The microsoft hotfix seems to have fixed all but a single program, and due to the poor quality of the program, I'm not surprised at all that it refuses to work properly when allowed to use multiple processors.

I'm glad to hear it kind of worked. Serious Sam 2 got semi-fixed by this patch, but still messed up the input a little. I don't mind changing the processor affinity while in game to get it to work, but I hear a lot of games have this problem. I recently bought Serious Sam 2, Quake 4, Half-Life 2, and C&C: First Decade. Out of all of them only serious sam has given me any trouble, maybe Tiberium Sun in FD but for the most part it isn't a horribly big issue.

Hey all,
Ive got an Athalon X2 3800+ so I thought Id chime in with my experience.

I played COD2 which claims to support Dual core, but I still had problems. My solution was to hit ctr-alt-del after starting the game, and manually set the affinity to 1 cpu.

I play DOD:source a lot, and I also believe this game claims to support dual core. It doesnt though. After playing for 10-20 minutes it either freezes, crashes to the desktop, or blue-screens me. My solution again is to manually set the affinity to 1 cpu after starting the game. It only takes a second and Im used to it now so it doesnt even really bother me anymore. What does bother me is that I wish I had listened to my friends and gotten a single core 4800 instead of dual 3800+, but thats a different story.

Extrarius about your download problems, I had the same issues, but for me it wasnt related to dual core. I have an Nvidia Nforce4 motherboard which has all kinds of 'cool' features, and by 'cool' I mean shitty because they dont work, just like the dual core deal. Specifically, there was a built-in hardware firewall which I had to disable because it was fucking with my downloads, causing everything I downloaded to be corrupt. It also fucked up any multiplayer game because I guess it must have been even messing with the incoming data from the server. If this sounds like your possible problem, let me know and Ill see if I can remember some more details.

I've had some issues too, I've bought an AMD 4800 Dual Core, and sometimes when playing Lara Croft Legend, it would become ultra-fast.

Perhaps we could create a hacker program that would save process names in some txt file, and if it found them alive, would set their affinity to a single core...

Quote:Original post by AndreTheGiantExtrarius about your download problems, I had the same issues, but for me it wasnt related to dual core. I have an Nvidia Nforce4 motherboard which has all kinds of 'cool' features, and by 'cool' I mean shitty because they dont work, just like the dual core deal. Specifically, there was a built-in hardware firewall which I had to disable because it was fucking with my downloads, causing everything I downloaded to be corrupt. It also fucked up any multiplayer game because I guess it must have been even messing with the incoming data from the server. If this sounds like your possible problem, let me know and Ill see if I can remember some more details.

Oh man! I also have this! How did you disable your firewall? I need to check that out...

After running this processor (X24200+) I don't think I'll ever switch back to a single core. Like how I can be running a game like serious sam, and be compressing files or installing something else without any lag. It is a shame that it has a little trouble with timing, but like you said this really isn't a huge issue unless your a hardcore gamer that has to reopen the game 15 times a day. The goods outweigh the bads IMO.

Quote:Original post by Prozak
Perhaps we could create a hacker program that would save process names in some txt file, and if it found them alive, would set their affinity to a single core...

Better yet would be to write a program that finds people who are about to purchase a dual core processor, and tell them to buy a single core instead.

Quote:Original post by PumpkinPieman
After running this processor (X24200+) I don't think I'll ever switch back to a single core. Like how I can be running a game like serious sam, and be compressing files or installing something else without any lag. It is a shame that it has a little trouble with timing, but like you said this really isn't a huge issue unless your a hardcore gamer that has to reopen the game 15 times a day. The goods outweigh the bads IMO.

LOL thats hilarious. I always see ads saying that Dual core is the way to go if you want to do video compression at the same time as playing a game, or huge file decompression at the same time as watching a dvd. I always thought that was funny because who ever needs to do that?

Seriously though, have you tried doing the same thing on a single core? My previous PC was a Pentium4 2.4 ghz (single core) and it was able to do what you described and more, no problem.

Quote:Original post by Prozak
Oh man! I also have this! How did you disable your firewall? I need to check that out...

Cool! Ill have to wait till I get home to be sure, but I think it might have been as simple as removing the firewall using add/remove programs. ActiveArmor I think it was called. I dont remember if I had to disable something in the bios or not.


Also, one other game to add to the list is Painkiller. That had very strange behavior on dual core. Somteimes it would run at double speed and sometimes it would run at half speed. One time It crashed while running at half speed, and then I was never able to get it to change speeds again (either to normal, or double), even when I messed at length with the cpu affinities.

Quote:Original post by AndreTheGiant
LOL thats hilarious. I always see ads saying that Dual core is the way to go if you want to do video compression at the same time as playing a game, or huge file decompression at the same time as watching a dvd. I always thought that was funny because who ever needs to do that?

Me actually, because when I get my new monitor I'm going to be running visual studio on the other screen. So one will be counter-strike, and since there is long round times and I'm a rusher I'll switch over to program in the other and test my apps.

You may find it funny, but for me this was always a problem because of my last machine. The majority of the time the installers would really slow the machine down, so you literally couldn't do anything intensive like playing a game.

PS: I also do video editing from time to time.