My upgrade streak went something like this..486DX66, Pentium Pro200, Celeron300.. my last contraption had a Pentium "solo" core processor, clocked at 850 or so, as in an older book of radio engineering one would have it put, megacycles. All was well and happy I had been until one day I was sucked in to the World of War Craft 3.. open wide, eyeballing over my army moving as if it just had a touch of a smoky magic dragon. The arm race was on and I upgraded ferociously and swiftly.. of course I went an old school and put the next balls heater myself.. why did I do it myself, yes, I like pain.. that's very clear to me now.
I stuck in a multi-core rock, shiny copper heat exchange mother and RAM so cheap I cried. After giving it a kick it all light up as a x-mas tree and went on pumping. Thing were flying for a year or so, than I decided to see how all the 4 cores share the load and to my amazement I only could see one core working! It turned out that old XP installed on a single core didn't have necessary multi-core system files and worked as if my expensive 4 core processor was a single core Pentium. Good thing kind people figured it out before me:
http://incore.net/winxp-multicpu/
To test all cores are engaged open Windows Task Manager, it should show 4 heart beats..
