Windows XP Poor Multicore magnament

1) There was NO need to apply the dual core power management hotfix if you have applied SP3 - it's included.
2) the link you reference starts off talking about the dual core pm hot-fix, then starts talking about the /usepmtimer switch for boot.ini. That switch is specific to AMD CPUs. Read the technet articles and verify it.

In plain english you are wasting your time.
Setting process affinity to multiple cores for a single threaded application will result in negative performance - i.e. it will decrease. Have a think about what you are doing by making that change.

Your ideal scenario is a dream. You need to face reality - it aint gonna happen.

Indeed - what is the point of buying a quad core and using it for applications that don't scale to 4 CPUs? the answer is NOTHING. I'm still running dual core for that reason - there's no point for me as I don't have a single application (well I have 1) that would use the additional CPU cores.

The list of software that actually scales well to 4 cores is pretty limited in the windows desktop area, other than a few exceptions. The number of games that scale to 4 CPUs is very low - a handful.

CPU scaling is primarily a function of the software (assuming the OS and hardware support it etc).

So to answer your last question - rewrite the code for the software you are running so that it effectively increases its thread usage and uses the additional cores.

I think you get the picture. You've got hardware that you can't use to its fullest potential on all but a handful of software, unless you're into stuff like CAD, rendering and multi-media type applications where there is far more support for more than 2 CPUs. Wait a couple of years for software to catch up - but by then, your CPU will be obsolete.

(I specialize in MS operating system support for a living, so I'm pretty well versed in this area).

Regards and don't take any of the comments personally - just being blunt.

Well dude looks like u didnt read what i said.

1) when i pointed that article, the thing i did was the "PerfEnablePackageIdle" configuration.

2) when i mean

"made a test running Ultimate Zip cracker 4 times its a program made to work on single core procesors and they all run on the 1st core while the other 4 cores stay idle"

i mean i open 4 instances of the same program i know that program its single threaded since im programmer and im probaly understand that better than you.

the point its all 4 processes run in the same core.

5) i never asked about software scaling in all 4 cores its self, i know all the multi core issues on a secuential thread thats not the point.


6) u talk about my perfect scnario its never going to happen, let me tell u something its not that hard as u may think, all i want its the work of different processes being split on the cores proportionaly and thats not so hard, im thinking about a software to do it itself by checking the usage of the cores and controling the of the processes affinity automatically.

so dude ur not being blunt ur just not reading enought.

The program has to be multi-core aware if it's going to run on more than one core without setting affinity. Vista is a bit better at distributing the load... but again, don't expect miracles. It's not enough for the OS to support multi-cores... the software must as well.

hi guys, i know this is a bit old but i have been searching for info on a similar topic and wanted to let you know about a program called cpu-control. i think it will do what you want and it is free.

http://www.koma-code.de/index.php?option=com_content&ta...

just trying to help

As I read it, alphadan was NOT trying to get a single threaded app to run multi-threaded across several cores, as muz_j and Zoron appear to be answering.

I think his question is why running 4 instances of a particular single-threaded app under Win XP SP3 on a quad-core processor did not run each instance on a different core.

If indeed this is what happened, then changing THIS behavior would on the face of it appear to be an OS function.

However, I am wondering if perhaps alphadan maybe upgraded his motherboard from single to quad-core without reinstalling Windows, in which case I would not be surprised to hear that Windows NEVER uses any core except the first one.

@superhighperf

THX man after several months may be more than a year, made this thread and now, i googled to my own thread and found u answered my question thats exactly what im looking for and i wonder why does the Windows OS doesnt have this feature builtin makes me sad.

im gonna test it but i read the page and looks pretty precise.