How to get the most out of Multi-Core Processors

[Haku Mioje]

I have a 3.0 GHz Quad Core processor and just want to know how to get the most out of it with multitasking and speed, im the type of person that loves to listen to music while i surf the net, use photoshop and web chat...

 

[sniperviper21]

you dont have to worry about anything.
the CPU will multitask by itself.

you dont have to do anything.

 

[Remeniz]

Yep. As above really. You can't force applications to utilise more than one core the program has to be coded to do this.

 

[sniperviper21]

ALTHOUGH u can manually set a core affinity in the Ctrl Alt Del menu for each program running. though this is pretty unnecessary

EX:
Core 1 : Media player, fire fox, Virus Scan, uTorrent
Core 2 : Crysis, Virus Scan
Core 3 : Crysis
Core 4 : Crysis

so you can manually divy up what core is handling what program. to try to manually spread out the CPU work load.

iv only done this once an noticed a loss in efficiency, actually.

 

[Indigo]

Unless you're encoding video, rendering 3D or running distributed computing like Folding@Home, you'll never touch the true capabilities of a multicore processor, no matter how much you try to do at once. The best thing you can do is to be sure to do lots of heavy lifting stuff at once if you feel as though you need to get more out of the system. Run a virus scan while you play a game, or encode video while listening to music, etc.