PSA: Try turning off E-Cores if crashing with Intel CPU

[beefstew4u]

I was getting crashes every 10 minutes while trying to play, and turning off E-cores with Process Lasso fixed them entirely. I have played for 8 hours straight without a single crash after having a 10 crashes in 2 hours before the change.

My PC specs:
i9-13900k
RTX 3090
32GB RAM

I am running at Very Low and 1080P (even though I have a 3440x1440p 165hz monitor)

[Awesomes007]

I’m guessing if the E cores are crashing the game, they probably aren’t leveraging the tech - despite some major possible benefits.

[Trouter]

Originally posted by Awesomes007:

I’m guessing if the E cores are crashing the game, they probably aren’t leveraging the tech - despite some major possible benefits.

Developers don't choose whether E cores get used or not - this is done by the Windows thread scheduler.

[Trouter]

Also note that on my 13700k i'm noticing that all of the cores are being used when running Cities Skylines 2, so this does suggest that all of the P Cores and E Ecores are being used.

[Trouter]

Originally posted by beefstew4u:

I was getting crashes every 10 minutes while trying to play, and turning off E-cores with Process Lasso fixed them entirely. I have played for 8 hours straight without a single crash after having a 10 crashes in 2 hours before the change.

My PC specs:
i9-13900k
RTX 3090
32GB RAM

I am running at Very Low and 1080P (even though I have a 3440x1440p 165hz monitor)

I am curious Beefstew, are you running on WIndows 10 or 11? There are differences with how P/E cores get loaded in Windows 10 compared to 11.

[beefstew4u]

Windows 11, latest update. Latest Nvidia drivers as well.

[playboi14]

I'll give this one a go. I posted earlier that playing on a 500k population city I noticed almost 100% CPU utilisation, so I'll give it a go and see how it performs when I manually disable the efficiency cores on my 13900k

[Tau]

Apparently I also had cashes because my RAM with XMP 7200mhz (and 13900k) does not run stable with Cities Skylines 2.
With 6800mhz almost no more crashes (unity still crashes again and again, but because of other errors)
No other game has triggered this error since 9 months, strange.

[Trouter]

Originally posted by beefstew4u:

Windows 11, latest update. Latest Nvidia drivers as well.

I suspect this has nothing to do with the Ecores themseleves but that it is improving system stability by reducing the load. This game as I said does seem to load up all of the PCores/ECores, but I have a 700k model which has fewer cores than a 900 as you have. One way to test this would be to allow some fraction of your Ecores to run on the game rather than none of them to see if that also helps with the stability.

[Awesomes007]

Originally posted by Trouter:

Originally posted by Awesomes007:

I’m guessing if the E cores are crashing the game, they probably aren’t leveraging the tech - despite some major possible benefits.

Developers don't choose whether E cores get used or not - this is done by the Windows thread scheduler.

After reading this, I see that developers can and should (according to Intel) optimize for the new architecture.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/guide/12th-gen-intel-core-processor-gamedev-guide.html

[Trouter]

Originally posted by Awesomes007:

Originally posted by Trouter:

Developers don't choose whether E cores get used or not - this is done by the Windows thread scheduler.

After reading this, I see that developers can and should (according to Intel) optimize for the new architecture.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/guide/12th-gen-intel-core-processor-gamedev-guide.html

Thank you for the article and correction on my point.

Note though that use of these low level apis they show in this article is not always going to be a good option, particularly in Unity where the goal is to create portable applications (its all low level Win-api c++ in the article).

In most cases simply creating work that scale well to multiple threads is the best and easiest solution to leverage a hybrid Intel CPU.

And still with all this, I can't see how this game running threads on ECores is going to cause crashes that are fixed by disabling the ECores (that are caused by the game itself and not by the extra pressure on system stability).

[Stealthy]

Ecores themselves don't cause the game to crash. It was probably more down to temperatures or some other factor for the OP.

But what you might want to test on your system, is to disable hyperthreading. That is a technology that gives 2 threads per each P-core, in hope to get more utilization out of single core. But if both threads are loaded full, then of course each one sees lower throughput as it has to wait the other thread been run at the same core.

Disabling these allowed me to keep temps in better control and run 12900k at 5100MHz All core and now 14900K with 5800MHz all core. Also E-cores can take a 100 - 200 MHz boost all core, without getting to thermal throttling.

HT isn't that much usefull anymore with multicore CPUs, and especially in games you need as high single core performance as possible.

[Munchykins]

If you turn of the E-Cores just because of CS2, what about all the other APPs, games, that know how to use E-Cores properly.

[River]

Originally posted by Munchykins:

If you turn of the E-Cores just because of CS2, what about all the other APPs, games, that know how to use E-Cores properly.

I wonder this too!

[Potat al Gaib]

No, i will not mess with my 500 euros high end CPU, just because CO can't code a game, rest of the games are mostly fine, i say mostly because Intel must fix their microcode, there is a known issue with gen 13 and 14 regarding this, but no, i will still not mess with my CPU just because Intel can't make a proper CPU and CO code a proper game, and Microsoft can't code a working operating system that forced me to upgrade to a gen 13 intel CPU just for it to properly operate on Intel's crap unoptimised efficiency-performance hybrid architecture

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/nvidia-blames-intel-for-gpu-vram-errors-tells-geforce-gamers-experiencing-13th-or-14th-gen-cpu-instability-to-contact-intel-support

The tech industry is getting more and more mentally retarded, from software up to hardware! We need AI not for making people rich by copying the works of famous people, but to help the laid back lazy millennials to teach the goldfish memory zoomers, to learn how not to digress into the quality standards of products and bring us back to the stone age!

[sanderrensink]

I am playing cities skylines on a rtx 3070 on high with these settings https://steamcommunity.com/id/rednas12/screenshot/2479869440688354034/