There are three parameters for measuring a processor’s power; its generation, its speed, and the number of cores in a processor. As a stand-alone computer part, this is the thing that decides a processor’s power anyway, only it won’t determine how powerful your system is. Different elements like the amount of RAM and the GPU also play an essential role in making a system all the more powerful. All things considered, apps, especially games indicate the minimum number of cores a processor ought to have for them to run smoothly.
Here is how you can find the number of cores in a processor, and also limit the number of cores that an app can use.
Find Cores In A Processor
Open the Task Manager and go to the Performance tab. Select CPU from the left column to see its performance. Under the CPU usage chart, you can see the details for your processor which incorporates the number of cores it has. This is the number of actual physical cores and does exclude the virtual cores.
Limit Core Usage By Applications
You can limit the number of cores an application uses. You might want to do this for the games. The procedure is the same regardless which type of app you want to limit the core usage for.
To start, run the app you want to limit core use for. Next, open the Task Manager and go to the “Processes” tab. Right-click on the app and select ‘Go to details’.
This will take you to the apps details tab. If you want, you can search for the application in the Details tab yourself, however, it’s less easier to find it this way. In the Details’ tab, all you have to do is right-click the highlighted process and select ‘Set Affinity’.
A new window called ‘Processor affinity’ will open. Select your desired number of cores you want to permit the app to use and click ok.
This setting won’t persist if you close the app and open it again. The Processor Affinity window displays all of you cores i.e. real and virtual ones. The screenshot above shows eight cores for a processor that has just 4 real cores. Allocate cores just within the scope of real cores in your processor and you should be good to go.
Limiting cores will affect how well or how ineffectively an app runs. Because an app is using a set number of cores doesn’t mean the other apps won’t be using those cores too. You can limit the number of cores being used by an app but you can’t make it so that an app has exclusive utilization of a specific number of cores. Your system will consume cores as it wants to keep things running easily and smoothly.
An app won’t use more than the assigned number of cores but, if the performance of the app proves to be insufficient to function, the app may freeze or even crash.
