Test: Setting CPU Affinity

[SkateZilla]

Did you physically take it out or just disable?

Because if you take it out, it will disappear from the list of Audio Devices, and won't need to be further disabled.

 

It's not just about whether is sound is processed by hardware or software and XAudio2 is software, but if you go over a certain number of sounds, over 32 for example, just as you fire a cannon in DCS, it will cause stutter, especially if the CPU is already highly utilized by the engine.

 

Yes, it may not cause stutter on half the chips that are newer, but a lot will experience it, especially with Realtek chips.

 

I'm sorry for hi-jacking the thread, so to say, that's not my intend, I only want to help people to resolve the issues, because I do not have them and play DCS smoothly, on not a brand new system.

 

I'm partially motivated by the lack of positive results with the affinity tweak.

I find that has a placebo or even a negative effect while for those who do have stutters, disabling the on-board sound and using a separate sound card will, in fact, help, as it has with my systems as well as a couple others that picked up a used SB card. Whether it's related to the sound drivers, hardware, or any other theory is less relevant than the positive effect itself.

 

And I worked in IT and companies like Yahoo! and Adobe.

And even though I'm only 32, I have built my first PC when I was 8.

It was an Intel 80386SX 33Mhz.

The PC Speaker in it was loud and created stutters in DOOM until I put in an AdLib card.

And it also helped with F-15 Strike Eagle II and F29 RETALIATOR :)

 

I'll look into this further for you, and make a separate thread,

I think it maybe plausible, but maybe limited to specific Onboard Chips/NorthBridge Combos Or Drivers, As I Know Alot of people that have issues with other games and onboard, but most of the time the resolution is DirectX.

 

I Have physically removed my XFi, Intensity and USB Device to run the Onboard Realtek ALC892 w/ no Stutters.

 

My First PC was an IBM AT then 286 then 386SX.

Edited January 14, 2014 by SkateZilla

[msalama]

Realtek ALC892

 

I know I said I couldn't care less, but still went and checked the chip AsRock used with these mobos. And lo and behold, it's a Realtek ALC892...

 

Zilla has no sound-related stutters. MSalama has no sound-related stutters. Both use onboard audio. Both have the same codec chip installed. NOW... is there indeed a pattern? Or do I just stink as a detective? You decide :huh:

 

PS. And oh yeah, since we're in the mine-is-bigger-than-yours mode, my first PC was an Apple Macintosh 512 back in 1987 :D

Edited January 14, 2014 by msalama

[msalama]

Otherwise, it's not logical to conclude anything from this.

 

It's logical to conclude that a dedicated sound card is not needed in this case, because the chip mentioned works well enough with DCS when operated in a suitable HW/SW environment (motherboard, OS, drivers, DCS itself).

[Wolf Rider]

yes, but how does it perform with other apps? :D oops...

[msalama]

:D oops...

 

Oops what? The aforementioned computer runs only DCS, so let me reiterate once more: this chip in combination with suitable HW/SW performs so well with DCS that a separate soundcard is unnecessary.

 

Which has been my point all along ;)

Edited January 17, 2014 by msalama

[SkateZilla]

My brother's OLD System seems to suffer with a Via Audio chip, but it's a budget tier board with a crap north-bridge chip, so.. will look into that more.

[Gerg]

Im using a cheap h61 board with a Via 1705 chip and get no audio lag or clipping.

 

Although i have noticed strange behavior with what drivers are used. I have built 2x computers using the same mobo except friends is a slightly never revision of same thing.

 

I always usually download drivers from Via direct along with other drivers from the makers website.

 

I ran into an issue where my friends sound would sometimes have lag and clip when using same chip and driver versions as myself. Even just the Windows sounds would clip sometimes if system was under load while my almost exact same spec machine never had the issue.

 

Even after downloading older versions of the driver from Via i couldnt get the issue to stop, i tried as a last resort to install the drivers from Asrock for the Via chip and it cleared the issue up straight away.

 

The driver version was the same as one i had already downloaded from Via but idk if ASrock tweak them for specific motherboards or etc etc.

 

It might be worth for those with audio issues to try the motherboard makers version of the drivers instead of downloading direct from Via or Realtek.

 

IVe seen this issue on laptops too with Via and Realtek sound chips direct drivers not working properly.

[SkateZilla]

It's Best to get them from the Mainboard manufacturer, as there are SEVERAL different versions of each Model Chip, and they are all connected to the Mainboard differently.

 

So the Driver from the Mainboard manufacturer page for that Mobo, has the driver adjusted to match the mainboard's setup.

 

That also fixed my brother's old system (since been retired), As it had the "AutoDetected" Default Windows Driver for the VIA Chip, Installing the Drivers and HD Audio Deck software for the Chip from Mobo's Page resolved the issues, DCSW Runs Smoothly on that machine too now.

 

After that, Hide / Ignore any Updates from Windows Update for Real Tek HD or VIA HD Audio etc.

Edited January 17, 2014 by SkateZilla

[BitMaster]

Hey Guys,

 

calm down on this AUDIO stuff... you all seem to miss the most important point in PCI / PCI-E cards or onboard chips of ANY kind, actually this strikes Network chips a lot harder but that is only a performance thing, with Audio, yes THERE CAN BE STUTTER REGARDLESS OF ONBOARD or EXSTERNAL PLUG-IN CARDS...BUT....the reason are your PCI / PCI-Express lanes.

 

Since you all state you have had Computers since the dawn of PCs you should know this from many many other devices as well, fore mostly on older boards with limited data-lanes available that had most if not all lanes shared with other devices !

 

Fact is, A SOUNDBLASTER card is no LSI or Adaptec hardware accelerated device PERIOD ! So there is little to no gain in processing speed and absolut ZERO gain in OFFLOADING work to the dedicated chip on a soundcard, cause there is no dedicated chip on any Soundblaster card to be found !

Looking back at the network issue I mentioned above, there are LAN cards, onboard and plug.in ones that DO HAVE THIS feature, for example TOE, TCP OFFLOAD ENGINE...and when you work with high-load servers with lotsa network traffic in/out that DOES MATTER a lot. Just that such a LOM is hard to find unless you pick a dedicated Asus Workstation Board or Server board...and even then you most likely have to buy a license code to enable that feature. This is a thing that pays back if you happen to have such a LOM on your good trusty Asus. Intel has them as PCI-E cards for about 140 € per connector. Soundcards simply do not have AN OFFLOAD ENGINE, so you can well stop here discussing this to be the reason for stutter or no stutter. The only thing a SB card does is as Zilla mentioned the AFTER-EFFECTS that are of no general use in DCS, I hardly ever found use for those effects unless a game sports support for EAX 1-5.

 

What really counts when you put a rig together are your data lanes. Having a Z87 chipset alone doesnt mean your Mainboard builder has connected all possible PCI-Express lanes to the PCI-E/PCI sockets, in fact, most dont cause it significantly UPS the price to manufacture such boards.

 

You can, in general assume this: All but the 16 lanes for your first VGA Adapter shares lanes with something else. Maybe your Manual tells you, maybe not. Read the Intel Whitepapers, check how many lanes the chipset has to offer and then check your manual...it will most likely tell you that you can have 1 VGA at 16x, two cards at 8x + 8x and if you happen to have the 3rd card option it often goes down south even further with 8x + 8x +4x.

Those boards are crap and the few lanes available, you can bet on this, share 2 or more devices, sound ( our off-topic topic ), usb, firewire, exsata (marvel useless thing ), additional usb on 3rd party chip, integr. VGA, PS2, COM, IR, etc etc etc...

 

A good mainboard allows you to plug AT LEAST 2 cards in at 16x + 16x, real good boards allow 16x + 16x +16x and EXCELLENT boards, Asus has one that does, allow 16x + 16x + 16x + 16x at full speed at 64 lanes dedicated to VGA acceleration of your choice, be it a game or CUDA molecule calculations. When you have 4 cards in btw, you have no more PCI-E slot available for any other card, but that is of lesser importance as I have not met anyone with 4 x Titan yet and crying for a SB card.

 

Still, when you experience stutter with adequate HW that should not stutter by common sense power assumption you most likely have a bottleneck in your PCI-E lanes causing IRQ-Stutter continously. Same stuff that haunted us back with PCI and AGP boards, that has not changed ever since but the problem only occurs at a higher end and in general, for general purpose the serial processing that is forced onto the devices sharing lanes does not produce a noticeable effect in normal work scenarios..aka YT vids, music, burning CDs...but it does matter when high volume data streams try to squeeze themselves through an already filled pipe.

 

There is not much you can do about it but DISABLING all on your mobo that you dont need... LPT COM IR PS2 etc... and see if that helps.

Plug yopur Audio card into another slot and take your manual for finding which slot is sharing what lane(s) with which device.

 

Pure, brute power, never gets you far if the course is complicated ;)

 

I used to have a SB card in every gaming rig since my 486DX but I stopped doing that when I got my first real gaming laptop 6 years ago from Dell with SLI 8800 GTX-Ms, Asus ROG series and now this MacBP-Retina. They all sponsor are very good sound chip that I dont accuse to be the problem of my stuttering, in fact, soldered to the mobo seems to be the way for the least latency and power consumption, my MBP-Retina proofs Apple to be right with this concept, many others will follow I guess.

 

As a matter of fact, that Dell XPS 1730 I had for 4 years had a SB Audigy card built in with a seperate-to-pay license code to enable the SB Audigy features like EAX and THX. Without that code it would only do the standard stuff...and you know what..when I moved to Win7-64 that software that enabled the chip was rendered useless cause it relied on 32bit environment and I never got those features avtive again, but my games, mostly BF1942, BF2 and some Racing games like ColinMcRae etc had no noticable sound degrades or FPS stutter etc..

 

This whole SB thing is due, they made their money through being the first to have Audio 25 years back and ever since tried to market the same over and over again with little improvement over time. The real thing would be hardware accelerated sound like T&L as of DX7 and later for graphics.

 

BTW SkateZilla, I am messing with the Affinity, did that years ago with our BF2 server when they introduced HT on P4's. I have mixed results and cannot say yes or no...I need more time to play the same scenario with and without changing affinity. Right now I deleted my whole DCS, redownlaod the newest installer and go from scratch without any mods as I had tried out too many and some did not get cleaned by repair function. Later tonight I will know more.

 

BTW, the Apple MacBookPro Retina Mid2012 sports a Cirrus CS4206B (AB40) chip that plays very well in many many games in OS-X and Win7. No need to buy any Thunderbolt driven Soundcard if there was any.

 

Apropos RAID that was mentioned:

I happen to own, service and sell Raid cards, hardware accelerated.

I wouldnt call this 70s stuff, it all depends on how much money you spend

and if you have a 8x PCI-E to plug that in. Having a RAID-6 for your data or Backup-DeDUP drive can save your .... :)

 

Cheers

Bit

also bullding, selling and servicing PCs & Servers for half of my life with success ;)

[BitMaster]

It's Best to get them from the Mainboard manufacturer, as there are SEVERAL different versions of each Model Chip, and they are all connected to the Mainboard differently.

 

So the Driver from the Mainboard manufacturer page for that Mobo, has the driver adjusted to match the mainboard's setup.

 

That also fixed my brother's old system (since been retired), As it had the "AutoDetected" Default Windows Driver for the VIA Chip, Installing the Drivers and HD Audio Deck software for the Chip from Mobo's Page resolved the issues, DCSW Runs Smoothly on that machine too now.

 

After that, Hide / Ignore any Updates from Windows Update for Real Tek HD or VIA HD Audio etc.

 

True, across many many Customers machines that I service, it has never been a good idea to install Audio drivers or VGA drivers from Microsoft !

It has, in fact caused severe problems too.

 

Bit

[BitMaster]

Hey,

 

tested affinity settings for my Intel Core i7 3720QM 2.6GHz with the values 5 and 10 and I got TERRIBLE results !!! half the FPS as with no affinity set.

 

True is, the game flooded 1 core continously with 100% not being able to load off to other cores.

 

It may be a valid setting if you call a 4+ GHz overclocked CPU your own but for my laptop(s) I just cant go beyond the built in 3.4 GHz that it auto-overclocks to when possible and inside TPD values.

 

This test was done with the latest 1.2.7 update from 2 days ago, 10th Feb.2014.

 

Let's hope for edge since you can't fight outdated code with brute force alone. If edge takes the load of rendering OFF that 1 core doing all of the game but sound it may be OK not to have the game core itself SMP capable.

 

I see no point in getting new hardware until edge is released and we all get some info on how much performance goes up. If it works well we can safely settle with a midrange Intel i7/i5 or AMD CPU and not pay an additional 100 bucks for 100MHz on top and rather invest that amount in a decent Nvidia or MAYBE ATI setup once the ATI's also work as expected.

 

I still think about this MacPro as all tests have stated that it never uses more than 200 Watts in its biggest config ( Crossfired D700's 6GB ) and a fat CPU.....and staying at an almost not hearable noise level.

 

I hate noise form FANS so much after 20 years working with PCs and Servers that I am willing to put some extra money in a device that wont hurt my ears and still performs superb. I dont see why a 4-Core Xeon at 3.5GHz shouldnt perform well with a Crossfired D700 combo and roughly 1GB/sec SSD PCI-E drive ;) with the size of a desktop recycle can HAHA

 

 

Bit

[Hunden Ynk]

I found this interesting, it's mostly about multi-threading, but the quoted part is relevant to this discussion. Source: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/35679/Parallel-computing-and-processor-affinity-Never-un

 

The Tests

 

Task: Generation of three 2D tables of information as a result of a geometric test in a 3D scene, involving 975.065 collision tests (ray-mesh) each

Hardware: Dell XPS 630 QuadCore

Monitoring software:

Process Explorer

 

PART 1 (multithreading disabled). Impact of processor affinity

 

Test 1:

 

• Number of threads: 1 (main thread)
  
• Processor affinity: CPU 1
  
• Total time: 2 min 57.11 secs
  

With processor affinity enabled to CPU 1, all the work is obviously handled by this CPU. The two peaks you can appreciate in the graph are due to a IO operation (saving data to disk) and clearly demarcate the generation of each table of data. In this test we can clearly appreciate that our task is very intensive and constant, as keeps the processor at a 100% usage almost all the time.

Test 2:

 

• Number of threads: 1 (main thread)
  
• Processor affinity: None (any processor)
  
• Total Time: 2 min 29.45 secs
  

Most of the work was handled by CPU 2 but the rest of cores also worked on the process (checked in Process Explorer that all the green lines belonged to the process being measured). It is clear that forcing the thread to work in CPU 1 only introduced locks and waiting periods probably due to interruptions coming from other programs that needed CPU 1 too.

Winner of part 1 ……… Windows Scheduler !

My experience within DCS (running on an i7 2600k@4.4ghz) - it makes no measurable difference either way (same with HT on/off). Do note that I'm pretty satisfied with the performance of the game, save for the usual suspects of cluster munitions etc. I'm just an habitual tinkerer.

[SkateZilla]

That article is interesting, I'd like to know his exact CPU (he only lists Dell XPS 630 QuadCore),

I wonder what the results would be on a AMD FX CPU with Shared Resources.

 

 

I've had my autoexec lua set to 2 specific cores for months with better performance, I might drop the Affinity to see if anything has changed.

[Hunden Ynk]

My money is on Intel, Dell used to be (and still is?) 100% Intel. Trust your own measurements SkateZilla!

[BitMaster]

My money is on Intel, Dell used to be (and still is?) 100% Intel. Trust your own measurements SkateZilla!

 

 

I deal with Dell a lot for servers and prof. Clients and Workstations, own a few myself and also used to call an XPS 1730 SLI device my own

 

BUT

 

Dell is not 100% Intel, they do have many servers with AMD CPU's mainly for massive virtualization environments and also have a few but not too many Consumer devices based on AMD chips.

 

I like AMD in servers cause it works.

I hate AMD in clients, not because of the AMD CPU but because of the chipsets you have to deal with. I prefer Intel very much over any AMD supporting chipset for compatibility and stability issues. Just my own experience. You may have other experiences and I dont want to argue on this, neither I argue with Mac Win or Linux... I use them all, service all and work on all.

 

Bit

[BitMaster]

Hey again,

 

another thing I have in my mind, despite I said I wont upgrade my system...

 

I just checked the following devices and prices and I think this could be it:

 

Intel 4770K ( I also have a fat "be quiet" cooler that I could mount, should allow easy 4+GHz OC'ing )

Asus WS87 Pro ( 16x + 16x for true SLI if I step up to SLI in the future )

16GB 1600MHz 2 x 8GB CL9 Kingston Hyper-something

Asus RaidR SSD PCI-E 256GB ( +800MB/sec read/write )

Asus GTX 780 Ti ( the NON-OC version since it shovels out the air at the exhaust and not internally )

Antec 750W 80+ - Platinum ATX ( Platinum rating to save some energy LoL )

 

what do you think ? I intend to run single monitor @ 1920*1080 or *1200

 

What FPS could I expect if I say Textures must be at HIGH since I wanna read the cockpit writings in A10-C and Mi8 for example. You cant read those in low or mid settings.

 

cost would be 1400 € ( wholesale w/o taxes, decalred as an office PC ;) )

 

reasonable ??

 

Bit

Edited February 14, 2014 by BitMaster

[Athlonic]

@BitMaster

 

Nice setup here.

 

I would just suggest going for a 2 x 8GB CL10 @2400MHz kit.

 

I saw some test with 4770K resulting as follow :

Optimal performance : CL9 @2400MHz in most case

Best cost/perf ratio : CL10 @2400MHZ cost around 100$ less

 

;)

[BitMaster]

@BitMaster

 

Nice setup here.

 

I would just suggest going for a 2 x 8GB CL10 @2400MHz kit.

 

I saw some test with 4770K resulting as follow :

Optimal performance : CL9 @2400MHz in most case

Best cost/perf ratio : CL10 @2400MHZ cost around 100$ less

 

;)

 

Thanks for your comment. I guess the 2400er only make sense if you plan to OC the CPU with the RAM along with it. I am not sure I I will OC but I want to leave that option open.

I think, with EDGE and SMP support in rendering, over clocking will not gain as much as it did, it would pay more to have a i7 over an i5 or an i7-SixCore version over an i7-FourCore version.

If Intel had a newer chipset for the 2011 Socket I would really go that way again. My last Rig that now is my server for business runs a 2011 3-channel Setup and that does have some clear advantages when RAM bandwidth comes to play... I am not gonna upgrade tomorrow and keep watching the market. Time will tell if Intel offers a new High-End Chipset for their 6-Core versions @ triple RAM configs. This are also the only boards to offer up to 3 or 4 x 16x true SLI without bottlenecking them at 8 x which is a matter with PCI-E 16x Gen. 3 and high end Cards. I read up to 20% performance gets lost when running triple SLI and one is on 8 x PCI-E slot.

I may never do 3 x GTX 780 Ti cause I couldn't justify against IRS or taxes but I would hate not being able to do it... you never know what rides you in the middle of the night ;)

 

 

 

But honestly, I don't want to over clock too far, especially not on the RAMs as I also need this machine for running intense VMware scenarios as well and I don't want to run on the border of BSOD or hear that CPU fan squeaking like mad... that is the least I need in my living room.

That is the #1 reason I run a MacBookPro with powerful internals, I can run 4-5 VMwares on it and don't hear any fan noise.

 

Watercooling is no option for me, it still is noisy and a mess too work with when you need to work on the mobo, also the GTX's won't be water-cooled and I see no point in only WC'ing the CPU.

 

Bit

[javelina1]

I'm running Win 8.1 pro, and just have DCSW installed for the moment. Flying the Toad. I've used this in my autoexec.bat, (noted below), which is in my \users\me\saved games\DCS\Config. I've got all the other modules ready to install, but will do that once my new sound card comes in. so for now, I'm just dink'n with the Toad to put in all the perf tweaks.

 

affinity_mask = 3

options.graphics.maxfps = 60

options.graphics.ScreenshotQuality = 100

ScreenshotExt = "bmp"

 

My CPU is an i5-4670k, (currently OC to 4.2ghz)

 

When I run DCSW, I've checked dcs.exe and still shows all 4 cores in use.

 

I've used autoexec.bat on my old rig, (i5-661), which did manage to keep dcs.exe on just (2) cores.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Also, I've seen in this thread about using a .lua file to manage the affinity setting. Which one(s) is the correct .lua & where are they located? When I check Skates first post, it states we can use the .lua files, but where?

 

thanks,

 

-Jav

Edited February 16, 2014 by javelina1

[javelina1]

I'm running Win 8.1 pro, and just have DCSW installed for the moment. Flying the Toad. I've used this in my autoexec.bat, (noted below), which is in my \users\me\saved games\DCS\Config. I've got all the other modules ready to install, but will do that once my new sound card comes in. so for now, I'm just dink'n with the Toad to put in all the perf tweaks.

 

affinity_mask = 3

options.graphics.maxfps = 60

options.graphics.ScreenshotQuality = 100

ScreenshotExt = "bmp"

 

My CPU is an i5-4670k, (currently OC to 4.2ghz)

 

When I run DCSW, I've checked dcs.exe and still shows all 4 cores in use.

 

I've used autoexec.bat on my old rig, (i5-661), which did manage to keep dcs.exe on just (2) cores.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Also, I've seen in this thread about using a .lua file to manage the affinity setting. Which one(s) is the correct .lua & where are they located? When I check Skates first post, it states we can use the .lua files, but where?

 

thanks,

 

-Jav

 

doh! autoexec.cfg, not .bat! Notepad++ saved it as a bat file.

 

thanks txtmb!!:thumbup:

[camsr]

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc835722.aspx

 

CoreInfo.exe will tell you all about your CPU.

If you have a CPU like mine (Core 2 Quad), you will notice this little goodie:

 

Logical to Physical Processor Map:
*---  Physical Processor 0
-*--  Physical Processor 1
--*-  Physical Processor 2
---*  Physical Processor 3

Logical Processor to Socket Map:
****  Socket 0

Logical Processor to NUMA Node Map:
****  NUMA Node 0

Logical Processor to Cache Map:
*---  Data Cache          0, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64
*---  Instruction Cache   0, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64
-*--  Data Cache          1, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64
-*--  Instruction Cache   1, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64
**--  Unified Cache       0, Level 2,    6 MB, Assoc  24, LineSize  64
--*-  Data Cache          2, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64
--*-  Instruction Cache   2, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64
---*  Data Cache          3, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64
---*  Instruction Cache   3, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64
--**  Unified Cache       1, Level 2,    6 MB, Assoc  24, LineSize  64

 

Two processors share one top level cache. Four processors total.

The Core 2 Quad is actually TWO Core 2 Duo stitched together over the Front Side Bus.

In a situation like this, it is best to set affinities for one application to one unified cache.

Otherwise the penalty in multi threaded applications is like a cache miss AND a read from RAM every time the called thread is located on the other unified cache.

The windows scheduler may or may not know about this, so you can guarantee a shared cache by setting affinities.

[Bucic]

I've just tested it on 6-core AMD FX-6350. The default configuration gives much better results. For some reason the decimal mask of 48 (cores 6 and 5) forced DCS to use only the 6th core. The rest of the cores fluctuated around 0% of utilization.

 

I have every possible power saving feature disabled both in bios and in windows.

[SkateZilla]

I've just tested it on 6-core AMD FX-6350. The default configuration gives much better results. For some reason the decimal mask of 48 (cores 6 and 5) forced DCS to use only the 6th core. The rest of the cores fluctuated around 0% of utilization.

 

I have every possible power saving feature disabled both in bios and in windows.

 

should be 0,1,2,3,4,5

 

I havent had any issues, but my CPU is on steroids, and all the "Power Saving" things turned off so the clocks down downclock.

[Bucic]

I used

For 6 Core (No HT)

(5,4,3,2,1,0)

30 = 110000 (48)

Where 48 is the affinity mask I entered into the autoexec.cfg.

[msalama]

This is a great thread, but something has changed as of late regardless. It used to be that I got the smoothest results when running DCS on cores 3 & 4, but then I started to see stutters with that setting after an update about a year ago. So I tried DCS on all cores again; and ta-ra, no more stutters!

 

So please re-experiment with this if you have problems, helped me at least.