Dual Core processing distribution

[usefulidiot127]

I was a bit curious as to how this worked so I opened up a few utilities as well as a cpu burn in tester. With the CPU burn in running full blast, my AMD Power Monitor showed activity in both of the cores spiking up and down, both spiking up to about 60 at times. However, in Everest, it showed only one core getting all of the activity and the other one remained completely idle. Which one has an accurate representation of what the cores are actually doing? I added a picture with a screenshot of both utilities.

Also, on my amd athlon 4200+ X2 AM2, what should my Vcore be, and how much if any is it ok for it to fluctuate. I think most of these software based temperature and voltage monitors are crap since their readings seem idiotic at times. I have been using Asus Probe and sometimes it seems really handy then other times it gives me really funky numbers, like my CPU is running at 8 degrees celsius. Ha.

Last question is what is the threshold temperature on my processor? I know it was like 85 degrees on my old athlon xp, not that you would ever want it to get close to that high.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/leon3/shared/cpu%20usage.JPG

 

[cmdrdredd]

ok first off each application must be aware you have 2 CPUs (dual core). If not it will only use the first core and ignore the other.

secondlyI wouldn't venture beyond 1.55 vcore as the temps may be a bit too high for most cooling solutions to keep stable. Idealy I'd stay under 1.5, but that's me. For temps I think at full load on both cores try to stay under 60c and idealy under 55c.

 

[usefulidiot127]

ok but I"m only running the one program, cpu burn in. How can I tell if its using one core or two? Amds power thing shows that it is using two, and everest says its using one. Who's right?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Well, I'll have to try everest myself, but if you open task manager you can set the affinity to use both or only one core if you want.

If everest doesn't recognise both cores it could just use them both together as one cpu and start splitting the work between them. Maybe this is what is happening? I'll download everest and check it out

a good way to tell CPU usage is through task manager. if it hovers around 50% it's using one core only. if It hops around between 50% and a bit more then it's splitting work when it needs to. If you get 100% then it's using both cores in full.

Speedfan can also show you this.

 

[usefulidiot127]

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/leon3/shared/cpu%20usage.JPG

check that pic out, it seems to show both cores fine in everest but only says that one core is active, in that same screenshot you can see the amd probe. Thanks for the affinity tip, thats pretty handy. And thanks for your help at this odd hour as well

 

[usefulidiot127]

i'm leaning towards everest being right because the task manager is at a steady 50-52% utilization. That doesn't explain the odd behavior of the AMD tool though, hmm

 

[cmdrdredd]

it's possible that AMD tool is just 100% wrong...I trust the OS before any 3rd party app.

If you want to do a burn in run SP2004 from http://sp2004.fre3.com

Open the app 2 times and you get 2 windows. Set one to cpu 0 and the other to cpu 1 and run both. You'll see 100% CPU usage because one app uses one core and the other uses another.

I believe the application must be coded to use both at once. Otherwise it just uses one or the other and you get that 50% usage.

 

[usefulidiot127]

so look at this everest reading, why is there no CPU temperature and why does the vcore say its at like 2.3. Some sensors are seriously jacked up I think.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/leon3/shared/everest.JPG

 

[cmdrdredd]

Again this goes back to what I said. I don't trust 3rd party apps to tell me readings.