Quad Core TP Experience

[Guest triangle]

Recently upgraded from a dual 6600 to a quad Q6600 and dropped the new beta in (with the recommended fsx.cfg file) after uninstalling the previous release.All four cores are now flat stick when I run TP (99% across the board) and I average between 700 and 1000 tiles per second as the flight terrain loads and then about 200 to 300 tiles per second in game (I have a 1.5mb connection) but still, the visuals are quite degraded (with fps unlimited and limited there is no appreciable difference).It is quite strange given the volume of tiles I get - the quality of the terrain textures is far from that which can be seen in the provider's viewing tool. I get some blurries but, mainly, the textures just seem kinda pixellated, even when at 6,000 feet.I'm not looking to take up people's time by asking for troubleshooting support but thought it might be of use for the developer to know the above. Of course, if you wanna help, feel free ;-)Andrew

[Arista 0]

Here's something to try for those who got more than two cores/CPUs: I'm running TileProxy Beta 5 with FSX SP1 on a twin Xeon 5150 (2.66 GHz) system, ie 2x2 cores. Out of the box, TPS were in the low hundreds, resulting in moderate blurries when slewing along at 160kt, with all 4 cores constantly pegged at 100%. While playing around with affinity settings, I discovered that setting AffinityMask=12 in FSX.cfg, so that FSX uses the second CPU only (core 3 and 4), results in tile rates well above 1000. Yes, that's a factor of more than 10! Needless to say, the blurries were mostly gone (apart from the fact that FSX is still switching mipmaps to late, but that's not TP's fault), and core 4 was only busy every minute or so, when the terrain loader kicked in, and was idle in between. The point here is to make FSX only use 2 cores, so that only one terrain loading thread will run, whereas it didn't seem to matter which two cores I used. After further investigation, it seems like the preloading mechanism is responsible for this massive TPS drop when more then one terrain loading thread is requesting tiles simultaneously. With preloading disabled (preload=0 in ProxyUser.ini), I now get close to 1000 TPS with FSX using all four cores again. As long as I stay below about 300kt, textures are keeping up very well (on a test from Seattle all the way up to the Canadian border), ie. almost no blurries, and core 2-4 CPU usage still periodically drops to 0, so there is still some reserve. So, after 2 days of tweaking, I have to say a big thank you very much for taking FSX one giant leap closer to "as real as it gets"!

[Guest cbuchner1]

Thanks for the tip with the preloader.I did not think FSX SP1 was actually capable of doing more than 1 texture thread simultaneously. It seems like it's one per additional core. Good to know.I am not sure if it is possible in a kernel mode filter driver to determine from which thread of an application an I/O request originated. If I could do so, it would be possible to fix the preloader by making the preload cache specific to each thread.So now who's buying me that quad core PC? ;)

[Guest triangle]

Thanks, Arista - I'll give that a try. I did change the affinity for TP but did not think to try a change for FSX.Would love to buy you a quad, Christian, but right now a gasfitter is replacing my entire hot water system and I can assure you I will be broke for a while as a result :-)Andrew

[Arista 0]

>I am not sure if it is possible in a kernel mode filter driver>to determine from which thread of an application an I/O>request originated. If I could do so, it would be possible to>fix the preloader by making the preload cache specific to each>thread.If this isn't possible, would it work to just add another 15 slots per additional CPU/core to the cache, while still preloading at most 15 tiles per request? In addition, you would probably need some clever logic to determine if requests are related. Depending on how exactly FSX loads tiles, figuring this out could be a nightmare, I guess.Anyway, if you'd like to have something tested, please feel free to contact me.

[maxymaxy 0]

Well I would chip in some dollars for a quad for Christian :)Triangle, would you please report on your findings using Arista's advice. I am getting ready for the quad upgrade. If it works on a Q6600 I am ready to plunge in.

[Guest sstobbe]

Andrew,How were your results once you made the changes? I am contemplating a new build using the Q6600, and am an avid Tileproxy user.

[Guest cbuchner1]

I am saving for a Q6600 myself. But first I got myself a New Beetle - this one runs on only a single engine. Doh.

[Guest Mike707]

I am also curious of your results. Please let us know. I am also looking at building a system soon and am looking at either the Q6600 or the E6850. Thanks.