01-24-2012, 05:44 PM
Quote:It's simple, by creating 2 physical cores and 2 virtual ones, applications like Firefox only use 25% of CPU because of no multi-thread/multi-core support, by disabling HT Firefox would use 50% of CPU.You're wrong
The case is simple. If you had a single core with HT disabled, you'd see a 100% load. But when you enable HT, the situation is as follows - Windows task manager shows 2 cores (it can't tell a virtual core from a real) and it does see that one of them is loaded fully. But since Firefox is a single-thread application, it can't load both "cores". So this is why task manager shows you 50%. Same goes when you switch to a real dual core. It will show you 25% any time when you use a single-thread application. Because the other real core and two virtual ones will halt.
This doesn't mean the CPU isn't loaded fully or "used not efficient". Well, this only means that you're dealing with a single-threaded applications. And reducing core count on your CPU won't improve speed - single-thread performance will remain the same.
So don't worry about this. For FF use ADblock and fasterfox. The first blocks ads that load CPU a lot.
You might overclock the CPU as well, this might add more performance for sure.