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Why does PhilsComputerLab disables all but 1 core on his XP gaming builds?

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First post, by data9791

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I always understood it was good to disable hyper-threading for some games, but Phil disables all cores but one effectively turning his XP machines into single cores? He says it's controversial but never explained why? Can anyone explain why he is doing this and explain the benefits to me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlGsffEoWOM

Reply 4 of 13, by _UV_

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If your main goal just make another video for your channel it's not worth all the efforts and time to workaround all possible conflicts with multi processor setups (HT and multi-core is just the same for software). That is mostly precaution for early pre W2000 aware games and some drivers.

Reply 5 of 13, by weldum

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in my experience, both unreal engine 1 based games (unreal, ut99 and so) and both serious sam TFE and TSE tend to have problems with multiple cores/threads:

-ridicously fast timing (game seems to run crazy fast but the fps aren't as high)
-bad or wrong framepacing and heavy stutter
-low framerates or impossibility to run the game

DT: R7-5800X3D/R5-3600/R3-1200/P-G5400/FX-6100/i3-3225/P-8400/D-900/K6-2_550
LT: C-N2840/A64-TK57/N2600/N455/N270/C-ULV353/PM-1.7/P4-2.6/P133
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Reply 9 of 13, by appiah4

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He also disables all IO he doesn't use even though he really doesn't need to, it's just his modus operandi. XP and 99% of XP software work fine on multicores and adjusting core affinity is easy as pie. He just feels more comfortable this way.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 10 of 13, by kolderman

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Given that few if any games from the XP era really take advantage of multi cores - and many suffer from them - why not? Set and forget, much easier than dealing with core affinity every time you play. Games only started utilizing multi cores in the late 2000s, and it seems only really need good MT performance in the last few years.

Reply 11 of 13, by God Of Gaming

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There's actually a way to set up your game shortcut to automatically launch it with 1 core affinity, so that you don't have to manually do it each time you start it, but I agree having only 1 core enabled is one less thing to worry about.

1999 Dream PC project | DirectX 8 PC project | 2003 Dream PC project

Reply 12 of 13, by appiah4

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kolderman wrote:

Given that few if any games from the XP era really take advantage of multi cores - and many suffer from them - why not? Set and forget, much easier than dealing with core affinity every time you play. Games only started utilizing multi cores in the late 2000s, and it seems only really need good MT performance in the last few years.

The OS itself benefits from it and the game can be set to single core affinity so why disable it is a more appropriate question I think.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 13 of 13, by DosFreak

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Why does anyone do anything? Because they want to or they were directed to.

Why play games on XP since Windows 10 is the best OS ever created and runs all games perfectly?
Why play games at all?

Ask Phil

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