Thoughts on unparking cpu cores for gaming

Is it even necessary with ivy bridge? what do you guys think?

 

It's Os based, not CPU based. It proved to be a performance crippler a lot of times, so I keep on disable core parking even today.
In theory it shouldn't be necessary anymore, as windows decides when a core needs to be parked or when all of them are needed.
The common scenario is that windows parks a core or two, and forgets to enable them again.
Since I don't like that windows decides what to do, and since I want to use the CPU at its max power, I disable them.
There are a lot of good readings around, google a bit.

 

I Googled it but I just trust some of you guys on here more since you have hands on experience

 

I have never had windows park cores badly lol.

 

well i unparked using kingpins guide and it did get rid of microstutter i was experiencing in a few games

 

Some older games have multi core cpu issues so setting a manual cpu affinity can fix said problems (stutter, crash, etc)

Other than problem scenarios there is no reason to do it.

 

yea I remember Titan Quest was like that with dual core CPUs... had to set affinity or it would crash constantly.

 

I've tried it..never noticed a performance difference in games but maybe its because I only have dual core (the guides i found on google all referred to quad cores).

The disadvantage that I did notice was a shorter battery life. Windows parks the cores to save power, so if you disable that, your battery won't last as long.

 

i did lose about 15 minutes, but if that makes games run better then im all for it. it super easy to repark the cores too

 

I've tried unparking and have noticed no difference in fps or benchmark scores.

 

It just helps with microstutter and performance in older games and general use tasks

 

I used Bitsum Park Control Utility and it works great! It not only allows you to change the CPU park settings on the fly (without reboot), but it also adds the option to your windows advanced power settings. You can set the values differently for when using your battery and while the laptop is plugged in, and you can set those specific settings to only effect one power setting (high performance, custom, etc). So you can unpark your CPUs easily before gaming and then reset them afterwards. I don't even bother because I simply set it to the default 50% while unplugged, so all CPUs are only unparked while I am plugged in. I just like the idea of having the ability to use 100% of my i7 when I want to, and set the amount of power saving while on battery. So far so good...

 

This +1
Definitely observable especially if running Windows 7 Ultimate. Once disabled it's smooth sailing all the way.

 

Same here, i dint even know what is "parking cores" until Planetside 2 forums.