Disabling Cores

[packsherpah]

I have a situation where I need to disable some cores to make a particular application work (better). I have a Mac Pro, but this particular app only runs in Windows. I am running windows 7 in bootcamp on a 12 core 2010 Mac Pro. If this was a PC, I would go into the bios and at the bios level disable the cores then boot into windows with fewer cores. Is there any way I can accomplish this type of thing on a Mac Pro using bootcamp? I know there is no Bios, so how else can I disable some of the hardware for the windows 7 environment?

Thanks

 

[FroColin]

Why on earth would disabling cores give you better performance on a particular application?

 

[ndraves]

I haven't looked into it much but can't you decide in parallels how much 'hardware' you give the VM.

If this is the case can you not just reduce the number of cores available to windows 7?

 

[gglockner]

Are you talking about hyperthreading? There are some cases where hyperthreading makes things run slower. Unfortunately, there is no BIOS, so you cannot disable hyperthreading while booting into Windows. It's possible to disable hyperthreading in Mac OS X, but this would only apply if you're running Windows via virtualization (Parallels or VMWare).

 

[initialsBB]

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I once met someone using bootcamp who told me there existed a utility for Windows that would disable cores without going into BIOS. He also had an old piece of software that would not run when more than 2 cores were present.

Unfortunately I cannot for the life of me find the name of the utility, but I know it exists.

 

[djjclark]

maybe this?

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/how-to-set-processor-affinity-to-an-application-in-windows/

 

[Cindori]

you can disable cores, and HT, using this utility.


https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/10975760/


EDIT: this is a OSX utility, it will not apply for Windows unfortunately


for Windows, I recall you can select which cores the process should run on if you enter Task Manager (or Activity Monitor, w/e its called... the ctrl-alt-delete thing)

this required a Pro edition of the Windows, at least in the Win XP days

 

[cutterman]

for Windows, I recall you can select which cores the process should run on if you enter Task Manager (or Activity Monitor, w/e its called... the ctrl-alt-delete thing)

Yes- go to process list, right click and select "set processor affinity"