How about taking advantage of Intel's Ht tecnology, by using one of the logical cores only for gaming processes, and the other for system processes? I had this idea after noticing that when playing a game, that this happens: 50% core 1 (game & system) 50% core 2 (game & system) So how about: 85-100% core 1 (game) 10-20% core 2 (system)

What about hyperthreading ? Do not type anything in this space.

Essentially, your designation of splitting cores is irrelevant, because both examples you cite are basically the same scenario. The logical cores distinction is very misleading - there is only one core and two front ends (if you will). Their performance on the back end (non-technical terms here) can only be optimized slightly. The HTT optimization has real world gains when you have multiple, low-demand threads to run. Basically, there is room to schedule these threads so that their execution speed is not in any way changed, but that more of them are processed in a shorter period of time. Games do not provide this luxury. They are typically high-demand (cutting out room for optimization) and single-threaded (without optimization for different code streams). Also, there is the issue of the primary cache (L1) being shared among two threads in HTT. This would probably only lower game performance. Wait for dual-core CPU's and games which make use of them.

Thanks for the info; I tried manging the processes and it was really kind of useless. I even think that the fps started to drop on some big levels. A task manger screenshot: http://img150.echo.cx/img150/5528/ClipBoard-1.jpg

how do you "manage" the processes..short of terminating or starting them? DFI lanparty 875p-t LGA775 2.8 @ 3.44 2 x 512 Geil Ultra Platinum DDR500 @ DDR490 128 meg Radeon 9800 Pro DUAL 36 GIG WD Raptors RAID0 21 in. 19.8 viewable Sony Trinitron 4 Mbps cable

Simple, in processes tab, you right click the process and select the last option, you will now have a list of processors for cpu0 to cpu31. Select the processors you want to use with the process. btw, you can only manage user processes, systems and other processes are restricted.