Using Dual Core...

[NightshadowUK]

I know of too many people with dual cores who don't even know how to use them, so it got me thinking...

Can you actually choose which core to set applications in Windows to? For example, could you set all the background processes to one core and then run a game off the other, and if so, how would you go about doing this?

Cheers y'all!

[Mblaster]

I'm pretty sure you can assign programs to cores in windows task manager, but AFAIK this isn't a permanent thing, they will go back to default when you restart the application.

[arthurleung]

Actually Windows will distribute jobs to the cores/CPUs automatically

On my Opteron 244 rig, when I fire up WinRAR and test files, windows split load 50/50 to both CPUs, so I'm not getting 100% CPU on one side and 0% on another side, but 50% on each. All programs DO NOT require a dedicated core/cpu to do its job, windows can shift the process between cores/CPUs and still work without any problem/performance penalty.

Because the program is single-threaded, its only 50%+50%=100% but not 100%+100%=200% (dual core/dual CPU).

Forcing programs to run on specific CPU/Core will only be useful if you want to force a bunch of CPU-hungry programs to fight for limited system resource (i.e. you doing 4 encodings at the same time, but you don't want them to occupy both cpu/cores, then force them onto one, sharing 25% instead of 50%)

[dangel]

Actually Windows will distribute jobs to the cores/CPUs automatically)

...actually not very well. I suspect Vista will be much better at this sort of thing given the market as it is now. You'll need XP pro or server for SMP support at all..


If you want to 'finetune' there's some utils to help you like http://www.mlin.net/SMPSeesaw.shtml for example