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Windows Vista, Dual Core?

J

JLGatsby

Banned
Does anyone have any information or predictions as to how Windows Vista will handle dual core processors?

My question would be, do you think Microsoft designed Windows Vista to work best on dual core? Do you think dual core chips will run their best on Windows Vista or atleast better than on XP?
 
It should definately work better with dual cores, but AFAIK, Windows NT has always been SMP aware so the benefits may not be very pronounced. If anything they'll multi-thread more system processes to use both cores more evenly but I'm not sure how much that would really help.
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Wrong forum.

It'll work just fine, just like XP does, just like 2k does.
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I'm not concerned with it working incorrectly. I'm wondering if the performance will improve. If it will take complete advantage of dual core, like Windows 64 does.
 
No, XP runs dual-core fine just like it runs dual-processor and P4 HT.

Vista is the same, it will use multiple processors (chips, cores, or HT) but won't work better than XP does with them.

Special effort for dual support is really only needed at the application level. Right now games don't benefit from dual-core because of how they are coded, the OS is not holding them back.
 
Originally posted by: Unkno
they said something about loading processes while your computer boots up with dual core...
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???

MS has been pre-loading parts of Office during boot to make it seem to start faster, but that doesn't require dual-core. If they're expanding this trick it would also have to be some kind of guessing scheme like pre-loading parts of the last 5 apps you've run.

This also only affects the startup time of an app, it does nothing to make it run faster.


 
Originally posted by: JLGatsby
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Wrong forum.

It'll work just fine, just like XP does, just like 2k does.
Click to expand...

I'm not concerned with it working incorrectly. I'm wondering if the performance will improve. If it will take complete advantage of dual core, like Windows 64 does.
Click to expand...

AFAIK Windows for AMD64 handles SMP situations in the same exact was as Windows for x86.
 
Windows can stay the hell outta my other core! The whole point is to let it do it's own thing in one so I can game in the other. gtfo microsoft 🙁
 
Originally posted by: Mesix
Windows can stay the hell outta my other core! The whole point is to let it do it's own thing in one so I can game in the other. gtfo microsoft 🙁
Click to expand...


....you really don't know anything about dual core do you? the only way your other core CAN do something else while your first core is gaming is because of the OS! Your current OS is assigning work to the second core instead of your first core which is gaming. Your second core wouldn't do sh*t if microsoft didn't support it. We are talking about if there would be any ADVANCEMENTS in assigning the cores in the new windows vista.
 
The same number of processes will be running to support windows and whatever you are doing whether you have 1 core or more. What XP does well is distribute the threads from those processes among the cores. Two cores chewing through the workload > 1, enough said.

And the above applies whether any individual program is written to take advantage of multiple threads or not. Again, x number of threads will be running. Multiple cores == more work per cycle. Bottom line: the single thread in your game gets more cpu cycles than it would in a single core system.

 
Originally posted by: Markbnj
And the above applies whether any individual program is written to take advantage of multiple threads or not. Again, x number of threads will be running. Multiple cores == more work per cycle. Bottom line: the single thread in your game gets more cpu cycles than it would in a single core system.
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Yes, but current games only run slightly faster on dual core.

Current game use single threads for most of their tasks, so if any one task saturates a core, Windows can assign other threads to the second core but it can't split up the one task that most needs extra CPU cycles. Only the game (or other app) programmers can do that, by finding their own bottleneck tasks and re-writing them to divide the work into 2+ threads.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Yes, but current games only run slightly faster on dual core.

Current game use single threads for most of their tasks, so if any one task saturates a core, Windows can assign other threads to the second core but it can't split up the one task that most needs extra CPU cycles. Only the game (or other app) programmers can do that, by finding their own bottleneck tasks and re-writing them to divide the work into 2+ threads.
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Absolutely true. If all the work is crammed into that one thread, and the others are not using many cycles, the advantage would be a lot less. I looked at BF2 this afternoon, and it has 11 threads running after joining a multiplayer server. I will look again later tonight using a different tool and see how much cpu time those threads are using relative to each other.
 
Most games actually are multithreaded now, it's just that it's usually 1 thread per task (for example sound), and a lot of those tasks use very little CPU. This lets a dual-core system do some work in parallel, as well as placing the OS's own threads on the other core.

Spawning 1 thread per task is fairly easy, what is much harder (so not done much yet) is splitting a single task like rendering or AI into multiple threads sharing the work. Sharing requires figuring out how to divide the work evenly and to do so without causing problems from 2 threads trying to change the same set of data.

For example in a RTS deciding to move a set of units, the AI would look at the map and plan out each unit based on what it decided for all of the other units. Having 2 threads each making the decisions for one half of the units gets tricky to coordinate with the decisions made for the other half.

You need that kind of splitting up of the hard tasks before you'll see much gain from dual-core
 
Originally posted by: JLGatsby
You guys sure are obsessed with games.
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The OS doesn't really matter, the applications do. Games are just an application. Draw your own parrallels to other applications. 😉
 
Originally posted by: JLGatsby
You guys sure are obsessed with games.
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Office runs fine on a 1 GHz PC, so who cares about its dual-core 3 GHz x 2 speed?

I used games as an example that's familiar to most people, and as a class of application that actually needs a fast CPU.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Originally posted by: JLGatsby
You guys sure are obsessed with games.
Click to expand...
Office runs fine on a 1 GHz PC, so who cares about its dual-core 3 GHz x 2 speed?
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It's more than MSFT Office, it's web editing, imaging, programming tools, being able to run 10 IE windows at once, etc etc. I also love background programs to be running. I have perhaps 4 different text messaging programs, gmail notifier, Konfabulator tools on desktop, and many other tools I'd love to run simultaneously without any lag at all. I am the king of background programs.

Oh goodness, that sort gets my blood flowing.
 
oh nooobs, please understand that a dual core is just 2 cpus in one package(basically) and dual, quads and more cpu machines have been around for years. nt4 was smp, i don't know if nt 3.51 was bu would assume it was. and also don't forget about the other oss out there, the world is not limited by windows and dual processor computing is nothing new.

i guess i can agree that the marketing has worked as people with absolutely know idea of that a dc basically = a dual processor, or a dual dc basically = a quad keep asking these stoopid questions.
 
This is OT, just fair warning.

But I fondly remember using my Dual Xeon pc w/ only 512mb of ram (Rambus!) to write my HS research paper, and I believe I counted 34 open windows or so, and the PC was still lightning fast response wise, and most of those windows were IE and office. I loved it. Can't wait to get a dual core cpu down the road.🙂
 
Originally posted by: Unkno
Originally posted by: Mesix
Windows can stay the hell outta my other core! The whole point is to let it do it's own thing in one so I can game in the other. gtfo microsoft 🙁
Click to expand...


....you really don't know anything about dual core do you? the only way your other core CAN do something else while your first core is gaming is because of the OS! Your current OS is assigning work to the second core instead of your first core which is gaming. Your second core wouldn't do sh*t if microsoft didn't support it. We are talking about if there would be any ADVANCEMENTS in assigning the cores in the new windows vista.
Click to expand...

I'm never joking around with anyone here ever again.
 
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