[guitardom]

you dont say what version of pt your running. you state 7.4 which can utilize multicore and 6.1 that cant utilize it, have to use one core.

other than that, no that should not be your problem. i typically leave one core off. i have an i7 w hyperthreading i have 8 cores and run it at 7, i ran 3 on my q6600 and 3 on my opteron. safe to leave on core for the computer to run other processes on.

you obviously did not install the latest cs updates for 7.4 either, up to cs10. you should do that immediatly as well.

there are some bios setting that can cause a bit of issues. check the q series sticky at the top of the page. but things like speed stepping can be shut off and a few things like that are problematic.