So you have two cores....now what?

Khannie

Got my dual core last week, so I've been looking around at stuff that will actually make use of the 2 processors at once.

The most useful thing I've found is the (unofficial) smp support for Xvid which you can get here. It's the "unstable" one that you want. I got up to around 70% CPU usage using AutoGK, but VirtualDub(mod) also has threading support. A nice performance boost.

Apparantly 7-zip has multi-threaded capabilities built in, but I couldn't get processor usage over 50% (i.e. one core).

I also heard that there is a Quake 4 patch with SMP support.

Anyone else care to add stuff to that list?

(I did find a list last night and I have it bookmarked at home, but it was old. I'll post it later).

zoro

All that money to upgrade to a beast...

You're sitting on the start line, engine revving and your body aching to go tearing down the race track, but you have to wait for one thing. That ever elusive green light before you can put your foot down, burn some rubber and leave your opponents eating dust as you break the sound barrier in less than .75 of a second.

But someone's forgotten to install the bulb on the green light....
So you just sit there - with your poor engine screaming silently for something to do.

Zofo

All dual-cored up and nowhere to go.........awwwww

Khannie

OMG! Welcome to boards zofo. About time you got here!

zoro

idd - welcome zofo! glad I linked you now?

Khannie

Right, enough OT.

TheDoc

games are now releasing patches that support dual core, call of duty2 for example, have a goo round

Khannie

Nice one. Thanks.

On the goo front: I'm trying to put a list together, so I'm looking for stuff like that.

Khannie

I'm surprised people aren't biting on this one.

To summarise, (actually) useful apps for dual core systems so far:

xvid smp
quake 4 smp patch
cod 2 smp patch

Surely that's not the extent of it.

Capt'n Midnight

BOINC

Penguins

Seriously Intel have been pimping hyperthreading for YEARS and I still can't find a simple site that says if common applications like Microsoft Office can use it or processor intensive apps like AutoCAD benefit, just waffle about how good it could be if your app supports it.

Airblazer

you don't need apps written for it to take advantage of dualcore..
for instance you're converting a mpeg file to dvd vob files using nero vision..now normally you kick this off on your single core machine and leave it alone for about 90 mins as your cpu is maxed out and you're lucky if you even have the available resource to even lock your machine...with dualcore you can surf/play games/virus scan/listen to music while doing all the above..now there's no need to close down other apps etc to free up resources..
what people have to remember is that dualcore is different to hyperthreading..
with hyperthreading most apps needed to be be rewritten to take advantage of it.
with dualcore you can immediately take advantage of it like the above..

MrPinK

Khannie wrote:

Apparantly 7-zip has multi-threaded capabilities built in, but I couldn't get processor usage over 50% (i.e. one core).

I vaguely remember hearing it's only 7za, the command line version, that's multithreaded. It's installed to the 7-zip folder too.

ShiverinEskimo

I run two instances of prime by putting -A0 and -A1 as parameters in the exe link. That runs two cores flat out.

Something like the above may translate to another program where you can assign it to a specific cpu.

Khannie

MrPink: I did try the command line version, but I'll give it another bash. Maybe I'm missing something. I think it's the underlying lzma compression library that's threaded though. I'll google around a bit.

Airblazer wrote:

you don't need apps written for it to take advantage of dualcore..

Ah, I know the benefits of being able to multitask. What I'm looking for is applications that will max out the 2 processors by running their computations in parallel (and thereby halve the time it takes). For example, if I'm running an xvid conversion, and it takes up 70% of my two cores, that's a lot more processing power than it only taking one core (50%).

pontovic

you could compute logarithmic matrices to the function fn(x) = 3x + 2y -lim(7xp + 3xy). If you could get the functions three numbers, (usually 7.8, 9.2, 2.1) and apply Theograds Theorem to them, you could solve the Chinese falling dice tower problem, by substituting in 7x for x and then you could substitute that answer in Lawams Theorem to get a continuous value for y.

Khannie

Wow. That sounds really useful. Thanks for your enlightenment.

I found that list.

here it is.