Changing Amount of Processors to two on Windows 7

TomB_88

Hey just got a acer laptop with Windows 7 heard it's a lot faster when you change the amount of processors been used does anyone know how to do this ?? cheers

Hammyman

Install a second CPU which you cannot do in a laptop. You cannot add more than there are cores or processors in the computer.

penrhyn

Buy a new laptop with a dual or quad core processor.
PS What processor does your existing laptop contain?

Try running the windows experience test see where you score and what the limiting factor may be.

You could download and run speccy which will list all your hardware.

John_Gray

TomB_88 wrote: »

...heard it's a lot faster when you change the amount of processors been used...

You shouldn't believe all you hear - apart from the two posts above mine!

busenbust

might be dependent too on version of windows -- 64bit .

RobTang

Hes talking about a debug variable that allows you to force windows to use a certain amount of cpus during startup.

It only effects startup and the default value should use all avaliable cores / cpus anyway...

However some people claim to have an improved startup time, backed up by results from a start time timer tool, but personally I think the results are dubious.

The only definative is that reducing the number of cores avaliable to startup will slow it down.

Spank

You can change how many cores an application uses (known as affinity)

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to open the task manager
Go to processes
Right click on the application
Then left click on Set Affinity
Tick/untick how many cores you want it to use

[Deleted User]

Spank wrote: »

You can change how many cores an application uses (known as affinity)..

Doing that won't give any performance increases, it just introduces complexities that potentially could lead to a decrease in performance.

Once again it's a setting that's only intended for use when debugging.

John_Gray

anewhope wrote: »

[Affinity] Once again it's a setting that's only intended for use when debugging.

Not always! For example, MS SQL Server was/is licenced by the number of CPUs which it runs on, so if you have a twin Xeon server and a SQL Server licence only for one CPU, then you have to specify that it runs on CPU1 or on CPU2.

Not something that the OP needs to be bothered about, though .

[Deleted User]

True, although as you say, it's an entirely different situation.