Ok, before I start, I am NOT wanting this to be an XP v VISTA thread.
So, I will just put what I have noticed fairly recently and I have verified this with 3 of my Quad core setups...
It started off with my Vista64 Pc not runnign very well at all, and generally being sluggish.
After some time, and a post on here, I went and saw that my CPU usage was all over the place...
Now, what I mean ( Bear with me, Im trying to be as simple as I can ), is that, I was doing some FOLDING AT HOME junk. I try to do one client for each core right.
But, I cut this down to only one client running, however, on looking at the task manager, I see that all 4 cores are gettign chewed up.
Now, if this one client was using up most of all 4 cores, and therefore getting my folding tasks done 4 times quicker than only using one core, then that is fine, I would be happy, but the annoying fact was that it was still only using up a total of 25% of the CPU time, sort of randomly talking a very small % from each core.
Now imagine this, but if I run all 4 clients, then each of the 4 all get a small chunk of all 4 cores??? - WTF?
Sure enough, I can use the Affinity switch and set each client to run on one core and this makes things much, much quicker.
I also found that Vista was really unstable with 4 clients and since dropping to one, I have found that I am loving Vista at long last.
Now, it seems to me, that Vista seems to be tryign to force single core apps to use all 4 cores, and yet, it does not allow them to use up any more than 25% of the total CPU power, which, correct me if I am wrong is utterly retarded... No, I know that each core is 25% of the total CPU time, Im not on about that at all.
Can anyone else have a look at the Task Managers CPU useage boxes, and run a job that should only use one core and let me know if it kind of gets thrown about like it does on all 3 of mine, or whether one one core gets to run it right....
Try it with a banchmark too...
Run it, when Windows lets it run amuck on all 4 cores, and also run it with forcing it to one core... Forcing it to one core is much much qucker for me.
For example, encoding a complete 1 hour WMV Movie file that I have taken from my DigiCam into Windows Movie Maker, takes 40 minuytes on 4 cores but only takes 25 to 30 minutes if I force it to run on only 1 core.
Kind of proving that Multicore PCs are a complete waste of time for most things.
I dont get these issues with XP64 however, only Vista.
Thoughts?
So, I will just put what I have noticed fairly recently and I have verified this with 3 of my Quad core setups...
It started off with my Vista64 Pc not runnign very well at all, and generally being sluggish.
After some time, and a post on here, I went and saw that my CPU usage was all over the place...
Now, what I mean ( Bear with me, Im trying to be as simple as I can ), is that, I was doing some FOLDING AT HOME junk. I try to do one client for each core right.
But, I cut this down to only one client running, however, on looking at the task manager, I see that all 4 cores are gettign chewed up.
Now, if this one client was using up most of all 4 cores, and therefore getting my folding tasks done 4 times quicker than only using one core, then that is fine, I would be happy, but the annoying fact was that it was still only using up a total of 25% of the CPU time, sort of randomly talking a very small % from each core.
Now imagine this, but if I run all 4 clients, then each of the 4 all get a small chunk of all 4 cores??? - WTF?
Sure enough, I can use the Affinity switch and set each client to run on one core and this makes things much, much quicker.
I also found that Vista was really unstable with 4 clients and since dropping to one, I have found that I am loving Vista at long last.
Now, it seems to me, that Vista seems to be tryign to force single core apps to use all 4 cores, and yet, it does not allow them to use up any more than 25% of the total CPU power, which, correct me if I am wrong is utterly retarded... No, I know that each core is 25% of the total CPU time, Im not on about that at all.
Can anyone else have a look at the Task Managers CPU useage boxes, and run a job that should only use one core and let me know if it kind of gets thrown about like it does on all 3 of mine, or whether one one core gets to run it right....
Try it with a banchmark too...
Run it, when Windows lets it run amuck on all 4 cores, and also run it with forcing it to one core... Forcing it to one core is much much qucker for me.
For example, encoding a complete 1 hour WMV Movie file that I have taken from my DigiCam into Windows Movie Maker, takes 40 minuytes on 4 cores but only takes 25 to 30 minutes if I force it to run on only 1 core.
Kind of proving that Multicore PCs are a complete waste of time for most things.
I dont get these issues with XP64 however, only Vista.
Thoughts?