AffinityMask no longer works

[Sawyer 0]

Hi I've been using AffinityMask=14 on my i7 setup for some time now with success. Having core 0 free with this setting works well because I I use that core for other software like weather program, ATC program etc.But 2 days I fire up FSX to use and notice in flight that its stuttering more, after looking around I notice core zero is fully loaded and after changing and removing the AffinityMask setting it now makes no difference to my setup. I have made no changes myself to the PC or FSX and simply does not have any effect now. It make zero sense to me so any help welcome. Thanks Sawyer

[davethewave2 20]

If you have hyper-threading enabled (check your bios to change) you need to use 84. 14 in binary is 1110 which means ignore the first core and use the next 3. With i7 with hyper threading fsx sees 8 cores (Core1 logical, core1 virtual, core2 logical, core2 virtual, Core3 logical, core3 virtual, core4 logical, core4 virtual) So if you use 1110 you are saying just use core1 virtual, core2 logical and core 2 virtual) You need 84 which is 1010100. This should be the setting forYou could also use 85 which would prevent fsx from using any of the virtual cores. Might be interesting to see what happens using 84/85 on AMD's Bulldozer when it comes out. To be honest, if you have hyper threading enabled I wouldn't bother with affinity mask. I think windows 7 can move threads between cpus so let the operating system worry about this!

[Sawyer 0]

Thanks for the replay Dave problem is I've never used hyper-threading due to it not offering any benefits to FSX and only increases heat with an overclock. I'm running a stable 4.2Ghz overclock and have been for a long while and have always had a good running FSX on this machine it's only this week for some mind bending reason that the AffinityMask tweak has stopped working. I do have backups of FSX so I might try looking at them to see if they are ok and at least trace the issue down. I find it such a strange problem that I'm thinking it might be an OS problem or an OS update.

[vgbaron 2,367]

I'd look at a system restore - I doubt if it has anything to do with FSX. One other thing to try before that - backup your FSX.CFG file and then delete it. After FSX builds the default cfg file, just add the Affinity Mask setting alone and see if it works. Vic

[davethewave2 20]

Some things to check. Affinity mask is under the [JOBSCHEDULER] section. You only have one JOBSCHEDULER Hyper threading is still disabled. (Only 4 cores visible in task manager) Are you editing the correct fsx.cfg? Agree with Vic, rename old one and rebuild again.

[Sawyer 0]

Well I installed a clone of an FSX install from the 6/09/11 and the problem was gone which was a relief and I'm sure glad I do backups, however I went back to the 16/09/11 backup to try and find out why this was happening but have yet to trace a cause. I did install UK2000 Newcastle demo, Shades and ccleaner between the dates and today tested them with and without but it didn't change anything. I did think that maybe ccleaner could have something to do with it as far as the registry is concerned but at this point cant prove it. All I do know is something caused the tweak not to work any more and maybe other problems not yet found. As for the cfg they are both the same, I just wish I could find out what it was to avoid such a strange problem.