configure OS to be faster with dual core CPU

[Wakalaka]

I just put together a system that uses a dual core AMD CPU. I've noticed that I don't have lag any more when watching TV and browsing Internet and downloading files at the same time. I moved my tuner cards and hard drives from my old system into the new system.

Are there any tips on configuring the OS to take advantage of dual core CPU and have an affect on GB-PVR performance?

[K.S.]

there is no need to configure anything. let the OS do the job. it uses whichever core is bored
you would only need to do something to be able to use both cores at the same time by the same app. and then the only thing you can do is to get a version of your app which is able to take advantage of the multiple core. as long as you're not the developer of that app (or have the source code ) that's the only thing you can do...

[garymeds]

with dual core or cpu, you can set processor affinity - task manager, processes, select process you want and right click. if you have dual core/cpu, you will see affinity.

default is all ticked, so you could untick everything from core 2 and leave it dedicated to PVRX2.exe if you wanted..

[K.S.]

if you like to mess around it's like playing with priority & setting PVRX2 to realtime prio on a single core system. what do you accieve by setting realtime? all the other processes don't get the cpu slot they need for normal operation, that way you'll find that even your realtime process behaves worse. what do you get by dedicating the second core to PVRX2? all the other apps & services & OS crowd around on core one to get their timeslot. you get thrown back to effective single core by your action
if you have more than 2 cores (Wakalaka has a dual core CPU): go ahead & dedicate one core for PVRX2 & the recording service & your remote app (& whatever else you like). that won't hurt the other apps as long as they still have more than one core left. my 2c

[SANGER_A2]

I have a Pentium 4 dual core 3GHz system and I let Windows manage it all for me. You could play around and let GBPVR only use one core and the recording service use another but you are unlikely to see any gain. Believe it or not, the people at Microsoft did actually put a lot of thought into the basics like process management!

I can use firefox to play flash games, watch a TV program that I'm recording with time-shift and encode another all at the same time with no lag at all and only the encoding process uses more than 10-20% of CPU-time (it grabs whatever it can get but is set to let other applications get CPU time first if they ask for it).

[martint123]

Playing with dual core and the like - it's very easy to slow things down, damn near impossible to speed things up. Unusually, Windows manages them fairly well.

[Wakalaka]

Playing with dual core and the like - it's very easy to slow things down, damn near impossible to speed things up. Unusually, Windows manages them fairly well.

That's why I asked, since it's unusual for Microsoft to do something well without 14 million patches. I tell everyone about software needing to be designed to really take advantage of dual core, threading, SSE instruction set, etc. since this is what I used to do when working at Intel.

[ram4x4nut]

MS should have a "Run Perfect" button just like the one Sub is going to add to the GBPVR config app.

[JimF]

How about priority for reliability, not performance? I occasionally (not often) see glitches in a recording, and wonder whether it is due to the CPU being overloaded. I want to make sure that GB-PVR gets highest priority so that even if I am editing other videos, there isn't a problem. I have a separate hard drive for recording/editing than the boot drive where WinXP is located, and still another one for playback through MediaMVP, so I am assuming it is not a disk access problem at the moment. But sometimes I am searching for commercials with Comskip on a couple of videos at the same time that I am saving another edited video while recording, so the CPU can be near 100 percent. Can/should I increase the priority for GB-PVR?

[SANGER_A2]

How about priority for reliability, not performance? I occasionally (not often) see glitches in a recording, and wonder whether it is due to the CPU being overloaded. I want to make sure that GB-PVR gets highest priority so that even if I am editing other videos, there isn't a problem. I have a separate hard drive for recording/editing than the boot drive where WinXP is located, and still another one for playback through MediaMVP, so I am assuming it is not a disk access problem at the moment. But sometimes I am searching for commercials with Comskip on a couple of videos at the same time that I am saving another edited video while recording, so the CPU can be near 100 percent. Can/should I increase the priority for GB-PVR?

The glitches aren't going to be caused bythe CPU unless the recording service uses 80% plus of your CPU-time when it runs!

The bottle-necks are likely to be the USB connection, the hard disc drive access rate (not likely for me as I have a RAID10 setup with 4 hard disc drives connected together) and (most likely) a break/error in the TV signal going to the TV antenna/card.