multi-core question????

liquidmonkey

liquidmonkey

Member
i have a core i7 920 and use as a utility to monitor when each of the 4 cores is being used.

i have noticed that very very seldom do all four cores get used and even more seldom does a core ever go above 20% or 40%. maybe this is normal and i don't get how multi-cores are supposed to work but i thought that when a program such as photoshop, lightroom, VLC (playing 1080p movies) or a game needs more power then ALL CORES would be used and it would show well over 50% usage.

some tasks take too long IMHO and the monitor shows the cores just around 5 or 10%. shouldn't they be at over 50% to speed things up?

is it possible to force core usuage at all?
 
why would you want to force core usage? try looking in your bios for any kind of power saving features. i'm not familiar with the i7 but i know some amd cpu's have a power save kind of thing where it shuts down two cores when not really needed.
 
I think the reason you are rarely seeing all four cores being utilized is likely because the Core i7 920 processor is such a powerful and efficient processor. It is like giving a ten pound weight to a professional athlete. He would have no problem moving the weight around.

If the professional athlete is likened to a Core i7 processor let's also liken the Pentium 4 processor to a 3 year old child. Give him the ten pound weight and he will have to exert himself a lot more to move the same ten pound weight.
 
liquidmonkey said:
i have noticed that very very seldom do all four cores get used

some tasks take too long IMHO
Click to expand...

That's the idea, but most programs don't know how to utilize more than one core.

The issue you're seeing is a limitation of the programs, not being able to utilize more than one core.

What OS are you using?
 
programs not being able to utilize more than one core sounds like the most likely explanation. i only hope software makers will put that option into future versions :)

i'm using VISTA ULTIMATE SP2 64-bit
 
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