I just found this very interesting tutorial on how to properly optimize Windows to use dual core (and other multi-processor) CPUs. Apparently, out of the box,
very few OEMs actually properly optimize their systems (and of course, home built systems aren't either), and the performance difference can be significant. AMD provided a Dual Core Optimizer application which automates this process, but Intel has provided no such utility. Microsoft provided a hotfix that half-way fixes the issue, but it is not included in Windows Update so almost no one has it installed...
Really pretty interesting. So, if you have a dual core capable CPU, including: AMD Athlon X2 (or many of the Opteron 165 and later CPUs), Intel Pentium D, Intel Core Duo, Intel Core 2 Duo, or any of the dual core Xeon CPUs (and actually a smaller gain can exist even with Pentium 4 CPUs with Hyperthreading enabled) then this page is an important read. The operation only takes a few minutes to complete, and I've already seen a pretty significant performance speedup on my Pentium D system and my "Bootcamped" MacBook Pro. I haven't tested on my AMD Opteron machine at home yet, but I'm certain it'll be much the same.
The tutorial is here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60416Unfortunately, applying the hotfix alone doesn't completely solve the issue (you have to make the registry change and change the boot.ini file too). As I mentioned above, apparently using the
AMD Dual Core Optimizer app essentially just does what this tutorial explains, but AMD's version of the fix is incompatible with a few random motherboards so using the manual Microsoft Hotfix + Registry Hack + boot.ini change is slightly preferred. Either way, if you're interested for further reading, here are the Microsoft KB Articles discussing the issue:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909944/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256