Multiple Core Tips

Nowadays seems like everyone at least has a dual core processor by now, well....not all but most of you do. Dual Core processors such as the AMD Athlon X2 and Intel's Core 2 Duo are the mainstream choice now and most applications and games are developed to take full advantage of dual processing power, it's a huge advantage over a single core, there's nothing you need to do to use your dual core on those stuff, is either you have it or you don't, but there's some other small things you can tweak to take advantage of your dual core, you have it why not use it, here's a simple one you can do to speed up boot up time.

I heard people complainin' why would their dual core processor boot up speed is the same as a single core computer, well most of you don't know that Windows didn't actually use 2 cores to boot up windows, I guess there's an unnecessary thought to it, like i said before, if you have dual core, USE IT! Fortunately window OS allow such option. I'll use Windows XP as an example, note for Vista users at the end.

1. On Windows XP, hold Windows Key + R, or click Start, then Run, to bring up the following:


2. type msconfig then Enter.

3. You'll see somethin' similar to this:


4. Click on BOOT.INI found on top of the available tabs. Then click Advanced Options.. shown below.


5. Here you'll see a few options, the one we'll using is /NUMPROC, so select it and you will have the option to choose how many processors to use, choose 2 if you have dual core of course hehe. 3 or 4 cores will be available if you have more than 2 cores.


6. Click OK twice then choose whether you want to Restart now or later.

For Windows Vista users, the process is similar through steps 1-4, after that steps, you'll see somethin like this, obviously that's just an example for people are using Quad Cores (4 cores) like AMD Athlon X4 and Intel Core 2 Quad, I believe it will work with tri core processor like AMD Phenom II X3 as well, just select the appropriate number of cores for your processor.


NOTE: Once restarted you may be notified of some changes which was made in msconfig, tick the check box on the lower left corner and then OK, so it won't appear everytime you boot Windows


Whether you'll see any improvement or not is up to you to decide whether to use this tip or not, i'll just leave it like that even if there's no improvement, no harm done :)