2 CPU Cores, How can you tell which is being utilized?

[Coldkilla]

Say I have a game on, and a movie rendering, how will I be able to tell which core is being used, or if 1 core is doing all of the work.

Other question: Will buying an x2 processor allow me to use a cpu hogger torrent program and a game at the same time?
Another Example: Render a movie & play a game


Thx!

 

[Sniper82]

The way I understand it you can do all the above. Otherwise whats the point in having dual core? BTW I'd say you would need at least 2gb memory in order to do multitasking like that but I guess it really depends on the game your trying to play.

 

[Coldkilla]

Well I actually have 2gb ram. However, I dont want a game utilizing, say core 1. Then a rendering program using core 1 as well, thus slowing down your game. How can I be sure that multitasking wont over-do a single core?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
Say I have a game on, and a movie rendering, how will I be able to tell which core is being used, or if 1 core is doing all of the work.

Use the task manager.

Other question: Will buying an x2 processor allow me to use a cpu hogger torrent program and a game at the same time?

Another Example: Render a movie & play a game

If the OS's scheduler properly assigns the hog thread to one core and the game thread to the other core, yes. I believe XP's scheduler is smart enough to do this.

The deal is, if you have two worker threads, you can garner advantages. Each process is composed of a number of threads (there is always at least one called the worker thread and you can have more of these within an app). Lots of the time, there are more threads, but they are usually idle (updating the GUI while a worker thread is performing an operation for instance). When you have multiple worker threads you start to see the advantages of dual core. You can get two worker threads from having two applications open, or from using one application that is efficiently multithreaded. You can only have one core assigned to each thread (until someone invents the infamous "reverse hyperthreading").

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
Well I actually have 2gb ram. However, I dont want a game utilizing, say core 1. Then a rendering program using core 1 as well, thus slowing down your game. How can I be sure that multitasking wont over-do a single core?

Unfortunately you really can't guarantee it, at least with stock XP. You can change the affinity after the fact (after the program has started), but you can imagine the inconvenience of trying to assign an encoder to CPU1 during gameplay on CPU0. I think people have made a program to automatically set the affinity of apps per your definitions, but I don't know the name off the top of my head. In fact there are probably multiple programs to suffice as a secondary scheduler. I believe you can also modify the Win32 PE image (.exe) with a preset affinity ("imagecfg"). I don't recommend using that with anti-hack game programs like PunkBuster because the exe will fail a CRC check.

 

[Coldkilla]

Ive got that automatic program from a friend of mine. The only name it has is "imagecfg". It works setting the affinity automatically for that program/game. As for multitasking, say your running three programs and cannot set an individual affinity for each one of the three?

 

[xtknight]

Then, one core will time slice between two threads. Only one core can be assigned to one thread, but the converse of that is not true. When two threads are assigned to one core, it uses time slicing and gives each thread equal time (unless one becomes a sleepy zombie or has a priority boost). I mention imagecfg in my edited post. Like I say be careful with games that use anti-hack techniques. I thought there was another program that could set affinity automatically without having to modify the exe.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, X is correct. One processor/core is designated as Master. It delegates jobs to the other core when it has more than it can handle. I would worry more about how much memory I had than the processors. If you are running more than your memory can hold you will get a lot of swapping to the hard drive and that's slow.

Good Luck, Jim