"Unparking CPU cores", what's this bullshit about?

deWaardt · May 3, 2016

So for years now I've been reading about "unparking your CPU cores to improve gaming performance".

Now I've never interested myself in this because I thought it was bullshit.

Now people have been telling me to unpark my Athlon 860k to improve FPS in GTA V and Bf4, as those games max out my CPU at a 100% and show video footage of it working.

Now I'm kind of asking, what is this CPU core unparking? How does it work, what does it do and does it actually improve performance?

To me it sounds a bit the same as installing racing spark plugs into your car to make it go faster..

Is it actually real or just some fairy tail?

Moonzy · May 3, 2016

this link might help you

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2166508/unparking-cpu-cores.html

tl;dr, if your cpu is already working as hard as it can (which it should), you wont see any differences

im guessing unparking is popular when multithreaded cpu starts appearing and games/softwares are still using single cores for processing

nowadays thats not the case

deWaardt · May 3, 2016

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

this link might help you

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2166508/unparking-cpu-cores.html

tl;dr, if your cpu is already working as hard as it can (which it should), you wont see any differences

im guessing unparking is popular when multithreaded cpu starts appearing and games/softwares are still using single cores for processing

nowadays thats not the case

Okay thanks.

So that puts the myth to rest. GTA V and Bf4 already run as good as it can on the current clockspeed of my CPU. When I get a new cooler I'll overclock the thing a bit more to improve it a bit.

incarnate · May 3, 2016

the Athlon only has 4 cores, so it's not necessary. it was more of a thing for the fx line. Windows would park cores and shift the load to the unparked cores. This would often take a whole module out, which would be bad since it would park an fpu which are used a lot in gaming.