A recommendation made by the vendor for Database Tuning SQL Server on Windows Server 2008 R2 is to apply CPU affinity for the SQL Server process. Or the affinity mask option

 As of SQL Server 2008 R2 , ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET PROCESS AFFINITY , CPU affinity can be configured on up to 256 logical processors.  

 The options are:

AUTO (Default setting; no threas assigned to a CPU)

Distribute SQL Server Worker thread to specifc CPU range

 Applying an affinity mask , partitions the SQL processes on specific cores.

 Notes:

1)  Do not enable affinity masking , without careful analysis.

2)  Check sys.dm_os_schedulers (DMV) .  Returns a recordset where  one scheduler is mapped to a processor.  The DMV gives you a good picture of the schedulers

3)  What is affinity masking   aka CPU affinity masking in SQL Server ?   Affinity masking is an option where a processor is assigned a specific thread.

4)   Prove that excessive thread migration between processors is causing excessive context switching , causing performance decrease. 

5)  Servers with 33 – 64 processors support affinity masking only on 64 bit architecture

6)  A Microsoft recommendation is to not enable Operating system affinity masking and SQL Server affinity masking simultanenously.