Affinity Mask Tweak - Still usefull ?

[VoiGrattler]

Hi All,

Seeking around for a good performance with my i7 2700K (Hyperthreading disabled) i was a bit curious , as i took a look into my resource monitor while having my airbus x extended at the fly tampa athens airport, rex also running. all 4 cores where maxed out ! never saw this at the disc version .... tweaking affinity mask = 14 only focused the work for my cpu on the 2,3 and 4th core, the first one wasn´t maxed out then... i couldn´t find the benefit for that so far...

did you explore simmilar things in your fsx ? seems to me that the core usage is much better then in the disk version !?

Mike

[Sistermatic™]

I did some testing with AM other night and a simple 4 core, let it rip with default settings, proved best.

There was/has been some talk about disabling HT completely but I can pretty well guarantee whilst it may give a minor FPS boost it's purely because there is less to draw as the HDD struggles to load textures with a maxed single core CPU.

I think it's one of those areas best left at default (at least on an i7) and let the OS and CPU do it's thing....

I'll see if I can dig out the HT testing I did. I noticed immediately that the 4 cores were unloading at different rates suggesting they were employed inependently to the FSX core.

This may be worth reading....
http://steamcommunity.com/app/314160/discussions/1/622954302098665715/

[side-fish]

I think I need to play with the steam version more.

Just a question though, is there a difference of turning off hyper-threading and disabling the threaded cores at the affinity mask?

[Sistermatic™]

side-fish の投稿を引用：

I think I need to play with the steam version more.

Just a question though, is there a difference of turning off hyper-threading and disabling the threaded cores at the affinity mask?

I tested with core 0-3 active and tested using single core (0 or 3). Texture loading and performance was better than turning off HT completely for reasons I think are illustrated in my link above.

tbh, I think the whole concept of on/off with HT is a myth. Even if FS runs "single core", data transfer (specifically), addon managment and every other periphery is distributed across multiple cores. In other words, leave it alone and let the OS do it's thing. FS was readily tapping across multiple cores as the load went up so it's obvious disabling HT would be (and is) detrimental - at the very least for terrain loading.

tldr: Don't fiddle wid it :)

[jcj78]

I did not move my affinitymask entry over from my box install .cfg to SE's .cfg when I copied over the FR cap, widescreen and Vsync. (My affintymask=2, idk what that signifies differently than "14", but someone might)I haven't gone to the trouble of running the calculator on my SE because I haven't had to. I'm not running MAIW, WOAI, or JFT360 on SE, so I haven't felt it necessary to tweak more than I have, yet. I guess it's always a qualified "yet".
I still have my Deluxe install up and running, and used for LAN multiplayer and for offline flight because it still has PreciptFx, MAIW, WOAI, and JFT360 running on it.

just based on what you report, sounds like its for naught anyway. If all four cores are maxing, I don't see how its gonna help to shuffle that load very much, and you've got me outgunned quite a bit. I am curious about my own cpu loads now though, and I guess I'm gonna have to break down and break out the calculator.

[side-fish]

SisterMatic の投稿を引用：

I tested with core 0-3 active and tested using single core (0 or 3). Texture loading and performance was better than turning off HT completely for reasons I think are illustrated in my link above.

tbh, I think the whole concept of on/off with HT is a myth. Even if FS runs "single core", data transfer (specifically), addon managment and every other periphery is distributed across multiple cores. In other words, leave it alone and let the OS do it's thing. FS was readily tapping across multiple cores as the load went up so it's obvious disabling HT would be (and is) detrimental - at the very least for terrain loading.

tldr: Don't fiddle wid it :)

Yes, I got that part. But are disabling HT and disabling threaded cores in affinity mask the same?

I'm asking because I don't leave HT off but I've always used the affinity mask tweak.I read your link by the way. Strange, I was under the impression back then that the game didn't use all cores by default. Like you said, FS runs on single core, but if texture and autogen supports multi-core, then I have no idea why we'd want to disable cores for that =P!

Well, that's for the boxed version anyway. I suppose I will check the steam version and see for myself if the CPU load really are evenly distributed among cores.

[Sgt. Max Cockburn]

I'm on a Dual Core and been testing lately. Seems there is truth to the idea that tweaking AM has merit.

For me, choosing an AM that sets the FSX to use 1 logical core only (AM=4) seems to garner smoothest results and highest FPS.

But it depends on your CPU and what you throw at it. Big balancing act.

[Sgt. Max Cockburn]

side-fish の投稿を引用：

SisterMatic の投稿を引用：

I tested with core 0-3 active and tested using single core (0 or 3). Texture loading and performance was better than turning off HT completely for reasons I think are illustrated in my link above.

tbh, I think the whole concept of on/off with HT is a myth. Even if FS runs "single core", data transfer (specifically), addon managment and every other periphery is distributed across multiple cores. In other words, leave it alone and let the OS do it's thing. FS was readily tapping across multiple cores as the load went up so it's obvious disabling HT would be (and is) detrimental - at the very least for terrain loading.

tldr: Don't fiddle wid it :)

Yes, I got that part. But are disabling HT and disabling threaded cores in affinity mask the same?

I'm asking because I don't leave HT off but I've always used the affinity mask tweak.I read your link by the way. Strange, I was under the impression back then that the game didn't use all cores by default. Like you said, FS runs on single core, but if texture and autogen supports multi-core, then I have no idea why we'd want to disable cores for that =P!

Well, that's for the boxed version anyway. I suppose I will check the steam version and see for myself if the CPU load really are evenly distributed among cores.

They are, depending on your AM. Under stress, in my experience FSX runs better when AM is set to use one core (on DualCore machine), or the two actual cores, foregoing the logical cores. Not sure about multicore.

In my experience, DualCore gets the best results at AM=5 (cpu 0&2). That said, I still need to check my stuff with a completely clean cfg.