Dual and Quad Core CPU Monitoring in different Windows Versions

[kanter]

I am about to be starting a project which will be determining the most efficient windows version for multicore processing. The project will be testing windows xp, vista, 7 and 8 consumer preview using both an Intel Core2 E6600 and Q6600 CPU in the same hardware setup.

The project I will be working on I am hoping to be very much like the one in this like here:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/generation-gap-windows-multicore-273

My question is for advice and help on how I can go about actually monitoring a CPU in the way that is described in the link, what tools I would need to get me going on my project.

I would really love to be able to get results for database transaction times, or get the cycles for encoding a file, but haven't done this type of work before.

If anyone has any knowledge of what I mean here and could help get me started off I would greatly appreciate the advice.

Thanks in advance
Dom

 

[TheRyuu]

We normally see scheduler improvements with each iteration of Windows so it really wouldn't surprise me if your results looked something like:

Windows 8 > Windows 7 > Vista > XP

Doesn't really answer your question but then again I'm not exactly sure what you're hoping to prove by doing it.

 

[BrightCandle]

At the most basic level you could run some programs in parallel and measure their execution times. Running many benchmarks in parallel should get you some data and it should be moderately repeatable and measurable. Just don't expect miracles in differences, you may find it hard to spot any.

 

[Denithor]

Make sure you run your test software on an SSD to prevent IO from being the bottleneck.