cyrnel

"Flop out" meaning to go somewhere else and get work done because that app is taking too long. Sure they would see an improvement, unless the test were designed to prevent it.

Knife, I'm a bit baffled by your contention. The XP thread scheduler is neurotic and wasteful but it will show an increase in work with multiple cores and multiple single-threaded applications. NT has had parallelism built into the kernel since way back when. XP Home will see some less benefit due to its further restrained scheduling support vs. multi-core + HT. But the benefit is there to experience.

Try setting affinity (for a few more % benefit) with task mgr or one of many launch utils. Monopolize each core with separate tasks and time vs. disabling one core completely. I don't know how you interpret the increase in work as other than an increase in performance. Not only is it measurable, but it's obvious to users making rigorous use of multiple single-threaded apps. XP's scheduler is less efficient than tuned, multi-threaded apps, and it's possible to sabotage the benefit with I/O or common resource blocks, (including user input) but otherwise independent apps do eat this stuff up.

I did have a customer a bit ago who was disappointed with his dual-core laptop. He hadn't patched XP power management for multi-core use and it would never load up either processor. That thing was a dog. Now I couldn't pry it from his cold dead fingers.

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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195