Quad Core question

[mrfatboy]

Sorry if this is a Noob question but I am interested to know.

I plan on getting a Q6600 in July. It will be running XP on a new Gigabyte P35 board.

So anyway for example, If I have 6 programs running at the same in XP does XP automatically assign a program to a different core to optimize processor power? Or do you have to do this manually? Or does the program have to be written for multi cores to take advantage of the q6600?

thanks

 

[Jjoshua2]

Any one program has to be writen for mutli cores to take advantage of a quad. However, you can run any four intensive programs no problem. ie virus scan, game, zip, and distributed computing project. There are quite a few programs now that support using 2 cores.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: mrfatboy
So anyway for example, If I have 6 programs running at the same in XP does XP automatically assign a program to a different core to optimize processor power?

Something like that. What XP actually does is balance the load between all of the cores. For instance, if you have a single-threaded app. that uses 100% of one core, and a dual-core processor, then XP will only put a 50% load on each core.

 

[mercanucaribe]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: mrfatboy
So anyway for example, If I have 6 programs running at the same in XP does XP automatically assign a program to a different core to optimize processor power?

Something like that. What XP actually does is balance the load between all of the cores. For instance, if you have a single-threaded app. that uses 100% of one core, and a dual-core processor, then XP will only put a 50% load on each core.

I was wondering about this. With 50% usage from one program, indicating that it's single threaded, the Task Manager shows the load distributed between both cores. Pretty cool

 

[mrfatboy]

I play BF2 alot and I thought I read somewhere that you had to set something in the BF2 setup to run on only one core or the game would not run.

But from what I am reading here for the most part that XP automaticallly balances the programs across the number of cores you have.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: mrfatboy
I play BF2 alot and I thought I read somewhere that you had to set something in the BF2 setup to run on only one core or the game would not run.

But from what I am reading here for the most part that XP automaticallly balances the programs across the number of cores you have.

It's not true. XP will assign threads to different cores as and when the load needs balancing. Only tightly single-threaded apps that are designed to run one core at the expense of another, or if you manually assign the CPU affinity in Task Manager, will only run on one core, solely.

 

[Agamar]

Won't XP only support 2 cores? I know it only supports 2 *physical* processors...

 

[Roguestar]

XP Home only supports 2 cores, IIRC. I know they only support 2 physical processors but XP Pro can support 2 processors with 64 cores each, if my memory serves me.

 

[mrfatboy]

Ok, to sum up, all of these things are true, correct?

1) XP does balance thread across cores when it can
2) XP Home only supports 2 cores
3) You can manually set your programs to run on a specific core by assigning CPU affinity in Task Manager.

so for an example of #3, I could manually assign (for giggles):

outlook --------core 1
dvd software --core 2
bf2--------------core 3
skype --------- core 4

and be running all these apps without a major performance hit?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: mrfatboy
Ok, to sum up, all of these things are true, correct?

1) XP does balance thread across cores when it can

True.

2) XP Home only supports 2 cores

False.

XP Home supports only one physical CPU (XP Pro supports 2; more than that and you need one of the 'Server' versions), but it can have more than two physical or logical cores (logical cores being what you get with HyperThreading). You can run a single quad-core CPU on XP Home just fine.

3) You can manually set your programs to run on a specific core by assigning CPU affinity in Task Manager.

True. Programs can also modify their own affinity (though few games have the options exposed), and you can pass options in while starting up an application from the command line or a shortcut to preemptively set the affinity.

so for an example of #3, I could manually assign (for giggles):

outlook --------core 1
dvd software --core 2
bf2--------------core 3
skype --------- core 4

and be running all these apps without a major performance hit?

In general, assigning specific cores isn't going to do all that much for you (and can hurt you badly if you don't balance it right.)

If you're running something that you know will run a single CPU core at 100% all the time (like a single-threaded video encoder), giving it a 'dedicated' core may improve its performance and keep it form disrupting other programs as much. If you're not doing something like this I would just let Windows manage the threads.

 

[mrfatboy]

thanks for clearing that up

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

2) XP Home only supports 2 cores

False.

XP Home supports only one physical CPU (XP Pro supports 2; more than that and you need one of the 'Server' versions), but it can have more than two physical or logical cores (logical cores being what you get with HyperThreading). You can run a single quad-core CPU on XP Home just fine.

Thank you, Matthias. One CPU is what I think I was thinking of and seeing the last time this came up it was about a dual-core CPU that's probably where I made the jump from .

 

[bob4432]

like normal, i 2nd what mathias says. i have run bf2 on dc and sc rigs since the game came out and i have never messed with setting it to 1 core w/ the dc rigs. xp handles it fine in a dc setup. same for all my other uses, i just let xp handle it and all works well.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: bob4432
like normal, i 2nd what mathias says.

Yep. Mathias99 does a great job on these forums. I vote we immediately double his salary.