[SOLVED] How do you know if a program uses multicores?

[barkersofgeraldine]

I have a 12-core processor

How do I check from the task manager if a program running takes advantage of the multi cores

I was wondering which of the following programs will take advantage of a multicore processor:

Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
SAS (Statistical Analysis System)
Google Chrome
Sandbox programs
Remote control programs, like TeamViewer

 

[kanewolf]

I have a 12-core processor

How do I check from the task manager if a program running takes advantage of the multi cores

I was wondering which of the following programs will take advantage of a multicore processor:

Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
SAS (Statistical Analysis System)
Google Chrome
Sandbox programs
Remote control programs, like TeamViewer

The easiest way is to open the CPU display in task manager and then right click on the graph. Make sure the display is set to "Logical Processors". Then run your program. See how many of the CPUs are busy. Word will probably be 1 or 2. SAS and Excel can use multiple cores for calculation, but you would need complicated spreadsheets or reports to see it easily.

 

[mdd1963]

I'd Google the following: "Is Microsoft Word multithreaded?"

Repeat the process as often as you'd like inserting your preferred application.

I doubt most folks are going to notice a 5900X running just one application like Word or Teamviewer 'better' than a 9700K for instance, but, certainly the 3900X or 5900X would allow all preferred apps (or multiple instances of apps) to be run at once without stutter or hesitation

 

[drea.drechsler]

I have a 12-core processor

How do I check from the task manager if a program running takes advantage of the multi cores

I was wondering which of the following programs will take advantage of a multicore processor:

Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
SAS (Statistical Analysis System)
Google Chrome
Sandbox programs
Remote control programs, like TeamViewer

I don't know that task manager is going to be a reliable way to see if an application is using multiple threads or not. Reason being the scheduler will move a thread around among cores that share resources. You'll see it as a graph line moving across the CPU chart graphs on various cores but it's just the one thread.

WinWord 2010 (for instance) keeps two cores/four threads "busy" on my 3700X even though it's only single threaded.

Of that list the one program I can say for sure is going to launch a lot of threads is Google Chrome. A multicore processor, especially one with SMT or HT, will fare better with multiple windows open in Chrome...as will Firefox now too.

 

[geofelt]

Be careful how you interpret task manager cpu utilizations.
Windows will spread the activity of a single thread over all available threads.
So, if you had a game that was single threaded and cpu bound, it would show up on a quad core processor as 25%
utilization across all 4 threads.
leading you to think your bottleneck was elsewhere.
It turns our that few games can USEFULLY use more than 4-6 threads.
How can you tell how well threaded your games or apps are?
One way is to disable some threads and see how you do.

You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your apps are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, it tells you that you will not benefit from more cores.

 

[TerryLaze]

Get process hacker which is similar to task manager only that you can double click on a running exe and it will give you a window showing you how many threads this exe runs and how much CPU each thread uses.
If you are too scared of third party tools, microsoft has Process explorer which has less features but will do what you want.

 

[TerryLaze]

You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your apps are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, it tells you that you will not benefit from more cores.

You can just use affinity from -task manager details- to restrict a software to use less (logical) cores.

 

[drea.drechsler]

You can just use affinity from -task manager details- to restrict a software to use less (logical) cores.

I think that's a better way because the effect will be limited to the app itself and not the whole system. Limiting the number of threads available from the CPU will choke the whole system, which itself is running with over a thousand threads in my case. Most are idle, of course, but some are constantly popping up and running.

 

[barkersofgeraldine]

thanks everyone - i will be trying the suggestions on here )