The other day, I fancied a bit of a change. Mainly through boredom than anything.

So, I swapped my main AMD PC with my Server PC.

The System is :-

I7-970 6 Core @ 3.2
Saphire Pure Black Motherboard
24GB G.Skill RAM ( 6x4GB )
C: = Corsair SSD ( Windows 8.1 - 64Bit )
D: = 1TB WB Black ( Apps & Games )
E: = 2TB WD Black ( Media )
F: = 320GB Seagate ( random junk )

I have been using a DVD RIP of my BlueRay of the film Prometheus to get a basic benchmark of how my PCs will convert video files, and whilst I was converting the file into an AVI, I noticed that the CPU % was only at 10% and occasionally flashing to 11%. I had a peek at the task manager and saw that core 4 was running in the 90%-95% area and all the other 11 cores were simply twiddling their thumbs at mostly 0% or 1 or 2% with the odd blip up to at most 10% ?

Ok, sure enough, on closer inspection, I see that there are the sleeping cores and so I sort them out, and give it a restart and check they are all running and I run the App again to re-do the conversion. I also check the useage that the app will give the PC, its only goes up to 8 cores and thats fine, even though its got 12 ( logical I know I know ) but again, its made ZERO difference?

I have tried a couple of heavy loading apps now and they are all doing pretty much the same... The CPU is NEVER really pushed all that much, and its slow as hell, so what am I missing? is it supposed to do this, and can I sort it out so it runs properly?

Anyone able to help?

Thanks in advance.