XP Dual Core?

[kr236rk]

hi,

what happens if you run xp / xp pro on a dual core processor - can you end up with the pc running slower than Pentium 4, or is there a way to get xp to work both halves of a duo core?

thanks

Ric

Dell D-3000 XP Home P4
Dell Inspiron 531 Vista Athlon64

 

[Frositay]

SP3 mate . Fixes all the dual core problems .

 

[Klo]

XP will work perfectly on a dualcore system, it should automatically balance the load over the two cores.

I have a quadcore, and it works perfectly!

 

[kr236rk]

oo! that's good news!!

thanks guys

R

 

[cpatain-chaos]

I ran DC prior to SP3 and never noticed any issues with load balancing or affinity

 

[Corasik]

hi,

what happens if you run xp / xp pro on a dual core processor - can you end up with the pc running slower than Pentium 4, or is there a way to get xp to work both halves of a duo core?

thanks

Ric

Dell D-3000 XP Home P4
Dell Inspiron 531 Vista Athlon64

Core duo is rarely if ever slower than a P4. Each core of a 1.6Ghz Core duo(for example) can keep up with a 3.2Ghz P4 in 99% of real world applications and games. XP even XP HOME without SP1 fully supports dual cores without any problems.

Many applications still dont support the use of multi cores, but you shouldnt ever find the computer slower than a P4 in normal use.

Even with running old single core applications, windows still has background chores to perform, so the dual core will always help, in addition multi tasking is smoother with a dual core.

Core duo (or to be more accurate core 2 duo) is so much more efficient than a P4 it doesnt need high clock speeds to be fast. On average each core of a Core 2 Duo can execute 4 instructions on every clock tick, a P4 can only manage an average of 2 instructions per clock. So even when an application is only making use of a single core, its still a lot faster than you would expect from the Mhz numbers.

 

[fross]

One thing I noticed when upgrading my CPU from a single core to a quad, is that the current installation of XP didn't recognise the extra core automatically. It uses a different driver for single core and multiple core, which it didn't detect automatically for me. You may need to force the correct HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), this link should get you started: http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/32681434/dual-core--one-core-lost.aspx

The versions of XP that support different numbers of processors don't apply to cores, just physical processors, so you will be fine.

 

[kr236rk]

thanks guys this is good news - my xp dv edit software needs a tiny bit more speed than P4 can deliver, so running dual core should do the trick

Ric