How to Make a Process Work on a Single Core in Vista
Published by: Codrut Nistor, in Tips & Tricks
December6th2007
Dual core processors are common these days, and despite the fact Vista works great on computers using them, there's always room for more... and one of the interesting things to do is to assign a certain process to a single CPU core, boosting the overall performance, in some situations.
This whole deal is pretty simple - some programs use both CPU cores, but they could work great on a single core too, sometimes even better than left alone, so what we need to do is use the Affinity setting in the Windows Task Manager.
- First of all, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to bring up the Task Manager(notice the different loads for each CPU core in the Performance tab).
- Now, switch to the Processes tab and check Show processes from all users.
- Right click the process you want to run on a single core and choose Set Affinity from the menu that pops up.
- In the window that opens, uncheck one of the cores, and press OK to apply changes.
As you probably imagined, all the above applies to new dual core systems, but it also works about the same for older dual CPU systems. If you don't see two CPU load panels in the Task Manager, then your processor is a single core one, and you can's change the affinity setting.
This whole deal is pretty simple - some programs use both CPU cores, but they could work great on a single core too, sometimes even better than left alone, so what we need to do is use the Affinity setting in the Windows Task Manager.
- First of all, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to bring up the Task Manager(notice the different loads for each CPU core in the Performance tab).
- Now, switch to the Processes tab and check Show processes from all users.
- Right click the process you want to run on a single core and choose Set Affinity from the menu that pops up.
- In the window that opens, uncheck one of the cores, and press OK to apply changes.
As you probably imagined, all the above applies to new dual core systems, but it also works about the same for older dual CPU systems. If you don't see two CPU load panels in the Task Manager, then your processor is a single core one, and you can's change the affinity setting.
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5 Comments on How to Make a Process Work on a Single Core in Vista
On 12/07/2007 at 8:42 am that_guy said:
So basically the same as you would in XP
On 12/07/2007 at 10:45 pm Codrut Nistor said:
Exactly.
On 05/08/2008 at 7:43 pm guest said:
tryed that but got access denied on nwtoolset on vista.
On 05/08/2008 at 7:57 pm KodrutZ said:
Do you have full admin rights? I guess it's useless to ask you about your dual or quad core CPU...
On 02/02/2010 at 10:41 pm Benquick said:
is it possible to make it default? i mean that every time when i would start program it would run on a single core. thanks in advance
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