f13.net

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256/en-us

Huh? Should I be installing this on my core 2 duo system? I can read most of their kbase stuff ok, but for some reason this one was confusing me last night. Might have been the beer.

It does look like you may need to install the hotfix since you have a multiple-core proc.

Of course, it could also make your computer assplode. 

 :-D

I just patched my puter with the hotfix for my dual core AMD64. Didn't break anything, but I can't attest to any performance increase. As usual, MS is being very vague about what systems this specifically affects.

Yes, you will need this patch if you run a Core2Duo.

The problem is as follows.

Current Intel and AMD processors are multi core which means that you actually have 2 or more processors sitting on one Chip.

Both Intel and AMD support power management features for those multi core processors. So the processor frequency can be turned down if a core is idle, the core voltage can be reduced or a core can even be shut down completely.

These power management modes can be set individually and differently for every core on your chip. So if you have two cores for example one can be running at full speed while the other one is only running with a lower frequency because it is idle and has nothing to do. On multiprocessor systems like your Core2Duo single threads or processes can be transferred from one processor (or core) to another to balance the load.

When Windows XP does this sometimes it is not waking up the core correctly. So if the idle core was running at 200 MHz because it had nothing to do it might still only run at 200 MHz although now your video processing thread is running on it.

This fix patches that issue.

Thanks. I thought so but as mentioned, it sounds like they're being more vague than normal.

I was looking through the kbase because I promptly crashed Oblivion and EQ2 minutes into the games :|

Jeff,

Are these 'power management modes' stuff that happens behind the scenes, or is it something one sets up through some 3rd party software, or some other utility? I ask because my AMD/Asus motherboard combo comes with its own type of overclocking features and I am wondering if there might be some interference between the Asus BIOS frequency settings and what WinXP might be doing on its own.

You definitely want to apply this patch (and any that come along in the future, there are still decently significant timing issues as well).

I also found this one. Not sure if it's led to any crashes, but I do use the Classic theme.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916199/en-us