Hello!
- Bobb - said:
And then later this year , if you do decide to go quad-core, just
pop-out the dual core and pop-in the quadcore and reboot.
Very smooth
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2748
[quote - concluding thoughts]
At AnandTech, we were pretty skeptical about the "threading is our
only savior" future, as Tim Sweeney, the leading developer behind the
Unreal 3 engine, explained the challenges of multi-threaded
development of the next generation of games. The fat, wide OoO core
running at high clockspeeds was buried a little too soon. Yes, Intel's
Core does not use the aggressive domino and LVS circuit-design
strategy that NetBurst designs used to achieve stunning clockspeeds.
At the same time, it is a fat, massive reordering CPU which gives free
lunch to developers who don't want to spend too much time on debugging
heavily threaded applications. Multi-core is here to stay, but getting
better performance is once again the shared responsibility of both the
developer and the CPU designer. Yes, dual-core is nice, but single
threaded performance is still important!
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2377
Writing multithreaded code means much higher software development
costs while CPU development gets easier and thus cheaper (compared to
even more complex superscalar CPUs). No wonder that the CPU developers
are very motivated to hype the multi-core route, but the software
development community is probably less enthusiastic.
Intel and other manufacturers should not simply push the costs of
getting higher performance onto the software developers. Because, in
the end, it will be the consumer who will pay the final price: either
more money or buggier software with more crashes and hangs. One way
that Intel and others can help to keep multithreaded development costs
under control while offering increasing CPU performance is to keep
investing in ILP and thus higher IPC cores; another option is to
improve the interCPU communications.
The easiest part of multithreading is using threads that are running
completely independent, that don't share any data. But this source of
threading is probably already being used almost to the fullest. In
order to tap into a new source of multithreading, such as the largely
unused potential of multithreaded AI, Phyics and animation, it is
important that developers don't have to worry about interthread
messaging and synchronization lowering performance.
Very fast interprocessor communications to make sure that thread
synchronization comes with little overhead will give a bigger
incentive to developers to invest the extra time in multithreading.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=983781
Since I purchased my X2 and then my dual core Opteron, I noticed that
gaming performance suffers while running certain games. [H]ardOCP
noted this in one of their reviews as the "Benny Hill Effect." There
is a certain amount of stuttering or random speedup/slowdowns while
running dual core CPU's in single threaded games. The reason for these
problems has to do with power state management in some form or
another, as these fixes are designed to address specific power state
management issues. This thread is intended to consolidate a number of
fixes I've come across in this forum and elsewhere.
3. Use an affinity masking tool such as
ImageCFG (
http://www.robpol86.com/Pages/imagecfg.php for instructions
on how to use). Backup your .exe before using this program. Imagecfg
has a problem with some directories with spaces in them, so its
easiest to stick it in the folder with the *.exe file you want to
change. Then use the command you need (knowledge of the DOS prompt is
a must ):
imagecfg -a 0x1 game.exe for core 1
imagecfg -a 0x2 game.exe for core 2
This will alter your .exe file, so make a backup of it. Especially
since future game patches might not work with a patched .exe
