On computers with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 there is a fairly unknown feature called " Core Parking " or, in Italian, Parking of the nuclei. This is an energy saving setting whereby, on a PC equipped with a multi-core processor, some cores are temporarily deactivated when the load on the system is low.
This feature is activated every time you choose a combination of energy savings other than the maximum performance, where Core Parking is deactivated by default (see In the advanced energy saving options of Windows 7).
If you work in an environment where there is no problem of saving energy and heat and you use the computer for video games, graphics programs or other heavier programs that use a lot of the processor, it can be a good idea to make the most of the CPU, by disabling Core Parking .
You can see that the cores of your processor go into the Parked state, opening the Windows 7 Resource Monitor, to the CPU tab, noting the use of the cores on the right side of the window.
The energy saving system of Windows 7 activates and deactivates the CPU cores almost instantly; however, since CPU usage usually occurs in very short periods, switching from Parked to non-Parked can affect overall performance.
There is little documentation on this functionality, however, what is certain is that disabling the parking of the CPU cores ensures complete exploitation of the processor which, consequently, should increase the overall performance of the computer .
The only side effect is a greater consumption of energy and heat which, in a summer period, may not be desirable.
Since Windows has no way to activate or deactivate the Parking Core manually, without going to modify registry keys, an automatic program can be used.
First of all, Microsoft has provided a hotfix for computers with processors that use the AMD Bulldozer architecture, (AMD FX Series, AMD Opteron 4200 and AMD Opteron 6200) because on these processors the core parking system is not optimized and can reduce performance.
The hotfix allows you to disable the parking of the Core selectively.
On all computers you can use the small automatic tool called Unpark CPU instead .
With this program, which does not require installation, you can check (Check) if the processor cores are parked and you can choose to disable Parking on all or only on some cores .
To change the parked state on a single core, select it and press Unpark.
You need to restart your PC later, before the changes take effect.
A similar program, more useful on laptops, is Park Control (32bit and 64bit) which allows you to activate or deactivate the functionality of the cores parked in Windows 7 depending on the energy plan used and if the computer is battery powered or connected to the network electricity.
It may therefore be an optimal choice to disable the Parking Core when the computer is connected with the plug to a power outlet and activate it instead to save battery and prevent it from running out soon.
Any changes made with Park Control are immediately active and there is no need to restart the computer.
These are not experimental tools, even if you act on the CPU, there are no contraindications other than those indicated in the article (increased heat and energy consumption).
You can then try to see if the performance improves and how much in using the PC with a video game or a program that consumes a lot of CPU.
In other articles, however, I remember that:
- Windows slowdowns and 100% CPU usage can be avoided
- It can speed up the execution of high priority programs on Windows
- With a few simple tools you can overclock processor (CPU) and video card (GPU).
