Start an Application Assigned to a Specific CPU in Windows 7, 8, or Vista

Windows has an option that lets you start an application and set the CPU affinity, which assigns the application to run on a specific CPU in a dual-core system.

To start an application you have to pass the affinity flag to the start utility in the command prompt. For instance, if you wanted to start notepad assigned to CPU, you could use the following command:

c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /C start /affinity 1 notepad.exe

You can see in task manager that the process is only assigned to CPU 0

To start a process on CPU 0, use the following command switch:

/affinity 1

For CPU 1, use this switch:

/affinity 2

You can use a number up to the number of CPU cores or CPUs in your system. The affinity is essentially CPU core # + 1, so /affinity 5 would use CPU 4.

You can almost modify the shortcut for an item to make it run on the specific CPU, by just prepending the full “c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /C start /affinity 1 ” onto the shortcut target. The only drawback to this approach is that the command prompt window will briefly flash on the screen.