Windows suppors SMP (Symmetric multiprocessing) since NT v.3.5, I think.
There is no separation between tasks and cores/processors as long as the application supports it. All system tasks are multi-core capable.
Diogen.
Windows Vista Experience
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There is no separation between tasks and cores/processors as long as the application supports it. All system tasks are multi-core capable.
Diogen.
Since I didn't see an emoticon at the end of that, I'll assume the comment was on the level. System Idle Process is just the processing power that is not being used, and is available for anything else.
A dual core is midrange these days. No question about it. On my quad core, I'm not running one OS, I'm running 3. It's a learning tool.
Instead of jumping to a hasty conclusion you should probably ask questions.
One could argue quite successfully that Windows hasn't been very good at Multi-processing for very long. Especially in comparison to other OSs that have been running with true near linear gains for many many years.
Cheers,
One could.
But one would have to admit the difference in hardware.
Commercial Unix's have been good at it for ages... on its own hardware.
The very first attempt porting Solaris to x86 was very mediocre on the multi-CPU front (no multi-core CPUs at that time). And so was Linux.
IIRC, Linus himself was in charge of rewriting the SMP part of the kernel and I recall reading RedHat hackers claiming how far ahead NT's SMP is...
Diogen.
Yes I agree. I was just pointing out that even if you are running a single task that is single threaded on a quad core, windows will somehow manage to use the other three cores. It is just amaizing to me how MS OSes can suck down so much CPU power when they are supposedly idle. I notice especially on my dual core laptop. I boot it up and it manages to max CPU and the disk drive for quite a while. Busy indexing, checking for updates, and who knows what else. Quad core processors seem to be the first CPUs that actually seem to keep Windows happy... But, I am sure MS will add more features that will require 8CPUs as soon as Intel releases them next year (or late this year).
I just ordered a new Dell system tonight. Thankfully, I had the option of requesting XP instead of Vista, which I did. Vista's too slow.
I bought a new Dell last year that came with XP. Loaded Vista home premium a month later in a dual boot configuration.
My experience has been that is runs rather well. In fact, I have shrunk my XP partition down to a bare minimum, and can't remember exactly when the last time I had to boot to XP was.
All my devices are supported, it has never locked up or blue screened on me.
And this is on a pc that did not originally ship with Vista, either
Yeah from what I read SP1 for Vista has address some things and has given it a performance boost as well. For most part folks complaining of it running slow is mainly due to the machine they have it loaded on or something else on the machine. Either way will be interesting to see SP1 for Vista which I think is due out next month.. Gald to hear things are running well now for you.
I have Vista Home Premium with only one core and it runs really fast. I havnt really had any lag.
Install the Folding @ Home SMP client. That will drop the "Idle" process down to 0% in no time...
Actually, most of the complaining has come from the gaming sector. A lot of things actually ran slower in Vista than XP. I am hoping SP1 fixes some of these issues as well.
