"dual" cpu - having two processors in your pc, but atm i dont think Windows can support process over more than one cpus and only XP Pro supports dual cpus
As far as I remember home support dual core might support quad core as well.XP PRO support more then 1 physic socket thus more cores.
These are 2 different things.
The OS thread scheduler will toss threads out to both "CPUs" during execution, you will see an increase in performance over a single core or HyperThreaded machine.
If the application was optimized for SMP you'd see even more of a perf increase as the app could / would target threads to processors rather than letting Windows just pick a free proc to shove a thread on to.
This might work if you were running in background aplication which takes a a lot of CPU time and it will work also with running virus scanning in background.
LFS cant utilize 2 cores because it isnt programmed for that.Simple as that.Give me a proof.
I am not running any *shit* in background so I have more then high doubts that dual core would give me more FPS.
So I tell you what, prove to me that 100% of LFS threads are only running on ONE processor / core.
REread the post. I never said LFS was the one utilizing both thread executors did I?
LFS is no doubt a multi-threaded application, the OS schedules those threads out to processors as they become available. Sometimes they go to CPU1 sometimes they go to CPU0, sometimes...*shudder* two threads can go out at the same time to CPU1 and CPU0!
If you want to deny the usage of an executor to an application, establish processor affinity for that application. Or go ahead deny that processor to pretty much everybody and create an app that runs an infinite thread at DISPATCH_LEVEL on one processor thus locking out any thing running at < DISPATCH_LEVEL from being executed on that processor.
The Windows kernel (NT, 2k, XP and beyond) schedules thread objects based on a multi-level feedback queue algorithm using the thread states 0-31 (31 being the highest priority).
The dispatcher traverses the priority queues searching for any thread that is in its standby state. When one is found, the dispatcher must determine whether there is a CPU available that the thread has an affinity for. If there is, then the thread is allocated that processor. If no CPU is currently available, but the thread has a higher priority than any of the currently running threads, it will preempt the lowest priority thread and begin execution on that CPU. If it is unable to preempt a thread it will be skipped, and the dispatcher will continue its traversal. If no thread can be found to execute, the dispatcher will execute a special thread called the idle thread.
It's been this way since NT.
Whether you want to believe it or not, Windows uses all available cores for you. Unless you have an AV monitor that runs all its threads at > DISPATCH_LEVEL (btw, that's only level 2 on the aforementioned scale), other threads which are running will get executed on that processor. And btw, you always have *shit* running in the background; networking, system services, etc.
Some of this may actually increase CPU intensive game performance because all those other threads aren't as readily stuck waiting on queue! *gasp*
I suppose it may be possible that LFS could switch between the cores, but it won't run on both at the same time. Like most games, it's a single-threaded app.
Although a performance gain is noticeable using a dual core processor, games must be written to support multithreading if the full potential is to be seen. Not all games support multithreading. The speed increase noticed by dual core users in non-supported games is purely from the OS seperating apps to use the dual core. So there is a performance increase with non-supported games, but not as big as it would be if the game actually has been written to support multithreading (not the same as hyperthreading btw).