I'm not very savvy about the specifics of computer hardware, but I just want to have a layman's explanation about a processor's affinity. I'm currently playing a game that crashes a lot when I don't set my processor's affinity to 1 CPU only (I have an AMD athlon tricore processor). Now, whenever I set it to one affinity, the game runs very smoothly - no hangs, no crashes, no sweat! I do this after lurking game forums on how to fix my game crashes. But what I don't understand is why set it to 1 affinity only. I tried doing research but the explanation that I read was very technical. My questions are, if I set it to 1 affinity only, wouldn't my processor be having a hard time? Does setting the affinity to 1 CPU only blocks the the other two CPUs from helping it process the game? Also, will doing this damage my processor? Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance to the experts out there.
Start here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor_affinity If you need to, you may need to backthread to understand some of the concepts in that Wiki. Processor affinity is a somewhat complex topic, and there really isn't a layman's explanation.