It seems rather a waste to buy more processor cores than you're willing to licence software for - also it's a shame that software (assuming that the licence that's too small isn't the OS) won't limit the number of threads but allow you to keep all the cores active.
All you can do in the BIOS is disable half the cores - it's on the CPU Information screen, "Number of Cores per Processor". The 2950 III I checked this on has two E5430 processors, which are quad core chips, so I can set this machine to 2 cores per processor and run as 2 x dual core for a total of 4 cores rather than 2 x quad core for a total of 8 cores. If you had 2 x dual core, I believe that the BIOS will allow you to set 2 x single core.
If you need to drop to a single chip to have few enough cores, or the software reads the processor configuration and still refuses to start, the only option is, as has already been said, to remove the processor in the higher numbered slot (without checking the manual I can't remember whether it's the left hand or right hand processor). If you do that and you don't reuse the processor elsewhere, pack it up in anti static packaging and label it with the service tag of the machine - that way you know at least one machine which has a processor installed of suitable model, family and stepping to use this stored chip in a dual chip setup.
Dev Mgr
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9.3K Posts
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May 21st, 2008 12:00
Why would you want to though?
SlavaK
2 Posts
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May 21st, 2008 12:00
Dev Mgr
4 Operator
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9.3K Posts
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May 21st, 2008 16:00
david.j.wood
145 Posts
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May 22nd, 2008 06:00
It seems rather a waste to buy more processor cores than you're willing to licence software for - also it's a shame that software (assuming that the licence that's too small isn't the OS) won't limit the number of threads but allow you to keep all the cores active.
All you can do in the BIOS is disable half the cores - it's on the CPU Information screen, "Number of Cores per Processor". The 2950 III I checked this on has two E5430 processors, which are quad core chips, so I can set this machine to 2 cores per processor and run as 2 x dual core for a total of 4 cores rather than 2 x quad core for a total of 8 cores. If you had 2 x dual core, I believe that the BIOS will allow you to set 2 x single core.
If you need to drop to a single chip to have few enough cores, or the software reads the processor configuration and still refuses to start, the only option is, as has already been said, to remove the processor in the higher numbered slot (without checking the manual I can't remember whether it's the left hand or right hand processor). If you do that and you don't reuse the processor elsewhere, pack it up in anti static packaging and label it with the service tag of the machine - that way you know at least one machine which has a processor installed of suitable model, family and stepping to use this stored chip in a dual chip setup.