Am I using both cores of my processor?

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

ok so i was using everest so that i could see what kind of built-in webcam i have so i can try to find a 64 bit vista driver for it, and i cam across something that cought my attention.

i do not know exactly how processors work, so this may be normal. what i noticed was that under CPU Utilization, it shows CPU#1/Core#2 fluctuating in percentage (as i would expect), but CPU#/Core#1 does not show any cpu usage whatsoever. is there something wrong with my settings or anything or is this normal? also, is there a way to directly test to see if both cores are working properly?

thanks

 

[jseber1982]

run 2 programs... right click one of the processes and change the affinity from 0 to 1.. this will put that process on the second processor so you will see some utilization

 

[turtile]

If the program isn't multi-threaded, it can't use both cores at once.

 

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

i'm sorry i'm a little confused. is there a program that will test to see if both cores are working and being utilized to their full potential?

or jseber1982, is there a specific process that would be good to use for your testing method?

 

[Meithan]

Just this afternoon a friend and I were testing our dual-core processors to see if there really was an advantage in having two cores.

What we did was watch the Task Manager's CPU utilization graph as we ran many instances of SuperPi. With one instance running, it's clear that only one core is being used. However, when you run two instances simultaneously, you can see that both cores get heavily loaded. If the result with one SuperPi was 30s (for 1M), with two instances it was 32s, ie: virtually the same, because with two instances the two cores get worked up, and there's no significant performance drop even if the workload is twice as big.

 

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

ok so is the everest program just flawed? because it's still saying 0 usage for core 1 even when task manager clearly shows them both being used

 

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

ok so i got everest ultimate and it says both cores being used. i think it was just because i was using an outdated version of everest. thanks though!

 

[CrazeD]

Just this afternoon a friend and I were testing our dual-core processors to see if there really was an advantage in having two cores.

What we did was watch the Task Manager's CPU utilization graph as we ran many instances of SuperPi. With one instance running, it's clear that only one core is being used. However, when you run two instances simultaneously, you can see that both cores get heavily loaded. If the result with one SuperPi was 30s (for 1M), with two instances it was 32s, ie: virtually the same, because with two instances the two cores get worked up, and there's no significant performance drop even if the workload is twice as big.

So, are you saying there isn't a performance drop with single core vs dual core? You're wrong.

Dual-cores will show their true beauty when given a multi-threaded program. Go run a multi-threaded program with a dual-core and then tell me it's not faster than a single core running the same program.


If I misunderstood you...then please excuse the rant.