Does WinXP take advantage of Dual core processors?

[nippyjun]

Does WinXP take advantage of Dual core processors?

 

[spyordie007]

yes

 

[nippyjun]

Anyone know of a link to some benchmarks that compare dual core to single core athlon 64 chips?

 

[mikecel79]

Anand has done some extensive benchmarks on dual core vs single core CPUs.

 

[sprockkets]

It would seem that XP home does support it due to the current license scheme, but anyone know for sure?

 

[Varun]

Pretty sure Home will only work with 1 Physical processor, however Microsoft does not consider a dual core two processors. Home should have no problem with one dual core.

 

[TheLiberalTruth]

I think you're right about it not having trouble with dual cores...otherwise I would think it would balk at intel's HT.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Varun
Pretty sure Home will only work with 1 Physical processor, however Microsoft does not consider a dual core two processors. Home should have no problem with one dual core.

Actually yes it does. If you look at Task Manager it shows 2 seperate processors. If you look at it on an Intel EE it shows all 4 (2 virtual) processors.

Correct, XP home does not support any type of multi core or processor computing.

As for taking advantage of dual core. It recognizes that if thats what you mean. It will balance the loads when you multi task. However, the applications you run have to be multi-threaded in order to show the huge performance increases dual cores have to offer.

-Kevin

 

[bsobel]

Microsoft info on dualcore... XP Home will support one proc with as many cores as developed will work...

 

[ShadowBlade]

http://www.anandtech.com - loads of benchmarks and stuff
its a pretty good site

 

[Link19]

So, is Windows XP Home technically really capabale of supporting dual CPU motherboards, it's just that it goes against the licensing of XP Home?? Isn't a dual core technically exactly the same performance wise as having dual single core CPUs on a dual socket motherboard with the only difference being physical in that a dual core is two CPUs packaged into one chip that goes into one ZIFF socket as opposed to having two CPUs packaged each in 2 spearate chips that both go in two ZIFF sockets on the motherboard??

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Link19
So, is Windows XP Home technically really capabale of supporting dual CPU motherboards, it's just that it goes against the licensing of XP Home?? Isn't a dual core technically exactly the same performance wise as having dual single core CPUs on a dual socket motherboard with the only difference being physical in that a dual core is two CPUs packaged into one chip that goes into one ZIFF socket as opposed to having two CPUs packaged each in 2 spearate chips that both go in two ZIFF sockets on the motherboard??

The difference is how the CPU's are reported by the bios. But if you consider that Xp Home is the same as Xp Pro with different features enabled, you can realize that Home would support SMP if the hal allowed it.

Bill

 

[Leros]

Originally posted by: ShadowBlade
http://www.anandtech.com - loads of benchmarks and stuff
its a pretty good site

<Neo>Whoaaa</Neo>

 

[ChicagoPCGuy]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

Originally posted by: Varun
Pretty sure Home will only work with 1 Physical processor, however Microsoft does not consider a dual core two processors. Home should have no problem with one dual core.

Actually yes it does. If you look at Task Manager it shows 2 seperate processors. If you look at it on an Intel EE it shows all 4 (2 virtual) processors.

Correct, XP home does not support any type of multi core or processor computing.

As for taking advantage of dual core. It recognizes that if thats what you mean. It will balance the loads when you multi task. However, the applications you run have to be multi-threaded in order to show the huge performance increases dual cores have to offer.

-Kevin

ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Do your research. XP Home supports 1 physical processor, and it can have as many cores as it wants. XP Pro supports 2 physical processors, and likewise it can have as many cores as it wants.

Therefore, XP Home will take full advantage of an X2 or Pentium D. Read the Microsoft link in the above post if you doubt what I say.

 

[remagavon]

Originally posted by: ChicagoPCGuy

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

Originally posted by: Varun
Pretty sure Home will only work with 1 Physical processor, however Microsoft does not consider a dual core two processors. Home should have no problem with one dual core.

Actually yes it does. If you look at Task Manager it shows 2 seperate processors. If you look at it on an Intel EE it shows all 4 (2 virtual) processors.

Correct, XP home does not support any type of multi core or processor computing.

As for taking advantage of dual core. It recognizes that if thats what you mean. It will balance the loads when you multi task. However, the applications you run have to be multi-threaded in order to show the huge performance increases dual cores have to offer.

-Kevin

ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Do your research. XP Home supports 1 physical processor, and it can have as many cores as it wants. XP Pro supports 2 physical processors, and likewise it can have as many cores as it wants.

Therefore, XP Home will take full advantage of an X2 or Pentium D. Read the Microsoft link in the above post if you doubt what I say.

:thumbsup:

 

[johnb3030]

I just built a system using an Intel D945GNTLR MB and a D 820 CPU (2.8GHz dual core) with Windows XP Professional. The system seems to be running fine, but when I run Task Manager I don't see two processors. Do I need to change some BIOS setting for dual core? Or is there some setting in XP that needs to be different? Thanks!

John

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: johnb3030
I just built a system using an Intel D945GNTLR MB and a D 820 CPU (2.8GHz dual core) with Windows XP Professional. The system seems to be running fine, but when I run Task Manager I don't see two processors. Do I need to change some BIOS setting for dual core? Or is there some setting in XP that needs to be different? Thanks!
John

In task manager did you go to view/cpu history and turn on one graph per cpu? The default may be showing you the combined average.

Bill

 

[johnb3030]

I couldn't find this at first because I was viewing the "processes" tab. It is only available for the "performance" tab, where it shows the CPU usage history for each processor. I was hoping it would be possible to have the "processes" tab show which CPU was running each process.

I looked at the Task Manager help file, and it tells how to use the "set affinity" command to assign a process to a particular CPU. When I look at it I can see that I have 2 processors. It appears that the default is to let all processes use both processors. But even after switching a few processes to use just one CPU, it doesn't seem to be able to display a list showing which process is running on which CPU. That would be useful to have.

John

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: johnb3030
I couldn't find this at first because I was viewing the "processes" tab. It is only available for the "performance" tab, where it shows the CPU usage history for each processor. I was hoping it would be possible to have the "processes" tab show which CPU was running each process.

I looked at the Task Manager help file, and it tells how to use the "set affinity" command to assign a process to a particular CPU. When I look at it I can see that I have 2 processors. It appears that the default is to let all processes use both processors. But even after switching a few processes to use just one CPU, it doesn't seem to be able to display a list showing which process is running on which CPU. That would be useful to have.

It doesnt show this as the system will move the process between processesors as it makes sense. Unless you have a specific issue (such as an app crashing in a MP box) you should not be playing with affinities yourself. You'll invariably wind up just getting worse performance out of the system, let the scheduler do it's job, it's actually not that bad at it

Bill