Setting affinities

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by Rock0, Oct 19, 2006.

  1. Rock0

    Rock0 Member

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    Hi everyone! I just have a quick question to ask. I recently built my computer from all new parts, besides ram and psu, and wanted to know about AMD's Dual-Core.

    I recently read up on how you can set programs, apps, and games to a specific core.

    Well when i went to task manager and right-clicked on [bold]most[/bold] processes and clicked set affinity, it showed that both core-0 and core-1 were checked and being used.

    What i want to know is if i am playing a game, for example, and want it running to a certain core, would i just uncheck one of the boxes? Or am i completely missing it?

    Thanks in advanced.
     
  2. Rock0

    Rock0 Member

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    No one can help? :(
     
  3. marsey99

    marsey99 Regular member

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    that sounds about right to me,but i dont have a dual core cpu.

    i will pm someone who has and ask them to tell you about it.
     
  4. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Most games except for a select few like Quake 4, are single-threaded, so they only use one core anyway. However, some games are programmed in such a way that they can become a bit confused by there being another core present. When you run the program, use the affinity option as you said, and just tick one of the cores.
     
  5. Rock0

    Rock0 Member

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    Hey guys, thanks for the help.

    And the game was an example(i suppose a bad one at that), so i want to apply this to any program i want. Since practically every process, in task manager, i've been able to access has both cores checked, would i just, simply, uncheck one box?

    That part kind of confuses me; woulnd't that just mean that it has one less core to aquire resources? Or does it mean the process can have more control over one core without having two cores in the way?
     
  6. marsey99

    marsey99 Regular member

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    from what i understand about it, some apps cant understand whats going on when it gets split between both cores and that slows it down. so for example if your playing a game and you set that to core 0 you could have core 1 encoding a video, or running your fireway and anti-virus. i think.
    sam will be back on monday so if you bump this thread then im sure he'll explain it better. but i think what your saying is right.
     
  7. Rock0

    Rock0 Member

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    Hmmm, that sounds good. I'll take your advice for now, and i will also bump this sometime monday to get this other guys attention.

    Thanks again for your help marsey; if anyone else would like to contribute, feel free to do so.
     
  8. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    In a nutshell, most games were only programmed with one processor in mind, and that doesn't mean they will only recognise one CPU. They can become a bit confused about which processor they're supposed to be using if you like, and therefore cause strange issues. A common one is that games run too fast, or pause periodically, or both. These are usually fixed by setting the affinity to just one core which makes the other core invisible to the game so there's no confusion.
     

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