Lock threads to cores??

[Wiigeek336]

Ok, so I've been interested in Dolphin lately. I have been heavily tweaking the settings so my PC can run at playable speeds. I am well-known of all/most settings, but "Lock Threads to Cores" really stumped me. I looked it up on the Dolphin performance guide and it apparently helps hyperthreading processors, and my processor(pentium 4) just happens to have HTT(hyperthreading technology). I compared FPS before and after. I got no decrease or increase. Can someone fill me in on why this is here and what it does?

[RachelB]

It rarely ever does anything at all, and can sometimes even lower performance. There are plans to remove the option, but in the mean time, just leave it off.

[ExtremeDude2]

I've found some games crash/won't boot with it, but they say it helps DKCR's random crashing :3

[DefenderX]

It really helps with DKCR With Lock Threads to Cores enabled, I never get any crashes (Well, didn't test it on Dolphin 3.5 yet)

[m0no]

(12-27-2012, 08:27 PM)DefenderX Wrote: It really helps with DKCR With Lock Threads to Cores enabled, I never get any crashes (Well, didn't test it on Dolphin 3.5 yet)

Working great!!

[NaturalViolence]

@Wiigeek336

In your case it won't make a difference. With a pentium 4 you shouldn't even be enabling dual core mode.

With the option turned off the OS is given control of thread affinity. This results in the threads "jumping around" from core to core.

With the option turned on the thread affinity is "locked" to a specific core. This means that the threads each remain on a specific core.

It's useful for taking measurements and might boost performance in some scenarios such as mobile cpus with turbo boost.

By default it's set to off and for most situations it should be left off.

In cpus with 1 or 2 logical cores (such as yours for example) there is basically no difference between having the option on/off.

[Wiigeek336]

(12-30-2012, 08:08 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: @Wiigeek336

In your case it won't make a difference. With a pentium 4 you shouldn't even be enabling dual core mode.

With the option turned off the OS is given control of thread affinity. This results in the threads "jumping around" from core to core.

With the option turned on the thread affinity is "locked" to a specific core. This means that the threads each remain on a specific core.

It's useful for taking measurements and might boost performance in some scenarios such as mobile cpus with turbo boost.

By default it's set to off and for most situations it should be left off.

In cpus with 1 or 2 logical cores (such as yours for example) there is basically no difference between having the option on/off.

Dual Core mode gives me a huge speed boost (almost 2X single core speed). But yeah, thanks for the info.

[NaturalViolence]

Are you sure that you have a pentium 4?

Also why did it take you 5 months to respond to my post?

[drhycodan]

What if you have a core i7 with hyper threading? Wouldn't having this option help?

[NaturalViolence]

Nope.