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Unlocking CPU cores, good or bad?

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12K views 9 replies 3 participants last post by  flavallee 
#1 ·
Recently, on youtube.com, I found articles on how to unlock the CPU's cores and gain processing speed. I have a desktop with an Intel G2030 CPU. I followed the procedure presented by the author and found a very noticeable increase in the responsiveness of Windows 7 in booting, shutting down, and even in the Firefox' and Opera's operations. I have not noticed any disadvantages. Are there any?
 
#3 ·
Frank, Instead, I'll write what I did:
1. Running msconfig, I selected the boot tab; then advanced options; under number of processors, I selected 2 instead of the 1 that had been shown in the pull down (2 was the maximum); I applied or saved. Then I restarted.
I did not go to administrative tools, as was suggested in the article, to increase my programs' speed. I thought I would try the first procedure first.

Al
 
#4 ·
This is how the BOOT Advanced Options window should look like in Windows 7:

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Windows 7 already knows there's a dual core processer in your computer.

I have a dual core processor in this desktop, and it shows that in the Processors heading in the Device Manager.

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#5 ·
No doubt that Windows "knows" it. The question is whether the two cores are being used. Under boot, advanced options, my window looked just like the image above, with 1 processor selected. I changed that as the article instructed to the maximum number, 2. The result was a perceived increase in performance.
It's not whether Windows tells me correctly how many cores are available. It does. It's how many cores are being used. I believe I changed that from 1 to 2, according to the article.
 
#6 ·
The problem you had was that at some point someone or something checked that box and limited you to 1 core. By default that box is never checked and Windows will use all the cores that are available, and contrary to what someone on Youtube says Windows doesn't check that box by itself, someone or something has to do it. Basically all you did was undo a mistake or restriction that was placed on the system in the past. I'd actually recommend you go and uncheck that box completely and let Windows handle the cores, which when unchecked will be all of them that if you ever upgrade or replace your CPU then Windows will automatically use the max number of cores instead of still being restricted to two. The unchecked box is also the default.
 
#7 · (Edited)
The author did not claim that Windows was responsible for the box's being checked. The Dell Inspiron 660s that I have with Windows 7 Home Premium came with Windows already installed. The manufacturer, Dell, did the installation. Dell did not even provide me a backup copy of Windows 7 until I requested it. I never re-installed the OS from the backup copy. I don't know if the box would be unchecked, if I re-installed it. Dell had the opportunity to set the processors to 1 instead of 2. The article states that some manufacturers may do that in order to provide the customer with constant performance in the case where one processor fails. I have no evidence that Dell did that, but I cannot rule it out.

Correction: Please note that the checking of the box, merely has to do with enabling the pull-down menu for the selection of the number of active cores or processors. As you may see in flavalee's image, his shows 1 processor with the box unchecked. If he wanted to change that, I think he would have to check the box and pull-down the choices.

I take it that there was no disadvantage to changing the processor number from 1 to 2, and so doing seems to me to have increased performance. I am satisfied and am marking this solved but will keep an eye on further comments. Thanks to all.
 
#8 ·
I've never seen or heard of Dell or any other manufacturer restrict the processors out of the box, that would impact performance and cause more complaints than any "core" failure which is something that almost never happens nor would it do any good since the system wouldn't know if a core failed, which one, or to switch to another. The article is just full of bad information if that's what it is saying. Processor cores are not for redundancy and have no redundancy features built it.

Also, very few computers come with recovery or reinstallation discs, that's been common for about a decade now. Most manufacturer's provide a recovery partition and a utility to make your own recovery discs. Of course you can request or order some as well.
 
#10 ·
goedel:

Now that I'm on another desktop that has a quad core processor, here is another example of what I mentioned earlier.

Product Rectangle Azure Font Screenshot


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As you can see, the "Number of processors" box is unchecked and greyed out, but all 4 cores show in "Processors" in the Device Manager.

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