disabling cores to maximize their overclocks for benchmarking purposes. How do you disable a specific core and would it be safe to leave one disabled for long periods of time to save power, if my computer only needs one core for an extended period of time?

 

[PCTC2]

In the BIOS. Under the CPU Menu, generally there's options that say "Core X [Enabled/Disabled]".

But I found I can't boot for some reason with any cores disabled. Maybe it's my board.

 

[JustaGeek]

Instead of trying to disable a "core", try the Microsoft patch that is supposed to address the problem of the processor "throttling" between the cores during intense applications e.g. games:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256

And the newer "reliability" patch:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=936357

My computer seems to run the games much smoother with both patches applied.