FAQ

Should I Micromanage CPU Affinities?

In some cases, yes, but it depends on your goal, and you need to be smart about it. If your goal is increased performance, remember that the Windows CPU Scheduler tries to manage which threads are on what cores itself, and it’s not entirely dumb. So, when you micro-manage CPU affinities, you are second guessing […]

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Do Not Risk Your PC with Cracks and Keygens!

Recently I have seen a new round of malware-laden cracks and keygens for Process Lasso Pro. You MUST understand that your security software is not absolute protection. It’s not even close. I believe the real-world, 0-day malware detection rate lingers somewhere around 40%. If security software protected you 100%, we’d not have a malware problem in the […]

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Intel Hyper-Threading

Spreading the Load – CPU Affinities and Hyper-Threading

Many users disable Hyper-Threading in an effort to achieve performance consistency. When the technology first emerged, this was good advice for users with real-time application. However, now that CPU architectures have matured, as have operating system CPU schedulers, the question of whether to disable Hyper-Threading is a little more complicated. Modern desktop and laptop CPUs […]

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About Task Scheduler 2.0, and Why You Should Never Disable It

In NT6 (Vista), a major kernel and subsystems redesign occurred. The refactored subsystems are still used in Windows 10 for desktop applications, thus are still important, especially after the arguable ‘failure’ of Windows 8 Store Apps. The subsystem in question here is the Task Scheduler. In Windows XP and before, when an application wanted to start itself at […]

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The Curious Demonization of the Windows Registry

The Windows Registry is meant to serve as a shared storage location for system and application settings. It is essentially a database, has per-user hives, multiple data types, and is generally well-suited for it’s purpose. Lookups (retrieval) of registry values are extremely rapid since the keys are traversed using an optimal data tree (an algorithm […]

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AMD 3D V-Cache CPU Core Selection by CCD

When CPU Affinity Matters

  Case 1: Overcome Scheduler Inefficiency It is sometimes necessary to assign an application or game to a specific set of CPU cores to maximize performance. For instance, on AMD X3D platforms, not all CPU cores have the same amount of cache available. One set of CPU cores (CCD) has more cache, and the other […]

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