Is the AMD Dual-Core optimizer necessary?

No. But it is supposed to improve your performance across a variety of workloads.

Its up to you though. Yes or no.

Hmmm... I think I'll go without it. I've noticed that my system seems to be a tad slow compared to other systems, even when they have worse hardware. I've been looking around XP trying to find anything that could cause this (I do regular virus/malware sweeps and use CCleaner for various junk files and registry issues), and the only real things I could see slowing my computer down are...

1 - Extra startup processes I don't need.
2 - The fact I use Windowblinds and Objectdock
3 - The fact that my hard drive has a few partitions, one for XP, one for Ubuntu
4 - My system is overclocked to boot, but there may be some things not getting enough voltage or perhaps the OC is too much and I've gone from being speedy to unstable.

I noticed that the AMD Dual Core optimizer was one such process that starts up and stays active, and I figured XP already handles multiple cores just fine and through updates gets even better so I don't need this anymore. The other things I've eliminated from startup are some RealTek stuff I didn't need, a couple of Nvidia processes that did little else but startup a control panel and tray icon (also not using) and some various other things.

NUMBER 2...22222222 is what is slowing your system down, their coding is awful.

1 - This is where your problem lies, extra processes includes real-time virus scanning of memory and files as they are opened. So check with both FileMonitor and ProcessMonitor to see what is taking up those cpu cycles. I found by shutting of real time protection, my system started behaving normally again. And I lose no protection.

2 - WindowBlinds and ObjectDock are great and run incredibly fast, faster than the GDI that comes with XP, this isn't your problem.

3 - Partitions have no bearing unless you have a horribly slow drive with no caching and are doing strange things with swap drives, things you would already know to be performance sappers.

4 - Components age and fail eventually, drop a few Mhz and see what happens. Also, in the name of stability and compatibility later drivers of various components are not as OC friendly as earlier versions...this is especially true for games and video card drivers...what you can reach in Mhz with one game and one driver revision does not guarantee you can reach that same Mhz with a different driver version, or a different game.

The AMD DC Optimizer is mostly for out of API stuff, like video codecs, Bink, cut-scenes, things of that nature. Your best bet is to have the latest CPU driver, a finely tuned bios including the lowest RAM latencies possible and the /usepmtimer switch.

After you have thoroughly scoured your system for cpu sapping applets and if you find a specific game skips or acts very peculiar with the /usepmtimer switch on, take it out and see if that fixes it. Since the number of games that will break with /usepmtimer on is less than the number of games it fixes, resulting in a net gain. Also you avoid having that AMD TSR haunting you in your tray. But you are correct, properly threaded games don't need the pmtimer fix.

Oh dear, well at least I know more of what you don't know! Here's a link to AMDs X2 page, notice one of the links in Product information is the Utilities, Drivers & Updates page, go there and find all sorts of things that might make your system run better, might not.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processor [...] 41,00.html

The /usepmtimer switch in your boot.ini is part of the dual-core optimization process [technical explanation skipped]. Maybe it helps your system, maybe not. Only you can say.