Windows 10 feature 2

Windows 10 Update 19H2 promises to improve single-thread/dual-thread CPU performance


Microsoft has announced a new feature that will be coming to the Windows 10 19H2 update. This new feature will offer better CPU core optimization, will be integrated directly to the operating system, and promises to speed up single-threaded applications by up to 15%.

Now in case you didn’t know, modern-day CPUs feature some cores that are better/faster than others. Until today, Windows 10 was unable to fully take advantage – on the Intel side – of those favoured cores. This is about to change though with the upcoming Windows 10 update. On Intel CPUs with Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, we may see performance increases by up to 15% in single-threaded/dual-threaded scenarios.

It’s also worth noting that Microsoft has already introduced better core awareness for the Zen processors with Windows 10 1903. Therefore, this new feature may not bring any significant performance increase on AMD’s processors.

As Microsoft stated:

“A CPU may have multiple “favored” cores (logical processors of the highest available scheduling class). To provide better performance and reliability, we have implemented a rotation policy. This policy distributes work more fairly among these favored cores.”

By offering a better rotation policy, critical instructions will be distributed more evenly among the favored cores so that they are executed quicker.

Theoretically, this should increase performance in some games that rely heavily on one or two CPU cores/threads. Such games are Far Cry New Dawn, CODE VEIN, The Surge 2 and more. As such, it will be interesting to benchmark these games once the update goes live.