Dual-Core Workload Problems

[larryiam]

I just got me a new computer and I am new with the whole dual-core concept because i have never had one. So now that i do i see that my computer likes to give all the work to one core and not the other.....for example when my computer scans for viruses core 1 will be at 100% load and core 2 like 0-5% load. I have the latest version of the product. Now I understand older programs like super pi and stuff are only optimized for single core computers so I get that. But wouldn't most new programs work with dual-cores? Or is there some application I can get to optimize load on my system to better manage the workload?
Thank you for your time!!

 

[Ididmyc600]

Hi

from what i know its only certain progs that are designed to use the dual core idea, i tend to advise people of this when they go to buy a pc and only want it to use internet and a bit of mail.

Regards

 

[Justin]

When you are dealing with an operating system like Windows, the overwhelming majority of software is gong to be suited to using a single core. Windows does not intelligently load-balance amongst multiple cores like, say, Linux would do, and as a result more often than not one core will do more work than the other.

When you are dealing with software itself, most software today is still single-threaded. Office suites, A/V suites, firewalls, most games, browsers and many other programs will still be single-threaded and therefore only execute on a single core.

In Windows, you can manually shift workloads from one core to another for a particular process inside task manager. Simply right-clicking on the process gives you a "Set Affinity" option, in which you can designate which core the process will operate on.