Multicore CPU performance improvement

[Prophet]

Stanger,

 

Go to task manager, and see how many CPU usage charts it shows.........

 

You should have 4, I bet you have 2.

 

You limited your Quad to a Dual.

[TwoLate]

Stanger,

 

Go to task manager, and see how many CPU usage charts it shows.........

 

You should have 4, I bet you have 2.

 

You limited your Quad to a Dual.

 

I have a duo. I had two options one cpu or two cpu. Thanks anyway for caring.

 

 

Edit. One cpu 27 fps start of a mission. Start of same mission with 2 cpu's 44 fps. Definte tweak here.

 

After the boot fix I now have both cpu's running for evey program.

Edited December 14, 2008 by TwoLate
Clarification

[Prophet]

Ah,, I thought it said Q6600 not E6600.

 

It is interesting that this tweak works. Because the OS detects the same amounts of cores as before, but by default for programs uses more cores.

 

Crazy! And much easier than anything else.

 

This IMO is the best solution so far.

[Prophet]

This didnt work for me.

 

Stanger, make sure to check after you are in the cockpit.

[TwoLate]

This didnt work for me.

 

Stanger, make sure to check after you are in the cockpit.

 

Dang yep you are right.

[JG27_Arklight]

For i7 users (and users of the Intel Northwood and other processors with Hyperthreading), you might want to try disabling Hyperthreading. Some people have reported increased performance in games with this feature off. You more than likely will not see a benefit playing games with it on. Now, if you are into heavy encoding or other things like that than HT might be best left on. If not, you may want to try your system with it off. I do remember disabling it when I had my Intel 2.4C though when I was playing a lot of MS Flight Simulator.

 

I will report back my findings.

[Kuky]

Few days ago I installed Vista 64bit on my machine to see wether BllackShark will run good on it (and as I resolved some other issues which were good reason not to gave Vista installed and what made me go back to XP) and I tried the single core performance vs both cpu cores being enabled for DCS.exe

 

Hopped onto online server and as I was in cockpit I paused TrackIR... in game counter showed 22 fps... ALT/TABing out and setting core affinity in Windows Task Manager to both cores and back to game... now it showed 34 fps. So looks like on Vista 64bit there is definite benefit of running the game with cpu affinity on both cores.

[ericinexile]

Few days ago I installed Vista 64bit on my machine to see wether BllackShark will run good on it (and as I resolved some other issues which were good reason not to gave Vista installed and what made me go back to XP) and I tried the single core performance vs both cpu cores being enabled for DCS.exe

 

Hopped onto online server and as I was in cockpit I paused TrackIR... in game counter showed 22 fps... ALT/TABing out and setting core affinity in Windows Task Manager to both cores and back to game... now it showed 34 fps. So looks like on Vista 64bit there is definite benefit of running the game with cpu affinity on both cores.

 

But the question that never seems to get answered is:

 

What were you getting with XP and single core?

 

This thread is 20 pages long and at no point can we compare apples to apples.

 

Regards,

Smokin' Hole

[Kuky]

^^^

 

With XP Pro I had no such difference... 1 core or 2 cores it was same framerate.

[Nate--IRL--]

Yes but what frame rate, compared to Vista single core?

 

Nate

[Kuky]

ah... DoH! Don't know now exactly... good question though... erm... I feel to lazy now to make dual install with Vista/XP and check this. Someone that has dual install already could try... any takers?

[polluxware]

See the first Training video, when the heli start taxiing and there is moment when the two mi-24 hind is in the background.

 

fps

 

Win xP SP3 with one core: 43fps

 

Vista SP1 with one core: drop downs to 23-25fps

 

Vista SP1 with two core: stay about 43fps and jumps back...

 

soo... its not necessary true that with vista always twice better than with XP

 

i think the really difference is when you use the Shkval..

[BTTW-DratsaB]

Got BS a day ago and I have to say I'm very impressed with how well it runs so far, way better than FC. And this set affinity thing is great, it boosted my frames from 30 to 50 in cockpit and 50 to 70 fps external...sweet :)

 

I need to read this thread through however to figure out how to set 4 cores permanently.

 

My specs

XFX 780i

C2Q9300 @3.2

4gb ram

2x 9800GTX 512mb

Creative XFi extreme music

Vista Ultimate SP1

 

GFX settings

resolution :1600x1200 75hz

Textures :medium

Scenes :medium

civ traffic :yes

water :normal

vis range :medium

heat blur :off

shadows :All planar

cocpit res :512

Driver

Anisotropic Filtering :x16

Antialiasing :x2

 

These settings are the default after I installed it (except for Screen Res, Civ traffic and gfxdriver options). I recon I have a bit of room to bump up some settings, given my current frame rate.

 

I tried using various SLI modes but no luck there, still get flashing clouds like with lock on FC :/ . But overall Im very impressed, thankyou :)

[Shaman]

Question is. Will ED fix the game in next patch so Vista users won't need to manually change this affinity option?

[Talon]

I tested this on a dual boot system testing both XP and Vista with an Intel Core2 Duo cpu, and I got roughly 15 to 20 fps more in Vista using the affinity to enable the two cores to run the DCS.exe versus the same exact system and enabling affinity in XP.

In XP if I had 40 fps with 1 core, I had 40 fps with 2 cores. In Vista if I had 40 fps with 1 core, I had around 55-60 fps in Vista with dual cores actvated.

Hope this helps.

[815TooCooL]

Oh cmon, this is the only reason why I hesitate to purchase English BS.

Why should I change OS just to play this sim *PROPERLY*?

Plz don't tell me I can still play it in Windows XP. I don't want fps cut in half compared to yours and don't want to fuss with affinity everytime I fly new missions.

 

Vista ultimate OS costs about $499 in my country and this sim is $49.

What a nonsense!!

And I don't really want to use Vista OS.

It was in my newly purchased laptop but after 4 weeks of patience, I finally surrendered to Windows XP.

 

This affinity fuss is pure comedy.

 

Plz fix this ASAP or if it's not possible then prevent Vista from boosting FPS so we can equally play in hell of stutters! :joystick: regardless of OS version.

[JG27_Arklight]

Plz fix this ASAP or if it's not possible then prevent Vista from boosting FPS so we can equally play in hell of stutters! :joystick: regardless of OS version.

 

 

 

You don't get better performance in BS because you don't want to use Vista, so you want ED to lower the performance for Vista users? Umm, no.

[ZaltysZ]

Plz fix this ASAP or if it's not possible then prevent Vista from boosting FPS so we can equally play in hell of stutters! :joystick: regardless of OS version.

 

It is good you haven't tried to play BS on something like Asus EEE PC, because I hardly dare to imagine what "equal hell of stutters" you would requested, if you have tried. :D

[crazysundog]

Guys,

 

I had the same problem using both prifinity and set affinity II. In short, it seems unreliable, where sometimes it would automatically improve performance and sometimes not. The strange part is that in some cases, it seems that the affinity would be set properly on multiple cores, but that there would be no performance increase until I manually went to the task manager, unset the affinity, and then reset the affinity. Weird. Anyhow, I think I figured out that the problem is that both prifinity and set affinity try to set the affinity of DCS.exe too soon after it is launched.

 

To get around this, I made my own little batch file to set the affinity automatically, which is attached. To use it you will need to download the command line process utility here: http://www.beyondlogic.org/consulting/processutil/processutil.htm

 

Put process.exe in the same folder as the cmd files. Then run either the 2 core or 4 core version as appropriate beefore you start black shark.. The batch file will keep checking for DCS.exe and if it finds that its affinity is only set to one core, will set it to multiple cores. The batch file should will automatically exit when you quit black shark. It will also quit if you don't launch black shark within a minute or so of starting the batch file.

 

Please note that to make sure that it does not bog down the system, I set it to wait for 30 seconds between each polling. This means it may take a little time after starting a mission before you see the performance improvement. So far though, it has worked 100% for me. Hope someone finds it useful!

 

I dont fully understand this, could somebody help?

 

"Put process.exe in the same folder as the cmd files." Does this mean in Prifinitty cmd files?

[wombat778]

I dont fully understand this, could somebody help?

 

"Put process.exe in the same folder as the cmd files." Does this mean in Prifinitty cmd files?

 

No, its pretty straightforward (my fix does not use Prifinitty). Here are step-by-step instructions:

 

Step 1: Download the batch files I made from here: http://rapidshare.com/files/173371139/DCSAff.zip.html It is a zip file that contains two files with ".cmd" extensions . Extract them into a folder someplace on your hard disk.

 

Step 2: Download the "Process Utility" from this link: http://www.beyondlogic.org/consulting/processutil/process203.zip

 

Step 3: In "process203.zip" file you just downloaded, there is a file called "process.exe". Extract that file and put in in the same folder as the files with the ".cmd" extensions from step 1.

 

Step 4: Double click DCSAff_2Core.cmd if you have 2 cores in your PC, or double click DCSAff_4Core.cmd if you have 4 cores. Then load Black Shark.

 

Thats it, and your processor affinity should be set automatically. Just make sure to always run the "cmd" file before you load Black Shark. Let me know if you have any trouble!

Edited December 14, 2008 by wombat778

[Prophet]

Oh cmon, this is the only reason why I hesitate to purchase English BS.

Why should I change OS just to play this sim *PROPERLY*?

Plz don't tell me I can still play it in Windows XP. I don't want fps cut in half compared to yours and don't want to fuss with affinity everytime I fly new missions.

 

Vista ultimate OS costs about $499 in my country and this sim is $49.

What a nonsense!!

And I don't really want to use Vista OS.

It was in my newly purchased laptop but after 4 weeks of patience, I finally surrendered to Windows XP.

 

This affinity fuss is pure comedy.

 

Plz fix this ASAP or if it's not possible then prevent Vista from boosting FPS so we can equally play in hell of stutters! :joystick: regardless of OS version.

 

Define properly...

 

So the game plays better on a E6600 than on a P4 2.8. So should ED cripple the performance so they are equal?

 

What you say is irrational.

[crazysundog]

Thanks Wombat... trying to stick those files into prifinitty was what messed me up...

 

Thanks for doing the legwork on this!!

[815TooCooL]

Define properly...

 

So the game plays better on a E6600 than on a P4 2.8. So should ED cripple the performance so they are equal?

 

What you say is irrational.

Why so serious?:D

That last sentence was some joker.

So do you think this situation is utterly rational ?

[Flanker15]

Also is there a fix comming so that allowing other cores will boost performance in XP? Or more importantly give the sim true multi-core support?

[Prophet]

Why so serious?:D

That last sentence was some joker.

So do you think this situation is utterly rational ?

 

Serious? I guess, just stating the facts. To think that a developer should limit performance on one system compared to anther is irrational. I guess if you say it was a joke, OK, but then I guess the entire post was a joke.

 

Also is there a fix comming so that allowing other cores will boost performance in XP? Or more importantly give the sim true multi-core support?

 

It is a difference in the way each OS handles the supporting files. The 'fix' would be something on Microsofts end.