Affinity Mask and Intel Turbo Boost 3.0

[LB777 100]

I've recently got myself a new Skylake-X cpu to replace my 3930k which had served me very well for the past 6 years and it comes with that turbo boost 3.0 thing that I think the previous generation (Broadwell-E) also has.

Now I'm trying to figure out if and how this should be used in conjunction with the affinity mask setting set for the sim. Intel has this utility to set it up but I'm not sure what it does exactly as I haven't found any proper guide on how to use it. It also has "Affinity controls" which I wonder if they might conflict with what you set for the sim in the .cfg file.

When using this I've noticed that the cores' frequency jump up and down quite a lot which I'm not sure is ideal for a stable framerate...

So really I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with this and how I should set it up, or if I should just disable it altogether.

[Terrydew 6]

I would also like to know the answer to these questions.

[JoeFackel 760]

Drop that Inteltool.

You're using your PC for an Highend-Application (read "Flightsimulation"), that means you need ALL the power your CPU has ALL the time.

Set the Affinity mask in your prepare3d.cfg (you have to test which setting is the best for your system).

Set your CPU to maximum power in the BIOS (refer to your mainboard facturers manual), watch out for enough cooling and your system will run on full power all the time without throttling during simming.

Reminder: it will raise the wear on your CPU and of course you have higher energy consumption, thats the price you have to pay.

 

[GSalden 4,656]

I am running my 5820 continuesly at 4.3 Ghz since 2014.. 

There is no wear on your cpu if your cooling system is good. A cpu is not a mechanical thing. It can only crash when overheating or by overvoltage.

[swiesma 625]

26 minutes ago, GSalden said:

I am running my 5820 continuesly at 4.3 Ghz since 2014.. 

There is no wear on your cpu if your cooling system is good. A cpu is not a mechanical thing. It can only crash when overheating or by overvoltage.

More voltage means higher wear!

For example:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1626782/pcgh-pcper-nvidia-to-pascal-maximum-tension-shortens-life-to-one-year

[Jiri Kocman 20]

I guess that Boost 3 will boost two cores to higher boost clock, but only if that two cores are only cores in use. I bet that only two cores will mostly never used in P3D.

[LB777 100]

4 minutes ago, Jiri Kocman said:

I guess that Boost 3 will boost two cores to higher boost clock, but only if that two cores are only cores in use. I bet that only two cores will mostly never used in P3D.

Well what I tried was to put an affinity mask for P3D to make it use 4 cores (1 thread on each), with 2 of the cores being the "favorite" ones that boost to 4.5GHz instead of the base 4.3Ghz. That seemed to work but as I said the clockspeeds were jumping quite a lot. From a cpu temps standpoint it sounded like a sensible idea, since P3D is not really gonna make use of more than 4 cores anyway.

I think ideally I'd want to have these 2 "best" cores at 4.5GHz (or more) and the rest stay at their default boost so the temps don't go through the roof, but I have no idea if that's something that can be done, be it with this Intel tool or manually in the BIOS.

[GSalden 4,656]

2 hours ago, swiesma said:

More voltage means higher wear!

For example:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1626782/pcgh-pcper-nvidia-to-pascal-maximum-tension-shortens-life-to-one-year

They are actually saying the same as I did ....  At maximum voltage your are putting an overvoltage on your cpu/gpu and it will break sometime in the future. Use a submax voltage icw good cooling and you will have no issues whatsoever.  

My cpu is about 200-300 mhz below it's maximum potential and therefore it it is still running fine after 3 years. 

 

[RudiJG1 172]

3 hours ago, GSalden said:

I am running my 5820 continuesly at 4.3 Ghz since 2014.. 

There is no wear on your cpu if your cooling system is good. A cpu is not a mechanical thing. It can only crash when overheating or by overvoltage.

I've been running an i5-2500K at 4.4 Ghz continuously at stock voltage since 2011....still going strong on air cooling. Runs P3Dv4 like a champ, so I'm with Gerard on this one.

[Slayer 190]

Have actually you tried it without any affinity masks and just let the sim and processor run? Theses days there is less and less need to tinker... at least establish some kind of baseline before you start tweaking anything.

This isn't the FSX days where you immediately have to start throwing tweaks at it because it's an 11 year old platform.

[LB777 100]

17 hours ago, Slayer said:

Have actually you tried it without any affinity masks and just let the sim and processor run?

I did try that yes, though P3D then uses mainly core 0 which I'd rather have free for the OS and other stuff. There are some great threads here about which affinity mask works best for P3D so I just followed that and it works well.

As for the Intel tool, I tried enabling/disabling it in a couple of scenarios and it just doesn't seem to have any effect on the sim. So for now I just turned it off... I got the impression that the affinity mask overrides it anyway.

[Kilo60 660]

Just overclocked my i7 6700 to 4.5 from 4.0 with Intel Extreme Turbo Boost...

 

Really not seeing the benefit in P3Dv4 as my FPS have not increased much and still getting spikes where my FPS will drop from mid 20ies to low teens with pmdg AC...

 

Is there a specific Affinity setting I need to set in the .cfg to really take advantage of the increased clock speed?