SP2.... dual core... HT?

OK i have heard from time to time that SP2 is a necessity for dual core processors. I have heard that theres quite a good performance increase over SP1 with dual core systems... is this ture. Would SP2 give a performance boost for an older Hyperthreading processor seems as how an HT processor has 2 logical cores?

Thanks

I've never heard anything like that. Is there an article or something?

I know that SP2 comes with a small program called Data Excution Prevention if the CPU supports it. A64 and above do but Athlon XP's at the time never got intergrated into them. But I'm not sure that SP2 will give dual core systems a boost I haven't read anywhere when reading on reviews for dual cores.

Maybe cause you set 1 core to do programs and the other to keep virus scans and other stuff I suppose.

AngelfireUk83 said:

I know that SP2 comes with a small program called Data Excution Prevention if the CPU supports it. A64 and above do but Athlon XP's at the time never got intergrated into them. But I'm not sure that SP2 will give dual core systems a boost I haven't read anywhere when reading on reviews for dual cores.

Maybe cause you set 1 core to do programs and the other to keep virus scans and other stuff I suppose.

Click to expand...

You can set affinity and detail off various processes to the various cores. That's an XP Pro feature, has been for a while IIRC. DEP is very cool, I use it, and I've cut down on the virus-catching since I started using it.

But realistically, there's very little difference between 1A and 2.

SP2 isn't really a necessity over SP1 for DC or HT CPU's, as long as you've installed the UnmapViewOfFile hotfix to SP1. According to the below article, a program that uses large mapped file views to share information between two processes may experience a significant performance decrease. The performance degradation occurs in the UnmapViewOfFile function. The problem occurs if you install SP1 on an P4 PC that has more than one logical processor.

Performance degradation occurs in the UnmapViewOfFile function
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;815227

can you download individual hotfixxes.... it seems as though i need to install sp2 to get that hotfix

Try Windows Update Catalog. More info here;

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323166