FPS and CPU/GPU loading in PD3 V4.1

[vc10man 732]

Steve, just out of interest for us 4-core CPU users a bit behind the rest of the pack, what is your recommended AM setting. I cannot see it anywhere in my P3D.cfg. Where is added?

[vgbaron 3,586]

21 minutes ago, vc10man said:

Steve, just out of interest for us 4-core CPU users a bit behind the rest of the pack, what is your recommended AM setting. I cannot see it anywhere in my P3D.cfg. Where is added?

you have to manually add it:

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=xxxx

FWIW, I don't use one - determined that on MY system, I get better performance without AM or HT enabled.

Each system is different - some use it and some don't - as long as they are happy. 

Vic

[jmig 100]

I followed Steve's advice and applied AffinityMask=4088. To my binary/AM uneducated eyes, I didn't see much if any difference. If anyone is interested, I have attached a screen capture of the same flight in the same area using the AM setting of 4088. I still never saw the GPU get maxed out. Unless someone can explain why I would be better on with a 1080 or 1080 Ti, I guess I will look into building a new computer and keep the GTX 970.

If anyone has other gems of information on this subject, I would like to hear them. As I said above, when it comes to maximizing a computer performance, I am pretty much lost.

Thanks again to everyone who offered advice.

 

 

[vc10man 732]

6 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

you have to manually add it:

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=xxxx

FWIW, I don't use one - determined that on MY system, I get better performance without AM or HT enabled.

Each system is different - some use it and some don't - as long as they are happy. 

Vic

Thanks for that Vic. Neither do I use HT.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Please note my system specs in my sig.  With my system specs I get excellent performance in P3DV4 and Xplane11 both.  In Xplane11 everything is maxed, in P3D I have autogen disabled and AI set at 25pct.  Texture size is set at 2048x2048  with only a slight impact on aircraft textures.  Everything else is maxed except for AA, limited to 8X.  If I unlock my fps the vary between about 55-70.  But since I use MSE and my own Colorado photoreal scenery, I limit fps to 33fps (don't ask why I chose that number, just seemed cool LOL).  This allows the scenery to render without blurries or stutters.  My photoreal scenery covers California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, the four corners states.

When I purchased my system I was a bit hesitant since my gpu only has 3GB VRAM.  But the salesperson at Fry's Electronics was insistent that the system was tuned for flight simulation.  Based on my performance with my old 2.33 GHZ system and FSX, which could maintain a locked 30fps, I decided to take the leap on the new system several weeks ago.

I run a very lean system, no services or background apps other than what is absolutely necessary.  Fraps for instance is a resource hog.  Even the Windows update service is disabled, as I would get update notifications at random times during my flights.

I have applied no Nvidia tweaks.  When I installed P3D it chose very conservative settings, so first thing I did was start ramping up detail.  I applied one graphics change at a time, evaluated performance, and repeated.  The only impact I had was when I tried to max AI.  Don't understand why AI has always been such a hog in FSX/P3D, in Xplane my airports and skies are crowded with AI and there is no performance impact.

Troubleshooting spotty performance is always hard.  I always recommend starting P3D with one of the default aircraft, it helps initialize the gauge system.  However my P3D default is the Carenado Cessna 337.

John

 

[dukeav 46]

As a first step, turn all traffic settings to zero on the Options-Traffic page. Any changes?

Second, lock frames to 30 and use 0.1 as FFTF. Any changes?

[SteveW 1,792]

18 hours ago, vc10man said:

Steve, just out of interest for us 4-core CPU users a bit behind the rest of the pack, what is your recommended AM setting. I cannot see it anywhere in my P3D.cfg. Where is added?

Thing about four cores is that you need them all for P3D v4 so use the AM to disable just the first LP with HT enabled or with HT disabled do not use an AM and the sim uses all four cores. Instead use a batch file (or an app) to start addon exe apps away from the first core.

 

The 4088 example for the  6 core+HT is just an example to keep things simple for the explanations. The main thing with P3D is to keep those addon exe apps off of the sim cores, we can't do that with 4 cores, they must be shared, so keep them from the first..

[vc10man 732]

13 minutes ago, SteveW said:

Thing about four cores is that you need them all for P3D v4 so use the AM to disable just the first LP with HT enabled or with HT disabled do not use an AM and the sim uses all four cores. Instead use a batch file (or an app) to start addon exe apps away from the first core.

 

The 4088 example for the  6 core+HT is just an example to keep things simple for the explanations. The main thing with P3D is to keep those addon exe apps off of the sim cores, we can't do that with 4 cores, they must be shared, so keep them from the first..

Thanks for that, on a Sunday, Steve. Now, you are talking science to a noob. Batch file to start addon exe apps away from the first core? Now you have truly lost me. I understand the 4-core, HT on/off, AM on/off thing, but the batch thing.................well and truly lost.

[SteveW 1,792]

Have a look into starting exe apps with a batch file here: http://www.codelegend.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=632

There's several methods shown how to do batches there. If we make sure the first sim process (that runs the screen updates) is not interrupted then our sim can continue smoothly.

 

Regarding guys testing - remember that setting Unlimited on the slider with VSync=Off (P3D Display Settings) allows us to see maximum frames. Otherwise we would set VSync or Locked to limit the frames and so looking for changes to fps is a waste of time.

 

[vc10man 732]

Thanks a million for that, Steve. Much appreciated.

[SteveW 1,792]

3 hours ago, vc10man said:

Thanks a million for that, Steve. Much appreciated.

That's fine I'm happy to help. Here's some more on it I can copy/paste in here using the four core CPU as an example with P3D v4:

 

As said before HT off simplifies the whole deal but we lose the performance increase from halving the thread switching time across the CPU. With HT off we know that the system jobscheduler places the second sim process on another core so as to leave the first core to do more work for the main process of updating the screen.

Example four cores:

1111 = No AM on a four core naturally = 15 decimal for sim

addons on 1110, two per addon

1100=12 decimal

1010=10

0110=6

So you can see we avoid the main core.

 

Again with HT On we need the AM to ensure that second process starts on the second real core. And also we can experiment with which processes share the other cores:

Using for example:

11,11,11,10=254 for the sim (11,11,11,01=253 same result as 254 for sim)

01,01,01,01=85 for the sim (10,10,10,10=170 same for sim but remember that addons are placed differently)

For addons use two of either per addon in these locations 10,10,10,00

10,10,00,00=160

10,00,10,00=136

00,10,10,00=40

 

Many other combinations are possible including using three cores for the sim and one for the addons:

11,11,01,00=244

00,00,00,11=3 for addons

 

(by the way the binary with commas can be pasted (CTRL+C -> CTRL+V) into Windows calculator programmers mode as it removes the commas for us).

[vc10man 732]

Once again, Steve, thanks for all this although it's like a chemistry lesson for me. All formulae!

So, how do I incorporate all the above in that batch file link you posted?

 

 

[NickJZX 17]

4 hours ago, vc10man said:

Once again, Steve, thanks for all this although it's like a chemistry lesson for me. All formulae!

So, how do I incorporate all the above in that batch file link you posted?

 

 

I'm curious with this as well, even with a 7700k and 1080ti its still somewhat stuttery. Thats with HT off and no AM prior. So anything to help make it smoother peaks my interest.

[SteveW 1,792]

5 hours ago, vc10man said:

Once again, Steve, thanks for all this although it's like a chemistry lesson for me. All formulae!

So, how do I incorporate all the above in that batch file link you posted?

 

 

I've provided help on that at my site:

http://www.codelegend.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=632

Although the batch is the cleanest least use of resources to do this, there are apps can do it but generally is just as hard to set them up as a batch file or two - with shortcuts dragged onto the desktop they (.bat) start apps just like the supplied icon.

[SteveW 1,792]

26 minutes ago, NickJZX said:

I'm curious with this as well, even with a 7700k and 1080ti its still somewhat stuttery. Thats with HT off and no AM prior. So anything to help make it smoother peaks my interest.

First of all, bring down the settings to see it is not simply overloaded that causes the stutter. Remember what I said about the sim being at 100% on the main thread, that means it will slow down rather than have the overhead to fill in the extra processing when the scene complexity increases. Bring the terrain res slider back to 2m at first, increasing that can introduce a sawtooth to the flow.

Four cores no HT No AM places the sim on AM=15=1111 all four cores, that's good. Now make sure addons each have two LPs away from that main first core.