Would diasabling 2 AMD FX -4170 cores improve the overall performance of the CPU

[t1mone]

I have been looking into my AMD FX-4170 and i have come accross many people saying that disabling 1 core from each of the 2 bulldozer clusters would improve performance, as each core wouldn't be sharing memory with its other core. would this improve my performance in gaming and single thread processes?

 

[clutchc]

It may have some effect in single threaded apps, but it would only weaken your gaming experience.

 

[t1mone]

Why would it weaken when both threads would have more memory to work with and would not have to compete with other cores?

 

[marshal11]

In single threaded or double threaded software it might help however I doubt it. I don't quite understand what you mean by the cores are competing for memory. What memory? The CPU caches? That doesn't really matter when it comes to gaming. Disabling 2 cores in games like BF3 will almost cut your performance almost in half because BF3 is well optimized for up to 8 cores.

 

[popatim]

what they are trying to get across is that that the 2 cores that dont have FPU access are still usefull. Single threaded apps it would make 0 difference if you disable 2 cores; its only 1 thread so it matters little if 1 core is idle or 3.

 

[Rugnir_Viking]

if you are looking at stupid overclocks with it then yes. shutting cores can and will lower temps and cut power use, and that allows higher oc to a point. not practical for ordinary use, and any multithready software will lose out hugely.