Introduction
Today, the computers with multi-core processors are very common. However, when running programs, this is not enough to have a speed increase comparing with computer with a single core processor. The programs must be designed to parallelize the operations to benefit from the full power of the multi-core processors.
Total Uninstall development will try to benefit from this processing power for the most demanding operations and make your dual or quad core processor a worthy investment.
Multithreading registry scanning
Total Uninstall 5.7.0 is able to scan the registry in several parallel working threads. Because of the inevitable synchronizing overhead necessary to split and combine the scanning partial results the number of the simultaneous task is limited to the available processor cores. More parallel working threads will only penalize the overall performance in the real world.
This new feature can be disabled or tuned from the program option.
By default, the number of simultaneous tasks is set to be equal with the number of the detected processor cores. To disable this feature set the simultaneous tasks to 1.
Testing the registry scanning
Since in the theory things looks good, we tested the new feature in the real life. For this we created a scanning profile that scans only the registry.
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU | 1 task | 2 parallel tasks |
| Windows XP 32 bit | 3.1 seconds | 3.3 seconds |
| Windows Vista 64bit | 7.0 seconds | 6.0 seconds |
| Windows 7 64 bit | 5.0 seconds | 4.3 seconds |
From the above table we see that there is no real benefit from the parallel scan of the registry (here it is about fresh installed operating systems). However, if your experience is the same, the registry scan is not a problem for you. You are already lucky having a fast computer with small registry and you can disable the introduced feature.
| Intel Core 2 Quad CPU | 1 task | 2 parallel tasks | 3 parallel tasks | 4 parallel tasks |
| Windows 7 64 bit (no antivirus) | 10.5 seconds | 8.4 seconds | 7.5 seconds | 7.6 seconds |
For the above used system, with about 100 installed programs, without an antivirus the performance increase is about 25%. We also noticed the best choice for simultaneous tasks that in this case is 3 parallel tasks.
Then we installed the most offending antivirus for Total Uninstall from the point of view of the scanning performance impact. The new scanning time was increased as expected and Total Uninstall become unacceptable slow with one registry scanning task.
| Intel Core 2 Quad CPU | 1 task | 2 parallel tasks | 3 parallel tasks | 4 parallel tasks |
| Windows 7 64 bit (with antivirus) | 63 seconds | 37 seconds | 29 seconds | 23 seconds |
| Intel Core Duo CPU | 1 task | 2 parallel tasks |
| Windows Vista 32 bit (with antivirus) | 37 seconds | 25 seconds |
The parallel scan made a great speed up in this case.
Conclusion
Depending from your computer configuration your experience might be different. We recommend to use a chronometer to measure the registry scan time to find the optimal number of parallel tasks. If you have a security solution with a real time protection that slow down considerably the system then the new feature will make the Total Uninstall usable on your multi-core system.
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