cpu affinity?

the_r_sole · 1 Oct 2010 at 11:32

just mucking about on my new machine here, I have 6 cpu core's (phenom II 1055t)
Its a machine for working, cad/photoshop/sketchup etc but i always have certain programs running in the background, skype, outlook, vlc etc - would it make any difference if i set the background tasks to run on certain cpus and leave the others for my main working programs, from what i gather they would only utilise 4 cores anyway....
or is it best just to let windows sort it all out and me to stop messing with it!?

dazzerd · 1 Oct 2010 at 12:11

Let windows sort it out imo

Even if it made a difference I expect it would be insignificant.

NathanE · 1 Oct 2010 at 18:48

It will actually slow those apps down if you lock them to specific cores (that's what affinity does).

Windows will perform the time slicing of threads between available cores and it has one of the most complex algorithms for the job, out of any operating system.

Affinity is useful for:

1. Programmers, debugging
2. SQL Servers with multiple instances

vsmora · 2 Oct 2010 at 07:35

Leave it alone. Unless you have very specific repeatable usage, you are likely to do more harm than good.