Image corruption in Win8 after unlocking second core of Sempron 145.

[Shawn]

Ok, so this is weird. I successfully unlocked the second core of a Sempron 145 in a budget pc I built for my son. I ran prime95 for several hours and windows never crashed and the temps never got above 50C even with the stock cooler. I even got it up to 3.5GHz with temps only hitting 52C. Great!

However, I go to the windows store to download some of the games he likes to play on the tablet and the images becomes all corrupt when I try to scroll. I downloaded Cut The Rope and while it works fine the right side of the screen flickers white. The size is the same as the charms bar when visible. Other apps do this too and it also comes up when the store is loading. This occurs at stock speeds, not just OC.

Interestingly, I don't have any corruption on the desktop, unless I'm in IE.

Has anyone heard of this happening before? I guess that means the second core is defective, but it's odd that it doesn't cause any instability. I also haven't figured out why it seems limited to metro apps. I tried bumping up the voltage, but the msi board I'm using limits voltage to 1.35v.

I'm using the onboard Radeon HD graphics so I don't know if it would go away with dedicated graphics, but I don't want to put too much money into this rig.

Right now i'm running at 3.5GHz with single core and no image corruption.

 

[blastingcap]

It's unstable. Don't unlock it. Just because it doesn't crash right away does not mean it's stable.

 

[Edgemeal]

Its been over 3 years since I unlocked a x2 to a x4 (still working flawless ) but I rem when reading up on it there were people reporting this same issue and IIRC there wasn't any way to fix it. Luck of the draw.

 

[podspi]

I am finding it hard to believe that an unstable core would cause flickering like that, especially if the core passes stability tests. My guess would be the IGP is having issues since it is possibly also overlooked (I assume the Sempron isn't unlocked, so the system clock is probably changed?)

Of course, before doing anything reset to stock and test. Then oc and test (one core), then unlock and test (stock speed). Have to narrow down where the issue is coming from.

I get the impression this machine isn't used for anything mission critical, so no reason to be overly paranoid about stability imho.

 

[Shawn]

I am having problems with image corruption with the second core enabled, even at stock speeds.

 

[richierich1212]

It's a faulty 2nd core unfortunately.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It's a faulty 2nd core unfortunately.

This ^^

There is a reason that CPU is being sold as a single-core. Fab testing should have caught something like that...

The reason you are experiencing display corruption might be that the defective core is feeding bad data to the GPU... :hmm: