readyboost and dual core

[Vista Gangsta]

i just added a 2 GB flash drive to my laptop with vista home premium
and the readyboost is just fabulous. both core performance meters were
always pinned at 100% in the red and after adding the 2GB flash they
hardly ever go above 75%. and the system is obviously much quicker.

question: why does core 1 always run at about 75% and core 2 never
goes above 40%?? i thought the dual core shared workloads evenly

mikey

 

[Guest]

Threads are shared as evenly as possible, but threads don't split. One core
may simply get the heavier working thread.

Example: (Using programs as the example, not threads.)
Two windows open.
Window A is defrag and running continuously on core 1.
Window B is Word and is sitting there idle on core 2.
(It's not quite this simple, but the idea is there.)

This is most obvious when running games not optimized for multi-core units
where one core may be doing all the work. Windows will assign background
functions to the other core, but they don't compare to the game that's eating
one core's resources and because it is not optimize for multi-core, it will
refuse to even look at the second core. This can actually result in a drop in
game performance if you went from a high-end single processor to a slower
multi-processor chip.

As future programs are optimized, this will improve. Multi-cores have become
popular, but optimization is not very easy when timing critical calculations
are required. (I work on simulation computers that run with 12 processors.
Timing of calculation completion is far more critical than equally sharing
the load.)

Until then, with exception to a very few applications or highly
multi-tasking individuals, multi-core PCs do not provide much benefit to the
end user.

 

[Otto Normalverbraucher]

i just added a 2 GB flash drive to my laptop with vista home premium
and the readyboost is just fabulous. both core performance meters were
always pinned at 100% in the red and after adding the 2GB flash they
hardly ever go above 75%. and the system is obviously much quicker.

question: why does core 1 always run at about 75% and core 2 never
goes above 40%?? i thought the dual core shared workloads evenly

mikey

I don't know why the 2nd seems to work less.
In NT4 & Win2000 I used to run systems with dual processors, in the PII
days & CPU 2 always did less work.
But you still noticed the difference between 1 & 2 CPU's in those OS's
if you needed them.