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

[garikfox]

i7 owners this is a must read below

http://www.overclock.net/t/1250666/winf ... g-our-cpus

[bthylafh]

Its about telling the OS task scheduler to treat the HT cores as real cores when scheduling them

Except Hyperthreading cores are /not/ real cores and don't respond the same way.

Verdict: probably snake oil, like disabling Superfetch.

[bthylafh]

But maybe I'm wrong. Show us benchmarks with and without this change, and monitor power usage as well.

[Ryhadar]

This seems to be an easier way to change it: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showp ... ostcount=8

Apparently, this can give you a great boost in WinRAR benchmark (google cache as the direct link doesn't seem to work anymore): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=us

Not sure if I'll try this or not. Disabling core parking could theoretically decrease performance by having the threads bounce around cores, though maybe since the core i7s have inclusive L3 cache the hit is negligible? It would be cool to see a TR review on this *wink* *wink*.

*EDIT*

For what it's worth, I'm also seeing some people say that SP1 of W7 fixes the core parking performance hit.

[Ryhadar]

Eh, tried a couple of benchmarks (7zip bench, and Cinebench 11.5) and really didn't notice a consistent, measurable improvement. I think if you're having problems with games and stuttering, or any performance related problems it's a good first attempt at fixing them.

I'll definitely keep it in the back of my mind. Also, I didn't notice any temperature fluctuations on versus off which would lead me to believe that power consumption didn't change drastically either.