Can anyone validate this Win7 tweak?

[Gnasher]

I've just gone and done the below tweak to stop core parking but have no idea if it makes any dif or not and just did it so haven't done any testing of any kind. What do you think?

http://ultimatecomputers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3644

 

[Joe Average]

Never heard of such a thing before (although it's obvious it exists - if I hadn't seen the TechNet reference I would have dismissed it). While it seems a bit interesting, I've got a dual core machine here and the Wife's machine is a quad (that I RD into most of the time for serious work) and I just sat here for a while with both machines being relatively idle aside from me doing some research online and her not even using her machine at all, and with Resource Monitor up and running on each, not one core ever seems to "park" on either machine so...

I wonder if this is just a random sorta thing that will happen on occasion given a specific hardware configuration more than anything else. Both our boxes are Intel through and through (CPU and chipset), so I don't know how one could "test" such a setting once it's made. I haven't done it on either of these machines, and since I'm not seeing any parking going on I doubt I'll bother.

It may have some effect on newer hardware like the new Sandy Bridge Core hardware, or even the 1st gen Core technology stuff, but I have to wonder about potential effectiveness or usefulness on the older stuff like this Core 2 Duo/Quad I've got working.

Interesting topic, however, and at least now I'm aware of it...

 

[Void]

I did notice parking on mine after seeing this thread. So I applied that tweak also. Not sure if it will make a difference or not but I do notice that the CPU usage is smoother now than before so we will see.

 

[cyclone3d]

It does make a difference in certain programs.

 

[DeathPrincess]

Never heard of such a thing before (although it's obvious it exists - if I hadn't seen the TechNet reference I would have dismissed it). While it seems a bit interesting, I've got a dual core machine here and the Wife's machine is a quad (that I RD into most of the time for serious work) and I just sat here for a while with both machines being relatively idle aside from me doing some research online and her not even using her machine at all, and with Resource Monitor up and running on each, not one core ever seems to "park" on either machine so...

I wonder if this is just a random sorta thing that will happen on occasion given a specific hardware configuration more than anything else. Both our boxes are Intel through and through (CPU and chipset), so I don't know how one could "test" such a setting once it's made. I haven't done it on either of these machines, and since I'm not seeing any parking going on I doubt I'll bother.

It may have some effect on newer hardware like the new Sandy Bridge Core hardware, or even the 1st gen Core technology stuff, but I have to wonder about potential effectiveness or usefulness on the older stuff like this Core 2 Duo/Quad I've got working.

Interesting topic, however, and at least now I'm aware of it...

According to that thread it only happens to logical cores (ie hyperthreading CPUs, mainly the i3s and i7s and similar xeons). I've pretty much found that the logical cores are parked the vast majority of the time as games and programs don't use them. I can't say weather it affects power consumption, but it doesn't make the CPU significantly any cooler.

So unless you have an i3, i7 or xeon you wont see any effect according to the article, so don't worry. I've been meaning to redo this for a while, ill try it and see how it effects things.

 

[OldMX]

That tweak was published here originally, they seem to notice best performance while using the sonar producer and studio.

 

[Gnasher]

Oops, I have i5 so no hyper threading anyway. I missed that part and thought he said it applies to CPUs with more than 2 cores. I can always set it back but will leave as is.

I just searched that and each core = one processor according to device manager so you sure it only applies to HT multicore cpu?

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-hardware-devices/237118-cpu-listed-physical-logical-cores.html

"With today's modern processors, Device Manager counts cores, not processors.
One processor with four cores = four processors shown. Two processors with
one core each = two processors shown."

Also from the link you posted.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1861804

"Hi rockreid !

Yes it %100 does include your Q9550 - so if/when you go to Windows 7, you will need to make this adjustment.

As riojazz noted it applies to all Windows 7 X64 and X32 installations where the system is using more than 2 physicial CPU's and/or more than 2 "logical" cores - ie: all Intel CPU's that are Quad-Core or higher.

Tom

PS: I assume it also applies to AMD quad-core cpu's but I dont use AMD for my DAW'a any more so I cant be certain, but my expectation would be that AMD quad-core would respond to core-parking exaclty the same as the Intel quad-cores. "


Q9550 doesn't do hyperthreading either.

 

[Redleader]

I will give this a go just to see.

 

[Falcon_CMH]

Its safe and the profile I was using had it set to 0. I went ahead and set it to 0 on the other profiles, I have a feeling if you set your profile to "High Performance" it sets this value to 0 anyway.

 

[bigdogchris]

Oh great, another "fix" that's just going to cause more problems in the end. I would bet 95% of the people that apply this ignore the 'logical core' part and put it on the standard non-HT quads.

 

[Gnasher]

Its safe and the profile I was using had it set to 0. I went ahead and set it to 0 on the other profiles, I have a feeling if you set your profile to "High Performance" it sets this value to 0 anyway.

My PC was set to high performance already and in the registry the value was 64 still.

 

[Gnasher]

Oh great, another "fix" that's just going to cause more problems in the end. I would bet 95% of the people that apply this ignore the 'logical core' part and put it on the standard non-HT quads.

Problems such as?

Don't see anything here that mentions hyperthreading when talking about logical cores. Logical core is the software layer and hyprthreading can execute 2 per core. That doesn't mean a non hyperthreading CPU doesn't also have logical cores, it just doesn't have 2 per core. Or perhaps I am not understanding what the below really means?

http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT05/Papers/McKendree/

"Figure 1. The Layers and Subsystems of the Logical Core Architecture.
3.1. Logical Core

The unchanging heart, the core of the system, is purely logical. The system operates under control of software running on-board. The system maintains and draws from a data archive. Given two otherwise physically identical copies of a logical core architecture system, with different software and data, they could be radically different systems with radically different behaviors.

Actual software code may be running, or in the Archive. Elements of code flow between the Archive and Software. For example, the machine could build a large hardware neural net, and decompress a stored data file with the precomputed neural net weights for a particular function.

An actual implementation of the logical core architecture may require software of greater size and complexity than is feasible today. Actual running code is not needed, however, before molecular manufacturing is itself feasible. Advances in software development, and in available computer hardware, should ease the challenge of developing the necessary software when the time comes.

Data erased is lost forever, so there is a bias towards saving data, even if in highly compressed forms.

This architecture does not specify many lower level details. For example, software may be partitioned functionally, and protected from cross-contamination.
3.2. Physical Core

The physical core consists of the minimal set of subsystems that implement the logical core, including the minimal support subsystems necessary to implement the entire logical core architecture. Computers run the logical core layer software. Data Storage stores the logical core layer archive. Internal Infrastructure provides the necessary system support and maintenance functions. General Manufacturing provides an on-call ability to build any potential components of the system. Material Supply provides General Manufacturing with the raw materials it needs to produce.
3.2.1. Computers

This is the physical hardware that runs the logical core Software. Many lower level details are unspecified. For example, different functions will likely be assigned to different physical computers, running in parallel, and potentially dispersed across the system"

 

[Forceman]

How is this any different than Speedstep, or any of the other C-states?

 

[bigdogchris]

That tweak was published here originally, they seem to notice best performance while using the sonar producer and studio.

People also notice improvement/decrease in performance by disabling hyperthreading in the bios. I think this can be attributed to whatever factor is causing that. This tweak is the same thing, some programs are better, and I'm sure some are worse. Same as just disabling hyperthreading.

Don't see anything here that mentions hyperthreading when talking about logical cores

Well, my quad isn't hyperthreaded and none of the cores ever park. The one demoed on technet has hyperthreading.

I'm going to file this 'tweak' in the "Microsoft knows more than you" folder.

 

[Gnasher]

OK, I tend to agree with you but I will leave the reg entry as is just for the hell of it and Microsoft be damned. If it is the same as just turning off hyperthreading though don't you think those people would have just done that instead of messing with the registry? The tweak turns off core parking and not hyperthreading.

 

[Joe Average]

Following the concept of leave it alone, one is left with two considerations or options:

1) It's that way for a reason, and...
2) Microsoft knows more about their OS and how it works than anyone that doesn't work for Microsoft and didn't help code Windows 7 directly

Owning it, using it, all that is nice and all but, I didn't code it directly and even if I had decades of experience and 10 degrees in computer science related materials or even if I could design a superior CPU off the top of my head on a cocktail napkin, I just think it's best to leave it alone.

I seriously doubt Microsoft would put something in there that someone is going to find just by digging into the Registry or scouring Technet or MSDN articles and suddenly find some "lost tweak" that restores or gives a nice big boost to performance.

I get the idea behind this, I do, but honestly, how many people actually use their multicore processors 24/7 (aside from people participating in projects like Folding@Home and similar ones) or will ever even notice such a "tweak" exists at all? I consider myself an "Expert" when it comes to Windows in general since I've had an MCP and many other certs since pre-Windows 95 days and entirely too much experience with this OS really, but even in spite of that background I don't see this as a must-have or a must-do kind of thing. I did note that I'd never even heard of it before this thread and that's 100% true, but now that I have added the information to my own "internal knowledge base," I still won't go out recommending people muck with the default setting(s) because I will always preach the leave it alone mantra that I pretty much started a few years ago.

It falls into the category - as bigdogchris put it so well - of "Microsoft knows better than you" or "Microsoft knows better than me" I should say. Seriously, it's like people just can't seem to just install the OS, leave it alone, let it do its thing and just use the OS as designed. I guess I'm just never surprised anymore that there should come a point where people stop worrying so much about every potential little tweak there is or could be and instead they actually do something with the OS.

Is that weird, or what?

The two questions I always end up asking are "When is enough enough?" and "How fast is fast?" Modern computers are damned fast, but we're acclimated to them so they don't actually seem that way, but they really are, and they can do so much if people actually put them to use instead worrying about that last percentage of CPU time, or that last byte of free available RAM, or that extra megabyte per second on a data transfer, or whatever.

I'm babbling now but... damn.

It's your machine, do with it what you will, and YMMV.

 

[cyclone3d]

The two questions I always end up asking are "When is enough enough?" and "How fast is fast?"

The immediate response, especially on these forums, should always be:
Never.
and
Faster then my system is currently running.

 

[Ur_Mom]

The two questions I always end up asking are "When is enough enough?" and "How fast is fast?" Modern computers are damned fast, but we're acclimated to them so they don't actually seem that way, but they really are, and they can do so much if people actually put them to use instead worrying about that last percentage of CPU time, or that last byte of free available RAM, or that extra megabyte per second on a data transfer, or whatever.

I'm babbling now but... damn.

It's your machine, do with it what you will, and YMMV.

This is the [H]ardForum. Yes, I agree with you 100%. But, like most of the people in these forums, we like to tinker and play with settings. I've blue screened many times due to a bad setting that I've changed. I've had to repair my OS many times. I've broken it, fixed it, and broken it again. That's what I do. There are those out there that use the OS for a "launcher" for other programs, which is basically what it is. Then there are those that want to know how and why it does what it does, and how to tweak and customize and fuck with it.

We're the same people that tore apart a Commodore 64 to see how it worked.

Yes, 99.9% of the population should just "leave it alone". And for a perfectly good OS, it's great advice. But, for the .1%, it's just a hobby and it's fun to screw with different things.

 

[Ur_Mom]

Oh, and let me expand on that just a bit: If we change a setting and it screws up the machine, we blame it on our fuck up. Not Microsoft. Well, there are a few out there that would still blame it on a shitty OS. Truth is, I've never had Vista or 7 crash on me for any reason that wasn't my fault. Two great operating systems.

 

[pxc]

I've pretty much found that the logical cores are parked the vast majority of the time as games and programs don't use them.

If you notice that, it's due to not enough threads from non-idle/near idle task(s) to distribute to those extra logical processors. The OS is treating it correctly. The second thread running simultaneously on a physical core is competing for execution resources.

I have never seen a "parking problem" on Core i7 when running > 4 threads. No doubt there is software with threading performance problems, but that's not the same thing.

This tweak is just a placebo IMO.

 

[Cerulean]

Oh great, another "fix" that's just going to cause more problems in the end. I would bet 95% of the people that apply this ignore the 'logical core' part and put it on the standard non-HT quads.

lol. So funny because now there is a clear divide in stereotyping.

We have people who want to improve the performance of Windows.

We have people who think people who want to improve performance of Windows are on the same level as conspiracy theorists, also implying (whether or not they realize it) Microsoft is perfect and Windows is an absolute product that absolutely satisfies all with its defaults.

The latter are douchebags. Get out of here. While some tweaks may not actually help, generalizing it to cover all tweaking and customization is quite an extreme way to handle it. Any kind of fanciness and extra features will add to performance loss. The more an OS is stripped down, generally the better it will perform. Linux is a fine example. Another fine example is disabling or removing non-critical functions of Windows that you don't even need.

From my experience, when I do a tweak it is first out of experimentation. I make a change but I don't expect any change. Based on my overall experience in the next week, I will make a judgment whether it made a difference or not (sometimes it takes longer depending on what it is).

Windows XP I did a really good job at tweaking. Not sure if it is the particular copy of Windows XP Professional that I had and/or the tweaks and/or third-party programs (ie. Diskeeper), but I ran on one of my XP installations for 3 solid years without finding any performance degradation. Always ran like day #1. And I didn't ever have any problems.

(EDIT: FYI, I have been using Windows 7 Professional x64 for a month or two on my new used T61, and Windows 7 Professional x64 on my workstation at home ever since it came out.)

 

[Gnasher]

It falls into the category - as bigdogchris put it so well - of "Microsoft knows better than you" or "Microsoft knows better than me" I should say.

That may be true for the most part but it most certainly is not an altruism. Microsoft do not always do what is best for the customer. Settings such as messenger service enabled by default, having autoplay enabled for everything, etc. were not safe settings and put our PCs at risk of getting a virus two fold. Sorry, but just because someone builds something doesn't mean it can't be improved upon by someone else. Also, the only people who would know about these tweaks have to be Microsoft insiders and not some average Joe messing about in the registry.

 

[Gnasher]

The two questions I always end up asking are "When is enough enough?" and "How fast is fast?"

They are never fast enough when you start throwing some of the latest games at them. Just go try and play IL2:CoD and it will bring the fastest PC available to its knees. That's why people OC and attempt to do tweaks, not so they can run Firefox faster. At the end of the day it is my PC and I will do as I damn well please with it.

 

[Gnasher]

Oh, and let me expand on that just a bit: If we change a setting and it screws up the machine, we blame it on our fuck up.

That's what system restore was invented for. I always make a restore point before doing any registry tweaks. Had to use it just 2 days ago too because I tried to go back from AHCI to IDE mode in the bios so messed with the registry and ended up with BSOD at boot up. No problem, just used system restore and back to zero.

 

[Gnasher]

l
Windows XP I did a really good job at tweaking. Not sure if it is the particular copy of Windows XP Professional that I had and/or the tweaks and/or third-party programs (ie. Diskeeper), but I ran on one of my XP installations for 3 solid years without finding any performance degradation. Always ran like day #1. And I didn't ever have any problems.

Got a list of tweaks you did to XP? I have XP an an AMD64 single core with 2GB of ram and it needs tweaking.

 

[Cerulean]

Got a list of tweaks you did to XP? I have XP an an AMD64 single core with 2GB of ram and it needs tweaking.

I will get back to you on that. Give me some time to put together a document.

*bookmarks page*

 

[Gnasher]

OK, thanks.

 

[DeathPrincess]

Ok I played around with this for a few days. i7 930, 4.2 gh/z

It doesn't appear to raise or lower tempretures, and the voltages from the core have stayed the same with all 8 "cores" constantly on. 26 idle, 50c load on, 25/6 idle, 50c load on but bear in mind that this has next to no effect and I didn't note ambient tempretures.

One thing I did notice is now that it has constant acess to all the "cores" it doesn't seem to prefer "real" cores over "virtual ones;

Cores 0, 2, 4, 6 (red) are "physical", 1, 3, 5, 7 are "logical" (yellow). Normally with the parking, the cores that were parked were 1,3,5,7 meaning that these would be out of commision most the time. Then to counter this, I run most the time with 1-2% CPU usage, so perhaps this would have more effect if you were running closer to limits. But then again, even before I did this tweak, the times when I was running multithreaded applications that would run the CPU at 100% across all cores, the cores would "unpark" automatically. Meaning that the logical cores would come into play when needed.

I don't really think that this is something that should be automatically done, unless the parking is causing problems, which with me it wasn't. If the computer needs the power of the parked cores it uses it. This way they are always "in use" at around 0-1%.

Ill leave it on though, to see what the long term effects are. But still to be honest I haven't notice any kind of improvement as of yet.

 

[bigdogchris]

lol. So funny because now there is a clear divide in stereotyping.

We have people who want to improve the performance of Windows.

We have people who think people who want to improve performance of Windows are on the same level as conspiracy theorists, also implying (whether or not they realize it) Microsoft is perfect and Windows is an absolute product that absolutely satisfies all with its defaults.

And as I said, I don't see how this 'tweak' is any difference than the performance gain/loss you get from disabling hyperthreading. This 'tweak' is not something that will work for everyone.

The latter are douchebags. Get out of here. While some tweaks may not actually help, generalizing it to cover all tweaking and customization is quite an extreme way to handle it. Any kind of fanciness and extra features will add to performance loss. The more an OS is stripped down, generally the better it will perform.

And it's also a help forum. When people start messing with shit, it starts breaking, then they come back asking for help. Some things simply do not need to be adjusted in order to maintain proper operating system performance, stability, and power balance. If you think you know more than Microsoft does about their own product, than that's great for you.

(EDIT: FYI, I have been using Windows 7 Professional x64 for a month or two on my new used T61, and Windows 7 Professional x64 on my workstation at home ever since it came out.)

And many more have used it since it was the very first leaked beta in 2008. What's your point?

 

[Suprfire]

I applied this "tweak" a year (or more) ago.
Mainly because there were some rumors going around that were saying this would increase certain performance aspects of certain games, mainly World of Warcraft (for me anyway).
That was back when you could still use SET ProcessAffinityMask in the WoW config. (you can still set it. but now its automated)

I did not notice any higher average FPS...
However, i did notice significantly shorter zone loading times and a lot less occasional stuttering.
And i've kept it that way ever since.

 

[Cerulean]

Got a list of tweaks you did to XP? I have XP an an AMD64 single core with 2GB of ram and it needs tweaking.

Uploading videos at 720p. Will take a couple to few hours before I have links ready.

EDIT: I gotta reupload someplace else. I think my uploads corrupt.

 

[evilsofa]

You may want to inquire about this in the folding forum. Seems to me that any effects caused by this tweak would be very apparent and testable there.

 

[Gnasher]

Uploading videos at 720p. Will take a couple to few hours before I have links ready.

EDIT: I gotta reupload someplace else. I think my uploads corrupt.

Videos??? I just asked for a list of tweeks for XP and no need to make me videos. You are a good man though so thanks.

 

[Cerulean]

Videos??? I just asked for a list of tweeks for XP and no need to make me videos. You are a good man though so thanks.

There is a little more to it than just executing a couple of registry files.

 

[Deleted member 214115]

Now, parking is designed to park the logical cores and allocate execution to the physical cores until the workload properly fits hyper-threading usage. It is better to have parking due to the fact that you are not creating contention within the execution resources that need to be shared for hyper-threading. Linux does this, and has had parking support for a longer time than Windows.

Now this does nothing, but reverse how the kernel handles the hyper-threading workload allotment. It will be similar to Vista, again, as in how it threw workload to any of the cores. No one recalls the marketing of parking before the release of Windows 7? Anyways stutter issues and other problems are usually due to something else, like a simple BIOS option(s), driver, etc. One person did mentioned proper demotion of C states. This is a BIOS option, and can cause such problems if not configured and coded properly in the BIOS.

Nothing wrong in properly configuring a system for optimal or proper performance, but tweaking is nothing more than placebo or bullshit.

 

[Cerulean]

Well in case my video uploading is fail, here are the tweaks and the outline to the videos as to what to do after running them. You can open up the tweaks in Notepad/++ and read the comments as to what each thing does.

Tweaks:
http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/TweakXP_2010-05-25.rar

Outline:
http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/TweakXP_YouTube-Script.txt

The outline goes with the tweaks, so do not ignore the outline. Follow through the outline for additional things to do that I couldn't figure out how to do via registry.

I used these for 3+ solid years without a single problem with my XP. It always ran like the first day of installation and never slowed down. It is important to also note that I used Diskeeper Pro Premiere, did not use any active antivirus (I did have ClamWin, but not installed as a service or running; minimal install) and used online antivirus scanners or a virtual machine to scan files I was suspicious about, did a just-in-case checkup every 6 months using a good handful of tools and programs [1] [2], used Firefox with the right addons [3], secured my internet with OpenDNS [4], used a decent router (though a DD-WRT or even custom built pfSense would have been better), and used KeePass [5] to manage and store my database of passwords (I used this tool to begin making all my accounts have a unique password, rather than using the same 4 to 5 passwords all the time -- I made this transition a couple or so years ago). I used Administrator account -- except entirely renamed to something different using control userpasswords2. You can rename Guest to Administrator (I do this now with Windows 7).

The tweaks should do a lot, including disabling autoruns I think. It has been a very long since I have worked with these tweaks, especially since I rarely setup a Windows XP and never had to reinstall my XP on last run.

Do you really need antivirus software?

 

[Gnasher]

Nothing wrong in properly configuring a system for optimal or proper performance, but tweaking is nothing more than placebo or bullshit.

configuring and tweaking mean the same thing

@Cerulean

Thanks downloading them now and will check them out.

 

[Cerulean]

configuring and tweaking mean the same thing

@Cerulean

Thanks downloading them now and will check them out.

+1

Shikami is part of a stereotype. Instead of calling these tweaks, we ought to use configuring just to add fuel to the flames. X-D

 

[Gnasher]

Yes, I am off to "configure" XP now using your configuration suggestions.

 

[Deleted member 214115]

Tweaking is going deeper than normal options that can be toggled, enable, et al. That is why it is called tweaking. It is like using steroids, you may gain something, but you can also gain an negative too. Tweaking is like hacking the NIC and PCIe in Linux to tune them for THE optimum level of networking performance.

There is a difference; the young kids don't know it though