Given the propensity of Win10 to chew up arbitrary CPU cores...?

[VirtualLarry]

Should Windows (sevices, etc.) be segregated from user-started applications, in terms of CPU cores utilized, and should they be limited?

For example, starting with 4-core or higher systems, should one core be reserved for the OS and background maintenance tasks? And increased to two (virtual) OS cores, for systems with 8 threads (4C/8T) or more?

This might eliminate "stuttering" in games, and prevent massive slowdowns, when Windows Update processes.

Any thoughts? This would be an optional setting. Maybe a slider, where the length is the number of total virtual cores in the system, and the partitioning would start at zero, on the left-hand side, and you could choose to have so many "OS-reserved cores", up to, say, 50% of total virtual cores.

 

[Ketchup]

Hmm. Well it's not a bad idea, it's just that I have never had the CPU be the part of the system that was slowing things down on a fully-updated Windows install. For example, I have an older laptop with a slow hard drive that I don't use very much. When I do turn it on, the hard drive is the main part that is being hammered with updates. So sometimes I just let Windows 10 finish its updates before doing anything else.

On my oth systems, I can barely tell when it's running.

 

[Elixer]

For example, starting with 4-core or higher systems, should one core be reserved for the OS and background maintenance tasks? And increased to two (virtual) OS cores, for systems with 8 threads (4C/8T) or more?

This might eliminate "stuttering" in games, and prevent massive slowdowns, when Windows Update processes.

Most things are I/O bound, not CPU, so pinning a CPU wouldn't do that much except on major windows updates, like the Fall update.
As for Windows update itself, just delay that to some off hour, I have mine set to 3AM, never had an issue with it making games lag.

 

[VirtualLarry]

As for Windows update itself, just delay that to some off hour, I have mine set to 3AM, never had an issue with it making games lag.

I knew that you could defer reboots for updates until non-working hours, but can you delay Windows Update checking too?

 

[Elixer]

Well, you could do...

In case it isn't clear, it is under Administrative Templates->Windows Components ->Windows Update