AA3 doesn't use all my processors!

I have a dual xeon machine running two 3.2 ghz processors multi threaded with XPsp2.
If i do the Alt-Ctl-Del to open the task manager, and then go to the performance tab I can view the processor usage.
XP pretends I have 4 processors because of the multi-threading, even though I have two in reality.

If I play a complicated session in AA1.5 (my gold standard) the processor load is split evenly between the four graphs, and the session will play fine.
The same session in AA3 is utter overload, and my computer cannot keep up with the effects, etc, so it just stutters along.
When I look at the processor load, AA3 is maxing out one out of the four graphs while the other is silent!

This makes me thik that AA3 is only using 1/4th of my processor power!

Thus far, this is the only program I have encountered that handles my processors as such.

Any advice out there?

I'm more surprised about what you say WRT AA1.5. Although specific processing routines in AA3.0 are designed to run in parallel (that's what makes NR so amazingly fast on a four-core processor) most of it doesn't. I can't talk for complicated mixes as that's not what I do, but from the perspective of audio restoration this alone makes A3.0 vastly superior to previous incarnations.

Heres what Adobe-Asia Pacific Support had to say about multi-threading
"With regard to your inquiry, Yes, Dual, Quad, hyper threaded or PC any multiple CPU (doesn't matter how many CPUs they have). Audition is a multi-threaded app, so the OS assigns each thread to a different CPU if available. This has been in all versions of Audition (1.0, 1.5, 2.0). "

While I agree that some opewrations only seem to use a single core others use multiple cores. 

I have a quad core running at 3ghz with 2gb ram on XP2.  I have some very complex mixes 25+ tracks with heaps of cpu intensive fx and this baby screams.
Are you sure its the cpu(s) that are struggling ?  I found that I had to put a Raptor 10k rpm drive in just so the quad core wasn't being starved by the drive delivering the tracks for processing?

Pulling up an old thread here - I've been doing some restoration work and spending more time in AA than in recent history.  My DAW is a quad-core Q6600 and AA is only tapping one core's worth of CPU.  The OS is XP Home SP3 - other applications use all cores at once.

Any tips on what I should be looking for here?

I found NR uses 4 cores only if Spectral Decay is at ZERO.

I've just moved from the quad core Q6600 (overclocked to 3ghz) to the dual core E8500 (overclocked to 4ghz).  I'm fairly certain that AA rarely (if ever) uses more than a single core.  But having said that I have never had the cpu struggling.  The cpu is heldback by the rate at which data is delivered to it by the hard disk - even with a Raptor

I have a half dozen machines (all running XP sp2) ranging from single core 1.2 gHz to dual core 3 gHz on which multiple versions of AA are installed.  Recently added AA3 to a machine designed and used primarily for video editing.  I employs a graphics card I would not typically install on a machine primarily used for audio editing but it is still  relatively conservative, I don't require a gamers interactive intensity but color management and respectable screen redraws.

In any case the machine was not tweaked for audio work but for logistics reasons ended up loading a four minute 8 track 32 bit float session to mix.  It took hours to achieve anything like respectable performance.  Installed AA 1.5 loaded same audio files (no changes to audio or video cards) and session ran fine right out of the gate.  Transferred AA3 session to 1.2 gHz single processor 7 yr. old machine, slower but roughly same amount of RAM that has been tweaked for audio performance (OS loads with 19 listed processes).  Session ran find with no obvious 'speed' differences to AA1.5

I was surprised enough results to be contemplating relating info to forum.  AA3 is different enough from previous versions to not be amenable to direct comparison . . . An assumption that might not be 'true' but reinforced, yet again, by these results.  My initial assumption to my response to issues with video machine were not that AA3 was at fault but rather that I had conflicts between audio and video cards which AA3 was unable to mitigate in any way I can't explain nor even have assumptions about why I didn't experience problems with AA1.5 I also didn't have problems with Reaper, Cuebase 4

No matter what Adobe says I do not think AA3 can be considered, in it's multitrack mode, to be optimized for multi processor use.  Edit mode is, if anything legacy of CEP and does seem to execute some things much more rapidly with multiple processors.  But this is not true of even all destructive edits.  I do not see a significant time savings while editing (distinct from mixing) on the 1.2 gHz compared with 1.8 single and 2.8 dual core machines.  I do not do much that falls into the restoration but do use a fair amount of convolution and full reverb.  There is some gain (most of which is lost by how AA3 saves data (and I very seldom have only one audio file loaded even when 'just' editing))

None of this means that AA3 is not a useful upgrade but it's multi core performance has been a consistent disappointment.  (I can't explain how bridge would interfere with multi track session but the video machine is my only machine on which bridge is installed (not from AA but via CS2 and from which I never got around to uninstalling))

I can't explain my results and will probably not perform exhaustive diagnostics they do, for me, tend to support my assumptions about how I've set up my hardware.  Multiple machines some of which are tweaked for fairly specific tasks, with general purpose machines providing pointers to modifications that work to improve performance on specific tasks.  One of my eight year old 1.2 gHz laptops I use for field recording has apparently decided that it does not want to record anymore.  At the moment there is quite literally nothing with which to replace it, in terms of integrated (fast) work flow.  For a lot of reasons I had (as long ago as a decade) high hopes for dual, multi core processors . . .  I have been fairly universally disappointed application implementation

in any case I am assuming we have as much response as we are ever going to get from Adobe concerning multi core implementation . . . in future versions it might or might not show improvement

Did you download and install the patch?  It's just been released and, according to the information on the website, addresses multicore machine performance, amongst other things. 

"Spectral tools no longer crash machines with more than four CPU cores"

That's the only mention of multiple cores that I could see.

I assume they mean more than ONE core - not too many have more than four cores I would suspect.

I would sometimes get a crash using Spectral tools when i had my quad core

I assume they mean more than ONE core - not too many have more than four cores I would suspect.

This may have been badly worded, and shouldn't really use the word 'core'. It really should relate to the number of processors running - which with a single core machine would be two. So, a quad core would have eight, and I think that this is most likely what's being referred to here. I presume that this is all to do with what the processor affinity setting is for any given process, but I haven't really looked at this in any detail, because I'm running everything on old P4s at the moment, so I'm stuck with just the two anyway.

the number of processors running - which with a single core machine would be two. So, a quad core would have eight,

Eh?  The Core 2 multicore processors dropped the abortion known as hyperthreading, so what you see is what you get.  Four cores is four processors.

This changes in the just released (Nov 2008) Core i7 processors, which have hyperthreading again, and so show as twice as many threads as cores - but just like before, only some operations can be split this way.

Paul

Eh?  The Core 2 multicore processors dropped the abortion known as hyperthreading, so what you see is what you get.  Four cores is four processors.

Yeah, I should have checked more carefully. I must admit that I'd just read about the Nehalem's new internal architecture, and assumed that when they mentioned hyperthreading in the blurb about that, that they hadn't actually dropped it.