so, i'm back with a dual core CPU now.........the AMD athlon 64 X2 3800 to be exact...\/\/007/\/355 X like 30...i hear that people experience bad lag with dual core CPU's and would like to know if it's possible to disable the second core, and how to do so.


Any ideas?

I got curious and Googled around for a while to see if there is actually an answer to this and found this thread interestingHERE , I refer to post date Feb. 07,'06, by BFG10K, where he mentions setting the core's affinity to 'zero'. The post is about halfway down the page, maybe you can make more sense out of it than I did as it is out of my realm at this time. At the very least it should give you some ideas how to optimise what you have, there do seem to be some issues with dual-cores when it comes to gaming. Good luck mon, am curious to see what you come up with, maybe let us know when you reach a solution.

Sorry for the late edit here but I found this as well on nvidia forums, where there has been much discussion about dual core issues.
QUOTE-
HawkleyFoxJan 6 2006, 03:27 AM
Finally, found a place that had to do with the weird problems I was experiencing... All this time I was blaming the nForce chipset.

Okay, so heres something interesting I figured out with a quick Google. You can disable the Dual-Core 'optimizations' for Direct3D (which seems to be the only apps that are affected by this bug) using a registry change. I'll include the full sequence which allows you to disable the OpenGL optimizations as well.

QUOTE
1. Go into Regedit and determine the current primary display card by looking in HKey_Local_Machine\Hardware/DeviceMap\Video and note the GUID (global unique indentifier assigned by Windows) for the entry "\device\video0" which is the long string at the end of the entry in brackets { }.

2. Edit HKey_Local_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{guid}\0000, where {guid} is the number derived from the above step.

3. Open the "0000" directory and enter a new key called OGL_ThreadControl and give it a value of 2. This will disable multithreading in the driver for all OGL apps.

4. In the same "0000" directory, to disable driver multithreading for all D3D apps, you can enter WTD_EXECMODEL and give a value of 0.

Source: AMDZone.com

Disabling the dual-core 'optimizations' will also give you a noticable boost in Quake 4 if you're using the version 1.05b patch (which has multiple thread optimizations of it's own).

I haven't tried this yet since I don't have the 80 series drivers installed (I will shortly though). If someone gets to try it before me, tell us if it helps any.

Edit: It actually does seem to work. I played Battlefront 2 with only one crash, which wasn't related to the dual-core bug apparently. Another application tried to steal window focus and caused the game to lock (but not the computer). I could play the XL mode which used to cause a crash within 15 seconds. I did learn that Battlefront 2 really dislikes transparent antialiasing, though... xD

I hope this is what we've been looking for. Somebody else needs to have a go at it to see if it fixes the crashing, and maybe many other problems dual-core users have been facing.
END QUOTE

I also see that there have been issues with the 81.xx drivers and that many people have resolved this by going back to the 78.01 ones.

The 81.xx drivers for Nvidia are actually suspossed to use dual core CPU's more especially in their rendering process. I don't know why that would cause a slow down as it is susposed to help speed the system.

yeah, i figured it out just a little bit ago. did a quick little google myself. Just gotta go into the task manager and right click on the process i wanna disable to second core in, hit set affinity, and unckeck the second CPU, (CPU 1, CPU 0 is the first i guess) and it works fine. I find it interesting that in that menu, it shows the possibility of havine a total of 32 CPU's, and would like to know if anyone has a way to rig that up?....LOL......the most CPU cores i've ever seen a motherboard support was 8, a server mobo supporting up to 4 dual core CPU's. heh heh

AMD has a 16 processor motherborad coming out soon, with support for Dual Core you could have 32 cores. Of course this is going to cost a lot of money.

How would adding another core the processor "cause lag"?

I don't know, thats whats confusing about the whole driver issue.

Yeah, it's still decently new technology. With AMD's FX-60 out and the FX-62 soon-to-be, I'm sure they'll be working on better drivers as well to help with the compatability issues.

Yep.
Anyone heard anything on Intel's Pentium D?

Yeah compared to AMD's Dual Core Solution the Pentium D Sucks

Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't see that post, because I know you would shoot down any hopes and dreams I had about buying a dual-core Intel.

I read, and it seemed to make perfect sence, that another core will cause lag. Because running a "single string" program, everything that has to run through the CPU, starts in one core. I guess the CPU or some drivers or something, will see that the first core has a bigger load on it than the second, so it moves it all over the the second core, ( i'm assuming it moves the whole program over, because being a single string program, it cannot function when split through 2 cores ) it then see's that the second core has a bigger load, so it moves it back to the first, and just goes back and forth.

That's what I read after googleing

it moves the thread from one core to another. programs can have multiple threads. It shouldn't cause lag during switching

I just bought a couple of Athlon 64 based PC's (no not dual core but they are X2 compatible so when the prices drop you know I will !) anyway on the topic ive never heard of anyone experiencing lag with dual cores. If anything I have heard dual cores reduce lag (if you mean lag as in running multiple programs and the machine switching tasks?) anyway I envy you ! my Athlons are 3500+ Venice cores ! im out dated already lol

it's not a multi-task lag. No problem switching, it's lag, as if my hardware is badly outdated. I can't wait untill everything performs better on a dual core. That'll be the life. Because right now, restricting most of my processes to a single core, increases that processes performance.

That would defiently be a problem. Outdated hardware makes the processor wait for things to happen.