Optimizing your Experience with Forged Alliance - It works

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

Also, the thing with turning off CORE 0 does not work for my PC, i guess for some others as well. Performance droped.

It was never based on any form of serious testing. Just one guy running a couple of replays and allegedly seeing a difference.

[VoiceofReason]

REFERENCES
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9487 "Optimizing your Experience with Forged Alliance - It works"
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9420&start=20 "Optimizing your Experience with Forged Alliance"

These are threads where Col_Walter_Kurtz gives his same opinion, seen here, repeated everywhere; trying to discourage anyone and everyone from even trying something to gain performance via this method.

What you'll also see there, are different people who have tried/tested this and have gained performance - I encourage anyone with a half decent system that plays large/big games to give this stuff a read.

Also, the thing with turning off CORE 0 does not work for my PC, i guess for some others as well. Performance droped.

It was never based on any form of serious testing. Just one guy running a couple of replays and allegedly seeing a difference.

Actually, there were a few people who did tests showing the "actual" % of simspeed difference, and describing a smoother game experience and a few other small details. I myself get a 0.5 to 1 full simspeed difference, better framerates, smoother gameplay and especially so during those crazy moments I can only describe by citing ASF micro in a setons/phantom game, and crazy navy battles - all those situations where instantly most cpus drop by 3 to 5 simspeed in microseconds - Yes, I don't suffer the same way most do through those moments - My game is actually perfectly responsive still, and it doesn't feel like supcom is trying to die.

I think it was also noted, you'd only see the "actual % difference" if you set priority to high, and untick core 0 for ForgedAlliance.exe affinity. Also to not do this unless you have at least a quadcore cpu. Thirdly, if your cpu is at stock clocks, and only the first core (core0) is running at the advertised speed, and all others are running slower; I can guarantee you'll see a performance DROP; I add this because most CPUs now days only have the first core running at full speed, and the rest running slower, sometimes by quite a bit.

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

REFERENCES
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9487 "Optimizing your Experience with Forged Alliance - It works"
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9420&start=20 "Optimizing your Experience with Forged Alliance"

I could also point to the poster in this thread stating it had an adverse effect. That was exactly why I warned against adopting this method as some kind of general performance increase. It might work for some, but has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

Just putting this in wiki (a wiki should be a reliable source of information) as a working method is not justified.

These are threads where Col_Walter_Kurtz gives his same opinion, seen here, repeated everywhere; trying to discourage anyone and everyone from even trying something to gain performance via this method.

What you'll also see there, are different people who have tried/tested this and have gained performance - I encourage anyone with a half decent system that plays large/big games to give this stuff a read.

There was no serious testing, and it is one or two persons only. Ionic reports difference of 3% that is meaningless. Also _V_ did not take turbo into account, or at least ignored my question on that front. You also see a poster reporting no influence:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9487&start=20#p95015

Clearly you are still a huge fan of the method, and that's fine. Like stated from my very first post on the subject I just gave reasonable doubt. Well, and I provided sources from GPG and Intel backing up my claim that single thread performance matters a huge deal. Because at some point you were claiming that your method and/or the OS are dividing the sim thread over multiple cores, or something to that effect. Which is wrong. Just for your convenience here is what I quoted, also found in the threads you linked.

GPG on mutlithreading FA engine: http://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/gd ... 6589i2.ppt

Also this:

Supreme Commander simspeed is dependent on only 1 thread: the sim thread. Once that thread completely saturates a logical core (or more like 85% of a core's capacity due to the way the engine works), the simspeed will slow down. The reason you are seeing only 2 logical cores worked to the max is because there are only 2 main threads in SupCom: the sim thread and the render thread. SupCom FA actually has 22 threads, but the other 20 do very minor tasks that have little in the way of CPU usage. So at best you can see 2 and a half logical cores being used. With Hyperthreading, one physical core will appear as 2 logical cores so what you are seeing with your hyperthreaded i7 looks fine to me.

Before you go around talking trash about how the Moho engine is poorly optimized, remember that the engine was built in 2005. Back then, dual-cores were the new thing. No one expected quad-cored CPUs to be released so quickly. So making a dual-threaded engine where the game simulation and graphical rendering could be processed on separate cores was very innovative for the time.

Source: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=61250

Not only is this manual affinity method not for fast dualcores suchs as the G3258 which reportedly runs FA at +1 an hour into a Setons game but you might also disturb the OS managing threads on a quad. After all you're telling the OS to use 3 instead of 4 cores for FA decreasing the available resources. It's worth noting these things instead of spreading this method as some kind of general performance increase.

Also, there is the fact that on GPG forums (unfortunately dead) a tool was distributed that reportedly told FA to be less conservative using up resources. Apparently the main thread (sim) will not tax a logical core 100%, even if there are free resources. This is an interesting observation, that I also say when using process monitor. Of course I'm going on the same thin ice as you so I'm not claiming the truth, but it is something to consider. I just really wish GPG forums were not dead and current coders could get there hands on this information. who knows where it might lead to.

TL:DR don't back up claims about the affinity / priority method with 'testing' of a few individuals. And as a seperate issue, there is some actual technical stuff to consider and it would be cool if current coders could get a look at that

[nine2]

Wasnt ur eternal performance debate thread locked? So now you come here. Amusey

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

It's in the wiki apparently. That makes it relevant here.

[VoiceofReason]

The tool you speak of is "CoreMaximizer" and it is useless unless you run Windows XP or any OS prior - and it also reportedly SLOWS down simspeed, to give you a smoother FPS through it's "magical thread management."
Also, I guess you missed this bit when reading (I imagine you just didn't read it)

I think it was also noted, you'd only see the "actual % difference" if you set priority to high, and untick core 0 for ForgedAlliance.exe affinity. Also to not do this unless you have at least a quadcore cpu. Thirdly, if your cpu is at stock clocks, and only the first core (core0) is running at the advertised speed, and all others are running slower; I can guarantee you'll see a performance DROP; I add this because most CPUs now days only have the first core running at full speed, and the rest running slower, sometimes by quite a bit.

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

Nope, not coremaximizer. The tool I'm speaking of was apparently able to tell FA to stop "throttling" CPU use too early and instead use the entire logical core available.

edit: it was way less known and the thread regarding it was quite small

[tatsu]

got it working and fully automated.

I added it to my AHK script as you can read here : viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9778

it doesn't even open cmd and is lightning fast

[ckitching]

Regarding the deadness of the GPG forums: Sheeo saved a copy. We have access to all that information.

He was talking about putting it online somewhere at one point, too.

[The Mak]

Regarding the deadness of the GPG forums: Sheeo saved a copy. We have access to all that information.

He was talking about putting it online somewhere at one point, too.

Please please do.