CPU core affinity

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Here's a blue post stating that WoW really doesn't do much with more than 2 cores, which I think I misunderstood to say that it was related to affinity. :P My bad! /drunk

[edit] Nope, not THAT /drunk. Original blue that prompted this post (also linked in the OP):

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...geNo=1&sid=1#4

You can use this to let WoW run on a specific core(s) but it only works up to two cores. If you set it on 15, you just let the game use 2 out of your 4 processors but you didn't tell it which ones.

Q u o t e:


So if I am understanding correctly, WoW still only uses two cores, while Windows will, instead of using the same two 'default' cores, be split into other, unused, cores?

Core 1-----Core 2------Core 3------Core 4
WoW--------WoW---------Windows etc.

I dont know much about this whole thing but bottom line, when will WoW itself use four-cores?

World of Warcraft is capped to two cores because we set the default processaffinitymask to 2. There's actually quite a few threads that the game runs but mainly 2 or 3 decent-sized ones and a dozen little ones. Windows can distribute all of these among other cores if you tell it to but you can't specifically tell what thread will go where.

Note the part in bold/underline in that last sentence. It is a critical point. I leave the why as an exercise to the reader.