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The default value for worker threads is zero. A setting of zero directs the SQL Server to automatically configure the number of worker threads at database startup. In our baseline tests max worker threads had default value of 544. This default value was modified to 704. This is the recommended value for databases using eight CPUs and a 64-bit system starting with SQL Server 2016 (13.x) SP2 and SQL Server 2017 (14.x). For more information about Microsoft’s recommendations, see Configure the max worker threads Server Configuration Option.
After testing a few max worker thread configurations, we found that increasing the value to 864 provided a slight performance improvement.