Just a note on X3:TC – it’s a single-threaded game(well theres another thread for sound processing, but it’s probably less than 10% of overall load) unfortunately, and due to CPU/OS limitations, although it seams that it’s somewhat using all cores(25%-30% each roughly) it’s just the OS “passing” the thread through all cores in a round ribbon fashion. That applies to all single threaded apps unfortunately, and if the process sticks to one core or is passed between them it doesn’t make much difference(but AMD was going to introduce a countermeasure to it in Bulldozer, so if it will happen that gives us hope until programmers at Microsoft will learn how to handle this(and I’m afraid that before they do it will be way too late ;-) ) ). You can easily check if an application benifits from multi-cores by using affinity setting in task manager(right click on process).

That’s all I guess ;-) (it’s just I’m playing X3 on a 2.8Ghz C2Q…gimmie a 4,5Ghz dualcore! ;-D )

After reading your article, I feel that I have finally found a reasonable arguement for leaving “Turbo Mode” enabled and my forthcoming build will benefit from your research. That said, I would also love to see a comparison of running the 860 with and without Hyperthreading enabled. To me, that is just as important as your research on Turbo Mode on/Turbo Mode off.

Good work my man. I look forward to coming back to your site more often :-)