What I Changed to Get Better FPS

[Guest Aviator4life]

"I've already done the affinity mask tweak (I posted about the tweak last year, I don't know if I was the first). I feel it's worked well for me and like you I did it to help with Tileproxy. I've left FIBER.FRAME.TIME.FRACTION alone, played around with it but decided not having it in my cfg worked the best. I will give the MIP BIAS a try. I don't think I've tried it.One thing about tweaks and the attitude of the "experts" in the forums. Whether something proves to be Snake Oil or not, blabbering about like a know-it-all claiming people are wasting their time is really no one's friggin' business. People can try suggestions or not. Short of someone coming in and suggesting: "Reformat and reinstall FS-X every six months" or something similar, most of these tweaks are harmless and can be backed out easily enough. Lately it seems whenever a tweak is posted, someone has to write "Let's see what "Mr. X" says". And if "Mr. X" disses the tweak, suddenly everyone hops on his bandwagon and turns against the OP. So whether this works for someone or not, whether it works for me or not, I for one appreciate the time you took to write it. Regards,John"I agree completely with this reply that you made John, on all counts. It is one of the reasons why my post count is so low. What some fail to realize is that there is a learning process which sometimes plays out in threads such as this, that is the purpose which is served and from which a thread's participants benefit from as well as all others who read it. Replies, no matter how nicely written, which are condescending in nature and which attempt to prove discussions such as the topic of this thread as pointless, bring absolutely nothing to the "flightsim table".I have learned just about everthing I know, from configuring and building my own flight-simming rig, which hardware drivers to use/install, which tweaks to use for my particular hardware, how to modify aircraft.cfg files, how to repaint aircraft, which add-ons are worth spending money on/those which complement my flight-simming experience best, etc., etc. by reading threads exactly like this one.True, some discussions are better than others. However, one never knows which threads will yield some important idea which turns out to really be of great help.I, among many others in the silent majority, greatly appreciate it when others "think out loud" on these forums to the benefit of all, as opposed to those who simply post in an attempt to boost their own self-esteem.Thanks for sharing discussions such as these with all of us gents. :(

[timers15 11]

This discussion certainly benefited me. Now I get the same FPS smoother and with maxxed autogen. Thanks!I can even start to think about increasing traffic now....Tim

[n4gix 4,947]

I, among many others in the silent majority, greatly appreciate it when others "think out loud" on these forums to the benefit of all, as opposed to those who simply post in an attempt to boost their own self-esteem.Thanks for sharing discussions such as these with all of us gents. :(

One should keep in mind that these very same points have been raised and discussed ad infinitum since FSX was first released. As it happens, they were actually discussed ad naseaum in the non-public, FSX Beta forum that MS/ACES hosted.The question I raised was based on a statement of fact made by one of the programmers who wrote the actual C++ code for FSX, so yes I do tend to place a higher weight to Phil Taylor's statements...I asked a pertinent and serious question. :(

[bojote 20]

fact made by one of the programmers who wrote the actual C++ code for FSX, so yes I do tend to place a higher weight to Phil Taylor's statements...

Hi Bill,You refer to the following statements?'The fiber system that has been a part of FSX since the RTM version still runs on core-0'then...'The fiber system is significantly off-loaded since SP1 but does still perform work'Then you say that you tend to place a higher weight to Phil Taylor's statements because he was one of the programmers who wrote the actual C++ code for FSX, correct?Before I add to the discussion, I would like to know if I got the facts right or if I'm putting words in your mouth incorrectly, taking things out of context or missing the point completely.Then, (since no body seems to trust task manager now) I would like to use performance counters and check what threads are loading where based on that information.. If I prove to you, with FACTS, that there is NOTHING running on Core-0 related to the FSX.exe process will it change your mind or you really don't care what my opinion is because I'm not Phil Taylor? just wondering... and without wanting to get confrontational here, I'm really interested in your objective opinion.

[n4gix 4,947]

Then, (since no body seems to trust task manager now) I would like to use performance counters and check what threads are loading where based on that information.. If I prove to you, with FACTS, that there is NOTHING running on Core-0 related to the FSX.exe process will it change your mind or you really don't care what my opinion is because I'm not Phil Taylor? just wondering... and without wanting to get confrontational here, I'm really interested in your objective opinion.

First, explain what you know about "threads" versus "fibers." They are not the same thing at all. I am not trying to be confrontational either, but seek to know if we can at least begin any discussion with a common understanding.Watching the Task Manager will not yield any information at all with regards to "fibers," so another metric is needed.

[gman! 1]

I don't want to get into the debate here incase I say something incorrectly, but I would like to aid Bojote, in his stuides. Here is a program that I have used for a long time, its called Process Explorer. If you don't have it already, you can find it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb896653.aspx. This program will show you if the process has any activity on specific cores.

[bojote 20]

First, explain what you know about "threads" versus "fibers." They are not the same thing at all.

Bill, I'm no expert when it comes to thread vs fiber usage, I simply know fibers have less overhead than a thread, so on multi-cpu setups, if context switches are high and I'm consistently at 100% CPU usage then fibers can easily be switched between CPU's without much overhead, I guess because of their preemptive vs cooperating multitasking atributes, and no, I don't think task manager will give me any information whatsoever about fibers, being a subcomponent of threads. Yet, the question (at least for me) remains: If I can prove AffinityMask restricts a 'thread' from running on CPU0 you are saying fibers can still run on the CPU i've just restricted via AffinityMask?

[n4gix 4,947]

Yet, the question (at least for me) remains: If I can prove AffinityMask restricts a 'thread' from running on CPU0 you are saying fibers can still run on the CPU i've just restricted via AffinityMask?

The key is that fibers are not switched between cores. They are invoked and remain tied to the core on which they were hard-coded to run, because they are under the full control of the application's scheduler. The chief advantage of fibers is that they do cooperatively multitask. One disadvantage is that they must remain running on the core on which they were created.Threads on the other hand, can by their very nature be shifted onto any available core, because they are totally under the control of the Operating System's thread scheduler. Very little of the core engine uses threads though.Now a reasonable question might be "why did ACES use a 'fiber process' rather than the (somewhat) more flexible 'thread process?" The answer is that they had to code FSX to run on single-core machines, and on such machines the probablity of thread collisions (which result in race conditions) is much higher. That is the major disadvantage of threads; they are pre-emptive and frequently uncooperative... :)Part of the work done for SP1 and more or less completed with SP2 was to shift as much of the fibers' work as possible to take advantage of multi-cores when available, but the main fibers remain tied permanently to core0. That's why when FSX is first installed, the optimum configuration for that specific machine's hardware is pre-set in the fsx.cfg file. Single core machine's settings will be very much different than a dual or quad core machine.Even so, I have here in my development studio three identical machines, all running up to date WinXP, all using a common library of aircraft, scenery and configuration files, yet all three exhibit -at times- wildly different framerates and fluidity, even when running the exact same flightplan over the exact same scenery.Now I don't hold the position that tweaking this-or-that is an exercise in futility, but do maintain that there's no single one-size-fits-all solution. Personal experience has demonstrated time and again that what works on one machine may well not work on even an identical machine.I hope this helps in some way. Enjoy the experience, but don't get so caught up in things that you forget to fly! :)

[bojote 20]

I hope this helps in some way. Enjoy the experience, but don't get so caught up in things that you forget to fly! :)

I probably need to do just that... besides, I'm not trying to put you, Phil or anybody on the spot. Thanks for the clarification on Fiber vs. Threads Bill, I'll do more flying and less tweaking and/or prove this or prove that :)