Microsoft has re-released a patch that the performance of AMD’s Bulldozer processors should improve. The patch ensures that the scheduler of the Windows better in line with the different cores of the cpu.
The two patches are of influence on the way in which the various cores are used. The Bulldozer chips have four modules, each with two cores, which, for example, L2-cache sharing. At the time that not all eight cores are used, it is better to have each module as a single core use, which includes access to the full amount of L2 cache. The first patch of Microsoft jumps to this and AMD claims in some tests, performance gains of ten percent.
The second patch has to do with the powermanagement. Windows 7 would sometimes cores to sleep to go, while they are actually still useful work. The patch should then also prevent cores prematurely be switched off and in that way, performance gains result.
Whether this affects the energy consumption is not entirely clear. Possible Bulldozer-cpu’s faster, but the chance exists that this comes at the expense of energy efficiency. Previously, Microsoft already had a patch out, but the influence on the performance was in most cases negligible; in some instances, the performance of Bulldozer cpu’s even backwards.