Before release, the early Phenoms including the 9600 were found to have something called the TLB Errata. An very very rare event that could cause a system freeze or data loss. The odds of anything going wrong are slim but AMD took preemptive measures to prevent bad reviews and issued a bios patch to prevent it. So all motherboards have code to disable part of the early Phenom chips. AMD predicted a 10% loss in overall processor performance. I found that not to be the case running Boinc, more like 40%. Anyway, all you need to do is get AMD overdrive.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_overdrive.aspx

It is an overclocking utility for AMD chips. Hidden in it is a way to turn off the patch. Install it, open it. In the main panel you will see a green dot in the upper right. Click on it and part of it turns red. That disables the patch and allows your chip to run at full power. I've been through a few versions of overdrive and though it has options to load in the background. I have found that I have had to start the program, make sure the dot is still red and then leaving it running minimized whenever I have to restart my computer. I've also never tried any of the overclocking options. I rather not push the chip if I'm already bypassing the patch.