How to Set CPU AFFINITY without using FSX.CFG

[quadraspleen 7]

Jim,I've been messing around with this, and also removing the line from my cfg and using task manager to manually set affinity and have seen the best results with the latter, setting FSX to use 0, 1, 2 and 3 and also sending stuff like Fraps (huge hog) ASE2012 (tiny hog) and EFB (larger hog) to cores 6 and 7. It's a pain to do it all every flight and it doesn't remember the setting for all of the other programs when you start them all up again..be great if there were an app that does it as we all run so much stuff alongside FSX that everything is having a fight..It's stuff on core 0 alongside FSX that causes problems I imagine?What i did notice though, is that if you bring up the Resource Monitor on the Performance page of TM and choose CPU, that I have CPU's PARKED :huh:Did a bit of reading and found that, even with high-end systems, and power management effectively turned off in ctrl panel, that Windows 7 will still PARK CPU's!!Who knew? Not me, that's for sure..I knew laptops did it with APM, but didn't realise it was still happening with me, sometimes even with FSX running..There is a registry hack that stops it happening..not noticed any extra heat from the CPU since and I am sure FSX is a tiny bit smoother :)Anyway, is 12 or 14 the best setting for a 2600K? I have a job to tell to be honest..I tried 255 and all of my cores were maxed out!bestjake

Edited February 29, 2012 by quadraspleen

[Paul_Smith 92]

Its wrong because it's giving the wrong decimal value for the binary equivilent for the amount of cores I wish to use. In most cases the majority of people just disable Core0. It also always gave me poorer performance if I accepted the tools values.

Sorry, not understanding you. With six cores, an affinity mask of 56 is binary 111000 which translates as use cores 5,4 and 3 and not 2, 1 or 0i.e. 3 cores for FSX, the rest for the system.With 12 cores (HT enabled) the value 1366 gives binary 10101010110 which I agree does not seem correct. Can you check if the actual value ******* gave you was 1344? That would map to binary 010101000000 which again is three physical cores for FSX, no HT cores and the rest available to the system.

[G7USL 117]

I have probably the fastest d/core CPU. Would this tweak help me at all please?

[MrKen 3]

Dual core? You can try it, but I don't expect you'd see any improvement

[DavidCG 0]

If you use task manager rather than FSX.CFG to set the Affinity as I mentioned in the first post eg shortcutC:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "" /AFFINITY E "D:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsx.exein the statement "/AFFINITY E" above the "E" is the HEX (not decimal) representation of the cores ie 1110 in this example cores 1, 2 & 3 are assigned to FSX leaving Core 0 to the system.David Gunton

[quadraspleen 7]

Hi David,presumably this works for any and all programs, not just FSX?bestjake

[Paul_Smith 92]

If you use task manager rather than FSX.CFG to set the Affinity as I mentioned in the first post eg shortcutC:WindowsSystem32cmd.exe /C START "" /AFFINITY E "D:Program Files (x86)Microsoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator Xfsx.exein the statement "/AFFINITY E" above the "E" is the HEX (not decimal) representation of the cores ie 1110 in this example cores 1, 2 & 3 are assigned to FSX leaving Core 0 to the system.David Gunton

What is the difference between doing it your way and doing it the FSX way?

[DavidCG 0]

I have played about extensively with CPU Affinity and FSX.CFG and compared the core loadings in Task Manager whilst FSX is in windowed mode. I am aware that this is not an exhaustive test.My conclusions so far are:-

• Hyperthreading should be turned off.

• With the Affinity set in the .CFG then my experiments have shown that once the aircraft has been loaded then core loading changes and FSX runs on core 0 and 1 and performance drops regardless of the setting in FSX.CFG.
• Setting Affinity without using FSX .CFG gives consistent core loading when ever FSX is running and can be applied to any program and not just FSX.

I am aware that some people have no problems with setting Affinity in FSX.CFG and thats fine. However, this is not what I have found. My system is an I7 860 runing Windows 7.Kind RegardsDavid Gunton

[777-Pilot 0]

Hi!Setting the priority of FSX.exe in Task Manager does also help me to improve performance.

[quadraspleen 7]

I have also found the same as both Davids..It's just a PITA to set it up every time you open all of those programs...ASE; FSC; EFB etc etc..I have rem'd the comment out of FSX.cfg now..A question to DavidCG: Do you find your PC suffers in other respects with HT turned off? I find my VCore lowers slightly, but it doesn't seem to like running other stuff, like when I'm doing video editing or using Photoshop etc..bestjake

[cj-ibbotson 81]

Sorry, not understanding you. With six cores, an affinity mask of 56 is binary 111000 which translates as use cores 5,4 and 3 and not 2, 1 or 0i.e. 3 cores for FSX, the rest for the system.With 12 cores (HT enabled) the value 1366 gives binary 10101010110 which I agree does not seem correct. Can you check if the actual value ******* gave you was 1344? That would map to binary 010101000000 which again is three physical cores for FSX, no HT cores and the rest available to the system.

Your right about the 1344, I was quoting that figure from memory, the ******* tool was giving me 56 which wasn't what I wanted, as you say its only using 3 cores which seems an underkill to me when I want to have more available, I think 62 was the correct value for 111110

[magnetite 38]

I have my affinity mask set to 255. All cores are being used.http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/7964/fsx100cpu.jpgCPU usage drops because I alt-tabbed, but you can see they are being used.

Edited March 3, 2012 by magnetite

[JSkorna 137]

Holy crap! 83 processes, that is a huge number!! and 12.8GB of memory being used? How many programs are you running at the same time?!

[magnetite 38]

Holy crap! 83 processes, that is a huge number!! and 12.8GB of memory being used? How many programs are you running at the same time?!

I actually use a RAM disk for temporary storage (8 GB), so I guess I'm only using about 4.8 GB. Certain programs use the temp folder for storage, and RAM is crazy fast as a temp storage folder (much faster than an SSD, that's why RAM based storage is so expensive). For example, whenver you install one of your addons (eg. ORBX, UTX, etc), it writes everything to a temp folder, then starts the install process. From there, it installs everything from the temp folder to the destination folder (eg. FSX). So installing stuff like UTX is much faster for me. Edited March 3, 2012 by magnetite

[JSkorna 137]

OK that makes sense! Now, why so many system processes?