Help! I've been all over the frickin web on this one...
New Acer M5100-B5302A
AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core cpu
Loaded the latest and greatest Ubuntu with the generic kernel -- SMP by default
garry@wiggum:~$ uname -a
Linux wiggum 2.6.24-16-generic #1 SMP Thu Apr 10 13:23:42 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

....but the system monitor only displays stats for 1 cpu. The system seems to only recognize a of 4 cores. See output of /cat/proc/cpuinfo below

garry@wiggum:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 16
model : 2
model name : AMD Phenom(tm) 9500 Quad-Core Processor
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 2194.527
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 1
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 5
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc pni cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate
bogomips : 4392.39
clflush size : 64

Performance so far indicates that definately there is only a single core at work here.

Anyone have any ideas how to fix this?

Just is case could it be that the monitor is set to report cpu's and not cores. I don't suspect that but see just in case. As you say the performance is bad.

See if a knoppix disk can report it correctly.

Is is 64 or 32 bit?

Does the bios support exactly that cpu? I assume you bought it together. Is there any bios select for core.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

64 bit eh? I see now that it is indeed a 64 bit chip.
I'll install that version and try it.

64 bit install did the trick

lesson to all is RTFM

Thanks for the report.

I meant Is it 64 not Is is. That is just silly.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10