Windows XP SP2 Dual Core Performance Fix

Microsoft has released a hotfix to improve performance on dual core systems. It fixes a possible decrease in performance during demand based switching. Cool 'n Quiet must be enabled for the fix to work, and Microsoft will only send you the hot fix if you have been experiencing the problem. The issue is how do you know if you are or not? AMD told that this can have an impact on some games although I've not heard of any problems.

Possible decrease in performance during demand-based switching

Demand-based switching refers to the changing of ACPI processor performance states in response to system workloads. For example, demand-based switching can change voltage and frequency in response to system workloads. Windows XP processor power management implements demand-based switching through the Adaptive processor throttling policy. The Adaptive processor throttling policy dynamically and automatically adjusts the processor current performance state in response to the computers CPU use. The Adaptive processor throttling policy works without user intervention. If you run Windows XP on a computer that has multiple processors, single-threaded workloads may move across available CPUs. This migration behavior is a natural artifact of how Windows schedules work across available CPU resources. However, if a computer is running with the Adaptive processor throttling policy, this thread migration may cause problems. For example, the Windows kernel power manager may not be able to correctly calculate the optimal target performance state for the processor. This problem occurs because the individual logical or physical processor core may appear to be less busy than the processor package actually is. On performance benchmarks that use single-threaded workloads, this artifact may become evident in the following ways:

• Decreased performance
• A high degree of variance between successive runs of the same benchmark tests

The hotfix that is described in this article includes changes to the kernel power manager. These changes make it possible to track CPU use across the processor package. This tracking helps calculate an increased target performance state.

Download Windows XP Dual Core Hotfix