Single Vs Multithreaded Application

[k1fox]

Hey techies. I've been reading reviews about processors and single and multi thread performance. Can you guys name me some applications that are primarily single threaded and those that are multithreaded, whereby the more cores the better. Thanks.

 

[corroded]

Gaming or otherwise...?

Most, if not all older applications are sinlge threaded. Meaning they only tap one cpu

New applications can be multithreaded but not necessarily. Look at the CPU testing articles here and you will see the different applications they use to test the CPUs.

In my usage, I game a bit and World of tanks is a single threaded game while the neewer game FireFall is mulitthreaded...

So, for World of Tanks, my i7's 8 logical cores are a waste while in Firefall the load is distributed across most of the cores.

Is one "better than the other" Meh... I will lean toward multithreading.

 

[mbreslin1954]

HandBrake, the open source video encoding software, is a good example of a very multi-threaded application. It will use as many threads as you have. Most anything that deals with editing or encoding video is very multi-threaded, as working with video is by nature a parallel operation. Look at video cards, GPUs, they are nothing but what used to be called vector processors, SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) machines.

7Zip, the file compressor/decompressor, is another good example of a multi-threaded application.

LAME, the open source audio encoder, is a good example of a single-threaded application. It will never use more than one thread (so when I'm encoding MP3 files, I just run four or more copies at the same time, each encoding a list of audio files).

From what I've read, the majority of major new games are multi-threaded, that is, they take advantage of at least two cores, if not more. Take a look at Tom's periodic articles on the "Best Gaming CPUs for the Money".

 

[corroded]

lol.. hell yes forgot Handbrake... it really taps the system... it was the first time I really saw an application use the whole CPU

 

[k1fox]

Thanks very much for your response guys. I needed a new system but due to budgeting constraints I had to settle with an ivy bridge i3 but I don't encode video/audio and all that. I game casually every now and then so I guess this processor will be fine. I had to scale back on the processor to get one of the new AMD R7 GPU. My next move is to go from 4gb to 8.