AXTBF%ALASKA.BITNET@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu (Tim Friest - Programmer/Analyst) (06/02/90)
A lot of people seem to be under the misconception that multi-tasking always slows down every task on a machine... This is simply not the case. If I have a word processor that basically just sits there waiting for me to type a key, and a terminal program downloading something at 1200 baud (say taking 20% of the CPU) and a game running which uses about 30% of the CPU, I've still got 50% of the CPU left (well, it's probably less, but lets keep it simple). That means I could run the game, and the terminal program and the WP again without noticing ANY degragation in speed. On the other hand, if I was doing an extremely math intensive ray-trace in the background which eats up every CPU cycle it can get its hands on, I would notice speed degragation with anything else I ran.... The point the people are making about games needing to multi-task is simply, if I run the game without anything else running, it is exactly the same as if the game took over the machine and didn't let me run anything else.... However, if I want to choose to run something else, that is my choice (it is my computer you know). Depending on what I'm running and how CPU hungry the game is, I might or might not notice any differnce in performance...