Turn off HyperThreading without BIOS

Question

I need to turn off HyperThreading from my i5-3210 notebook since it hinders my IDE performance. My i3 took about 10+ seconds from compile to run in my Android VM, same code runs in my AMD in about 10 seconds, while it took about 6 minutes in i5.

I am sure the problem lies on i5's HyperThreading, because I noticed that all 4 logical cores stayed at 100% for more than 5 minutes while it was loading VM while compiling my code. At that times, even mouse cursor stuttered, Youtube stopped playing video, and audio stuttered. After compiling done, then all 4 fluctuated wildly for another 1-2 minutes when VM loaded and started my code.

The VM is HAXM running Android 6, and also VirtualBox with GenyMotion. IDE is Android Studio, Virtualization has been enabled, my notebook is ASUS A55V, and I've tried to look in bios to turn it off but couldn't find it. I also don't want to restrict it to one core since I need to run them on multiple cores using affinity. And I am sure that I need to see my code performance in multiple cores. So, restricting using affinity like many people suggested is not acceptable solution.

Any one has any suggestion on how to disable 1 logical core in each cores? Can it be done? Or any other suggestion?

Thank you

Answer 1

I am going to be honest, I am not familiar with the Intel HAXM, but you might be able to throttle it to use less resources. If that does have a setting you may want to look in the Android Studio configuration:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19986498/android-studio-using-100-cpu-at-all-times-no-background-processes-appear-to

This thread mentions a program call Process Lasso which worked well for them:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31350847/android-studio-using-100-cpu-on-an-i7-processor-for-project-rebuild