How could I have missed that. I actually had GPU-z running on my second monitor while benching, mostly to keep an eye on temps and load, I never noticed the "memory used".
Well, if I had any doubts, then I guess that settles it. Thanks for the tip!
As for threading, I wish I could say I agree, but I dont. First of all, you have 4 cores, but you also have hyperthreading, which means 8 cores are exposed to the OS. Each core has the ability to run 2 threads, so its presented as 8 logical cores.
Now by setting affinity mask to 6, you are doing the exact thing you should NOT do, that is pin the threads to 2 logical cores on the same physical core (logical core counting starts with zero). Thats precisely what you need to avoid.
Dont have time for elaborate explanation, but people should leave those affinity mask settings alone if you are using windows 7. You will not gain from it, you will only lose. Windows 7 scheduler is aware of hyperthreading, will not schedule one logical cores sharing physical resources unless all other cores are busy. The only reason to set a mask is if you need one or more cores to be entirely dedicated to another application.
XP is different as it doesnt know about hyperthreading and might therefore schedule 2 heavy threads on the same physical core even if 3 other cores are idle.
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