Newly built pc problems..Help!

Hey guys. Yesterday I brought my new PC parts home and put them in my case, booted up/ set up and all that jazz. After all of this I realized that my motherboard cannot unlock the hidden cores in my cpu, which would turn my AMD phenom II 555 into a phenom II x4 955. My last motherboard had this capability, but it is a little old and optimized for XP. I have an Asus M5A97 R2.0 motherboard, the amd phenom II 555, and an HIS Radeon HD 7870. Will this processor bottleneck my GPU? What processor should i go after if i legitimately cannot unlock the hidden cores?
And I've also noticed that some of the time, my hard drive is running at 100% which seems to slow down my PC tremendously.. These may be some newbie questions but this is my first build, so... Thanks!

phenom II x4 955/965 (the 955 is a better overclocker the 965 is a faster base chip) both are good chips 

And not all of those chips have locked cores to unlock some do some dont its a lottery

i would say go for a FX6300 or a FX8320 or FX8350. the FX6300 is the cheapest solution, will ofc work great with a 7870. i personaly have a FX8350 with a HiS Radeon 7870.

So, should i not use my processor now? or will i be ok to use it until i get a new one?

Use it while you have it i dont see why not better to have a working computer than a not working one :)

ofc just use the cpu you have right now..till you have the money to buy a philedriver.

Asus M5A97 R2.0 supports philedriver out of box.

So i think I've decided. either the FX 8320 or the 8350 CPU. Most likely the 8320 since it will save me a bit of cash. I would assume this all should work fine with the AMD FX8320, if not, let me know. I'm quite excited to get the full power of my new machine. All I need now is a much larger hard drive and maybe a SSD for some extra kick :) 

  • current specs:
  • CM storm scout 2 case
  • Amd phenom II 555 @3.2Ghz
  • HIS Radeon HD7870 Ghz edition
  • Seagate barracuda 250gb 7200rpm
  • Asus M5A97 R2.0 motherboard
  • Coolermaster EVO 212 cpu cooler 
  • Corsair cx600 PSU 
  • 8 GB GSkill 1866 ddr3 memory

 

FX8320 is realy a great cpu go for it ☺