Dual core 'optimisation'? System feels similar to my A64 3500+

[DarkShadow]

I have a C2D and to be honest I have no idea if I should be installing soemthing or similar as it feels similar to my A64 3500.

All I've done it installed xp with updates slipstreamed, installed a couple of driver form asus website.

What can I do to get the most out of Dual cores? Should I start setting affinity's? I can see two graphs in task manage but I'm not sure if that suggests it's had a patch installed?

My previous system was:
A64 3500+ @ stock
1GB Geil Ram

Now I have:
E6300 at stock for the moment
2GB Crucial Anniversary kit

I can only feel the difference in games which I'm not overly pleased with

I'm almost certain I'm doing something wrong.

 

[SGCWill]

What games are you playing - t.b.h i only noticed a huge difference in my strategy games such as total wars and homeworld - loading times decreased slightly, but thats it. GPU is more important for games at this stage!

 

[NathanE]

Upgrade to Vista. Explorer is fully multi-threaded in that OS. In XP it was so-so.

To be honest though, between an X2 and C2D - you aren't going to perceive much difference at all in casual Windows usage.

PS: Setting processor affinity actually reduces performance. Do not use it for anything but compatibility purposes.

 

[DarkShadow]

PS: Setting processor affinity actually reduces performance. Do not use it for anything but compatibility purposes.

Really?

I read somewhere that it was a good idea to do so!

It's a single core not X2 btw

 

[SGCWill]

PS: Setting processor affinity actually reduces performance. Do not use it for anything but compatibility purposes.

That only happens on X2's for some reason, I've never had to do that on my E6300.

If your E6300 is at stock clock then you won't notice much difference. Crank up the FSB.

 

[NathanE]

Really?

I read somewhere that it was a good idea to do so!

Nope it's always bad. The kernel can decide which core to place a thread onto and it has far more variables at its disposal to make that decision. The kernel will actually try it's darndest to keep a thread on the same core as it knows there could be a hardware cost in switching it to another core. But in certain conditions (i.e. when another thread is already executing on the core and it's quantum is still ages away from expiring) the kernel deems it more sensible to switch it to the other core anyway.

Use it for compatibility purposes only.

It's a single core not X2 btw

My mistake.

That only happens on X2's for some reason, I've never had to do that on my E6300.

Yup the shared L2 cache on C2D eliminates a lot of the problems experienced by X2 users.

The NT 6.0 kernel (Vista) detects if the CPU has a shared L2 cache and actually modifies its thread scheduling behaviour because it knows there is no hardware cost associated with switching the thread between cores.

 

[McNutter]

You're not alone in that dark_shadow. I went from a single core 2.5GHz Athlon 64 to a 3.4GHz Core 2 Duo setup and the only difference I've noticed is in benchmarks tbh. All this new gear is just a rip off!

 

[pastymuncher]

Surely the performance for gaming must be better as the GPU is less likely to be cpu limited.

 

[james.miller]

it is better. not a huge amount. biggest gains are encoding and multi-tasking speed. dual core is great if you want to encode a film whilst playing a game. cant do that with a single core. you can encode on both cores, gettings things done at least twice as fast as a single core.

dual cores certainly do ave their benifits but if you buy them for gaming then thats your mistake.

 

[steve258]

It is not a rip off you just have false expectations!!

If all you do is word and Internet why bother upgrading to C2D?? surely a single core A64 is more than enough?? Windows simply don't utilise that much CPU power so performance is mainly down to the speed of your OS drive and the amount / speed of RAM. If you want to feel the difference in windows go buy 2* Gigabyte iRAM and raid them!!

 

[Tombo]

dual cores certainly do ave their benifits but if you buy them for gaming then thats your mistake.

This thread gave me lots of laughs.

 

[Dureth]

Your all going to notice a serious difference from single to dual core this year. Games like Supreme Commander and Alan Wake drag on single core.