Processor Affinity and single core game designs

[ThinkTank]

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/change-the-processor-affinity-setting-in-windows-7-to-gain-a-performance-edge/5322

Core Maximizer provides these benefits.

I claim you should use it for many of the following reasons:

1. You use Windows XP and the benefits are greater there.

2. You have a laptop and running one core at 100% and 20 degrees higher temps will cause your laptop to thermal throttle at an earlier threshold.

3. You believe load balancing your OS is a good thing. Having I/O, Networking, and PCI access balanced over multiple cores will maintain your sim speed when your computer struggles with Forged Alliance.

ren_shownetworkstats command issued in the FA console will display the sim speed of all the players in the game.

The minimum CPU for a 8 player Setons game is a 3ghz with 2 or more cores. The minimum GFX is a ATI 4770 (IMHO)

From my experience, all of you Setons players need to buy a new computer. My OC 4Ghz upgrade cost me $300 for a new MB and Processor.

[ZaphodX]

According to Zep this will make no difference on windows 7.

[ThinkTank]

I know, that is why I am quantifying my argument with him here. If you run a process load monitor in Windows 7 you will see that FA runs one core at %100 and ~20 degrees higher. That result is from a Full ATX tower with 5 fans. You can imagine how bad it gets with the craptops most of you choose to play with.

[Ze_PilOt]

I guess it can if you run multiple heavy programs (and not multi threaded) at the same time.

From my test, it has 0 influence over FA on a normal situation.

[ThinkTank]

I think you are talking about the game benchmarks but I don't know how you came to your conclusions. Would you agree, if it provides no detriment to the game, it should be used to solve OS related performance and temperature problems?

In my nightmares I imagine the other players streaming music, pron, Skype, torrenting, Teamspeak, and a browser while they play. You want to balance in this case.

[Ze_PilOt]

1. You use Windows XP and the benefits are greater there.

It's true that it will perform better.
But stop using XP (a twelve years old OS !!) will make your computer run better with everything, not only FA.

2. You have a laptop and running one core at 100% and 20 degrees higher temps will cause your laptop to thermal throttle at an earlier threshold.

I don't own a laptop so it might be true. But loading FA on core 1 will probably take 100% of that core too, you are just moving the charge around.

3. You believe load balancing your OS is a good thing. Having I/O, Networking, and PCI access balanced over multiple cores will maintain your sim speed when your computer struggles with Forged Alliance.

7 perform way better than XP on these specific points, and it's already balancing these over your cores.

The only case where I can see a real use of it is if you are running a livestream that encode your FA stream on a single core too. Then not having them on the same core can help (even I'm pretty sure seven will move one of the process on another core by itself).

It's probably more true if you are running multiple app that doesn't take much CPU. Then It will not balance it on other core. But that's not the case with FA.

[ThinkTank]

WinXT was a fine OS. I am saying Win7 can benefit from balancing too. If the OS is balancing all of these tasks well, why remove one core by running it 100% and only give the OS 3 remaining cores to work with?

[Ze_PilOt]

WinXT was a fine OS. I am saying Win7 can benefit from balancing too. IF the OS is balancing all of these tasks well, why remove one core by running it 100% and only give the OS 3 remaining cores to work with?

If FA is 100% on core 0, moving it to core 1 will make core 1 at 100%.

I don't see how you can reduce the overall charge doing that, sorry.

[ThinkTank]

That is not how Core maximizer works. I will also claim that if you manually set affinity to move FA.exe to the core1 you will still gain benefits because when the computer boots, it allocates processes to core0 and does not remove all of them when FA is loaded.

[Ze_PilOt]

To make a simpler example of what the article is describing.

Let's say you have 4 non-threaded applications, and four cores.

Each app (A, B, C, D) are using, each, 20% of one core.

If you are running all these apps at the same time, you probably will end up with :
core 0 : 80% CPU
core 1,2,3 : around 1-2%.

So moving each application over other cores (with process affinity) will result with :
core 1,2,3,4 at 20%

And probably less thermal problems on a laptop, yes.


Now, we are replacing A with an application that take 90% of your CPU. Let's call it FA.
By default, you will probably end up, on secven with :
Core 0 : 90% cpu
Core 1 : 60% (the other applications), or something similar.
Core 2,3 : 1-2%

Moving app A (FA) around won't change anything, you will just move the 90% of another core, but it will always take 90%. You can't make it less.

What you SHOULD do in that case is moving B C D in other core, so you end up with :
Core 0 : 90 % CPU
Core 1,2,3 : 20 %.

But overall, your laptop will (probably) generate the same thermal dissipation.

That's why I'm saying Core maximizer does nothing : FA take as much CPU as it can, you can't cut it in half.
While XP would try to run every app on core 0 (resulting in a slowdown), seven will already try to move stuff around, making thread affinity useless.