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WinFix: i7 owners Win7 by default is crippling our CPU's

29K views 95 replies 43 participants last post by  JonnyH 
#1 ·
By default Windows 7 uses Core parking with our i7 CPU's, This is a power savings feature and it actually decreases performance and isnt needed on Desktops but designed for Laptops.

For example: With a i7 2700K when cruising the net with Firefox/Safari etc. or compressing a file with WinRAR youll notice that only 4 threads are being used not 8. The core parking feature of Windows 7 is crippling our performance.

To get all CPU Threads working all the time we have to Disable Core parking in Windows 7, below is how we do this and unleash the true performance of our i7 CPU's
smile.gif


Step 1: Go into Task Manager/Resource Monitor and see if any cores are parked, If so then go to step 2.

Step 2: Run Utility. (this utility uses the "Official" way of disabling core parking, which is the powercfg command)

Download the Disable Core Parking Utility from the URL or attachment below

http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

parkcontroldist64.zip 947k .zip file


Now you have disabled Core Parking which in my opinion is what it should be like in the first place.
smile.gif


Enjoy the "True" Performance of your i7 CPU
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#2 ·
Cheers for sharing dude - I'll try this out when I get home.
 
#3 ·
Yeah I was shocked when I found out it was doing this, I was wondering why 4 threads were never being used lol

The only way I saw all the threads being used was in IBT and prime95
 
#4 ·
#6 ·
That is not only for i7 CPU's, it applies to everything that uses HT (Pent 4's, i3's, Xeons), and BD CPU's. I used that on my i3 and worked too.
 
#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by silvrr View Post

Are you sure that the programs are coded to utilize 8 threads? Also do you really need 8 threads to browse the internet, I doubt your CPU is the bottleneck there. Winrar could possibly benefit though.
its not about bottlenecking. Its about telling the OS task scheduler to treat the HT cores as real cores when scheduling them
 
#12 ·
Has anyone noticed a performance gain in anything by doing this?
 
#13 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by selectstriker2 View Post

its not about bottlenecking. Its about telling the OS task scheduler to treat the HT cores as real cores when scheduling them
More of what is is gaining you, if the cores are not needed or not coded to be active why be using them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wholeeo View Post

Has anyone noticed a performance gain in anything by doing this?
This.
 
#15 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by wholeeo View Post

Has anyone noticed a performance gain in anything by doing this?
I did with BOINC and F@H.

I do agree most people would not notice this, but people who make their silicon work, it's priceless.
 
#16 ·
Yeah this is mostly for HT CPUs or CPUs with a lot of cores (BD). This has been out for a long time.

You wont really see much performance difference, it basically just turns on the idle threads to run and spreads out the load evenly instead of actually waiting for 100% load. When BF3 first came out it had a hitching/slight lag issue with the i7s, this was primarily the cause of that till they patched it up. I could see this mostly benefiting programs that use multiple threads or when you're casting/live streaming etc.. as for temps it should increase it slightly.

For i7 users you will notice instead of 4 boxes with activity in your task manager and the other 4 idling, you will see 8 with activity as work is spread out evenly throughout the cores.
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by garikfox View Post

By default Windows 7 uses Core parking with our i7 CPU's, This is a power savings feature and it actually decreases performance and isnt needed on Desktops but designed for Laptops.
For example: With a i7 2700K when cruising the net with Firefox/Safari etc. or compressing a file with WinRAR youll notice that only 4 threads are being used not 8. The core parking feature of Windows 7 is crippling our performance.
To get all CPU Threads working all the time we have to Disable Core parking in Windows 7, below is how we do this and unleash the true performance of our i7 CPU's
smile.gif

Step 1: Go into Task Manager/Resource Monitor and see if any cores are parked, If so then goto Step 2.
Step 2: Run Regedit
Step 3: Goto the location in the picture below.
47
Step 4: Click on "Attributes" on the right hand side and modify the value to "0" (This will add the core parking option to Control Panel/Power Options)
Step 5: Restart the computer
Step 6: Now go into Control Panel/Power Options and set the Core Parking feature to "100%" then hit Apply, This will disable core parking.
278
Now you have disabled Core Parking which in my opinion is what it should be like in the first place.
smile.gif

Enjoy the "True" Performance of your i7 CPU
thumb.gif
thank you very much for this it worked perfect, all 12 threads are all running now, none of them are parked.
it use to show 8 of the 12 were parked.
thumbsupsmiley.png
 
#19 ·
I was wondering which cores were parked on your CPU's ?

Before I disabled core parking it was 1,3,6,7, that were parked, Then after a restart it parked 1,3,5,7

So it seems it doesnt park just the HT cores it parks other cores aswell
 
#22 ·
This is why I goto overclock.net, stuff like this...
+rep
Quote:
Originally Posted by blued View Post

Dont understand why the reg editing is necessary since the option to disable parking is right there in the power options.
Might not be an option available for everyone... 64 vs 32 bit, ultimate vs home edition?
 
#24 ·
I have to say, while it may SEEM like this would increase performance, it won't. Period. the reason it's parking the HT threads is because using HT decreases the performance of each individual thread. It's much better to be running processes only on the real cores until the real cores are fully loaded.

The only time you would see a performance increase from this would be if the threads were approaching 100% utilization. In this case Windows will start loading the other threads anyway. If anything, the core parking would increase performance on single threaded programs since the HT threads aren't being loaded on the same core, so they're not impacting the performance of the other thread running on that core.

You're much better off with Windows treating hyperthreading the way it does than treating the "Hyperthreads" as if they are normal cores. It's ideal for Windows to only run 1 thread per CORE at a time unless necessary and that's exactly what it does.
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by DirektEffekt View Post

I have to say, while it may SEEM like this would increase performance, it won't. Period. the reason it's parking the HT threads is because using HT decreases the performance of each individual thread. It's much better to be running processes only on the real cores until the real cores are fully loaded.
The only time you would see a performance increase from this would be if the threads were approaching 100% utilization. In this case Windows will start loading the other threads anyway. If anything, the core parking would increase performance on single threaded programs since the HT threads aren't being loaded on the same core, so they're not impacting the performance of the other thread running on that core.
You're much better off with Windows treating hyperthreading the way it does than treating the "Hyperthreads" as if they are normal cores. It's ideal for Windows to only run 1 thread per CORE at a time unless necessary and that's exactly what it does.
oh really? my cinebench 11.5 scores went up .5 after doing this.
 
#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ajslay View Post

oh really? my cinebench 11.5 scores went up .5 after doing this.
It really shouldn't make a difference on Cinebench since it's multi-threaded and should load all threads anyway. For things like games etc. through, mainly single threaded apps, it will make a difference, since Windows may inadvertently put loads on 2 of the threads of a single core when other cores are available, which decreases the performance of those threads. I can't think of a way to test this, but it is far better for the PC to use HT cores only when it's necessary.

Your higher score on Cinebench is likely due to the fact that it's a highly segregated task and actually has small breaks between loads on different cores. Try this on something like LinX or when encoding a Blu-Ray for example, and I think you will find no change. Whereas you may find a slight drop in high-load single threads, although it may be difficult to measure as there aren't many benchmarks which would do this.

EDIT: I should mention that the drop will not occur in a benchmarking scenario, but rather in everyday usage where you are doing many things at once.
 
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