30 minutes ago, JoeFackel said:

Guys, thx for all this expert input, highly appreciated. But don't forget, the majority of user don't have 8 cores or more up the sleeves, i guess most of us still struggle with 4 cores or even less 😉

Yes, there's little we can do with four cores but allocate them all, 1111=15=AM0 in that case, although we can assign addon exes to 1100 and this is a no-brainer improvement. 

1 minute ago, SteveW said:

Yes, there's little we can do with four cores but allocate them all, 1111=15=AM0 in that case, although we can assign addon exes to 1100 and this is a no-brainer improvement. 

With HT= off i guess, with "on" it would be AM=85, right?

 

Yes! 85=01,01,01,01 and so the sim performs 'exactly' the same as 15=1111 HT off, the only difference is what runs on those other LPs that are not there with HT Off.

Similarly with the six core no HT: AM=30=011110 assign 100001 to addons - with HT On AM=340=00,01,01,01,01,00 (or 680) - assign 11,00,00,00,00,11 to addons - this provides slightly better performance in the sim with HT enabled because P3D uses a lot of systems resources and i/o.

 

7 minutes ago, SteveW said:

Yes! 85=01,01,01,01 and so the sim performs 'exactly' the same as 15=1111 HT off, the only difference is what runs on those other LPs that are not there with HT Off.

Slowly i get thru all this AM-shitzu .... the whole add-on junk should then go AM=192 / 11 00 00 11 or AM=195 / 11 00 00 00 i guess?

16 minutes ago, JoeFackel said:

Slowly i get thru all this AM-shitzu .... the whole add-on junk should then go AM=192 / 11 00 00 11 or AM=195 / 11 00 00 00 i guess?

Yes, anything you don't care about for performance can just take up each other's time - to an extent. Obviously there's a point whereby reducing the quality of performance for some addons might cause the sim to stall although that shouldn't happen with well coded apps. But even single spare cores do not present poor performance to a ton of apps especially HT enabled - one of the reasons for emulating two cores on a core is to reduce waiting in line for resources served from the same spoon. 

So to recap:

We have two basic types of task in the sim:

1. Those that take seconds to complete - example: collecting new scenery data as we fly.

2. Those special tasks that must not be interrupted - example: working for frame rendering.

If we enable HT then we need to worry about where those tasks reside since unchecked they gang up in pairs on cores, forcing sharing where it would not with HT disabled.

Those long tasks have to interrupt the rendering task at some stage to pass on the result. That's done in a way that distributes the load. Higher throughput overall means that those special tasks get shorter interruptions. And that's why you require the optimum loading time for the machine.

 

Edited August 27, 20187 yr by SteveW

I'm just testing SMT off, so 8 cores. AM=127 (01111111) and set all my addons to 10000000. 

It's running very nicely, not a single stutter yet, just on a 4 hr flight. 

Once that is done i'll enable SMT and following the logic of this thread looks like AM=16373 (0011111111110101) and then addons to 1100000000000000. I'll need to knock back the oc to 3.9 instead of 3.925. 3.9 is tested stable with SMT on. So will see how they compare.

 

52 minutes ago, SteveW said:

 

You can put addon exes onto cores doing background tasks of the sim as well, but this slows down that data bandwidth - an aggressive app can bring down a task occasionally. These are tasks that take seconds to complete so are 'relatively' unaffected. If you need to do that you already have confidence in that you started with a good bandwidth setup.

Don't be so modest Kev, you knew full well the techniques we discussed, maybe you just needed a leg up to get on track quickly, no harm in that.

Still got to figure out loading the addons with an AM using a batch file, don't ascribe too much wisdom to me yet 😉

5 minutes ago, djbully said:

I'm just testing SMT off, so 8 cores. AM=127 (01111111) and set all my addons to 10000000. 

It's running very nicely, not a single stutter yet, just on a 4 hr flight. 

Once that is done i'll enable SMT and following the logic of this thread looks like AM=16373 (0011111111110101) and then addons to 1100000000000000. I'll need to knock back the oc to 3.9 instead of 3.925. 3.9 is tested stable with SMT on. So will see how they compare.

 

Looks like too many '11's to me. Instead if you find 127 is good with HT disabled, then with HT enabled you NATURALLY substitute 00,01,01,01,01,01,01,01 = 5461.

I understand big numbers of LPs and cores are seductive but actually I would first try 00,00,01,01,01,01,00,00 = 1360 and work from there.

 

But yes, even with HT off we still need to optimise the core-count and move the addon exes away from there.

But enabling HT is going to cost us more brain-cells than it takes to do sudoku on the way home from work.

 

 

 

Thanks for that Steve, will do. I was not using AM until today, my previous flirts with it did not improve performance, but this is looking good. 

I'll take on board the advice about less 11's. Will report back 😎

7 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

Still got to figure out loading the addons with an AM using a batch file, don't ascribe too much wisdom to me yet 😉

Pretty straight forward:

New text file on the desktop - edit in notepad - on one line put:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "Notepad" /affinity 9 "C:\Windows\notepad.exe"

Now Save As: (somefilename).BAT and close

double-click that file and notepad starts - look at task manager - details - set affinity. Should be showing 1001.

Substitute with your addon exe details and you are away!

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, djbully said:

Thanks for that Steve, will do. I was not using AM until today, my previous flirts with it did not improve performance, but this is looking good. 

I'll take on board the advice about less 11's. Will report back 😎

Yes, applying AMs incorrectly won't give better performance.

If we see worse performance with an AM I'm afraid we got it wrong - simple as that.

We don't necessarily see better performance with HT disabled because we don't gang up on cores that way. We often see worse performance when enabling HT because of that fact with certain types of processes - these we have to massage.

If the app provides an AM setting it is there because if we need to adjust it then we do it that way - we do not allow it to be handled by a process manager.

9 minutes ago, SteveW said:

Pretty straight forward:

New text file on the desktop - edit in notepad - on one line put:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "Notepad" /affinity 9 "C:\Windows\notepad.exe"

Now Save As: (somefilename).BAT and close

double-click that file and notepad starts - look at task manager - details - set affinity. Should be showing 1001.

Substitute with your addon exe details and you are away!

Yes that bit works, so I substituted 3072 for 9, expecting it to show me 11,00,00,00,00,00 , and it didn't?

Instead I got.... 00,00,01,11,00,10 ????

FIXED: the 9 was in Hex no Dec.... C00 instead of 9 give me 11,00,00,00,00,00 🙂

 

Edited August 27, 20187 yr by kevinfirth
dunderheadness!

The use of batch files - I can't remember offhand but try

start /B "" /affinity C00 "C:\Program Files (x86)\FSWeather\FSWeather.exe"

Using HEX values. There's a few different ways shown on my site sometimes there's unexpected results.

There could be a problem asserting AMs to apps that already do something as I mentioned before, check that before attempting to start any app.

4 hours ago, SteveW said:

Guys, remember though it's not a great deal maybe 6%, but each few percent gives the edge to the feeling we can get from the sim.

 

So... all this talk about AM is just to get a 6% improvement in... what? Fps? Loading times? Somehow I never understood all this AM talk and this topic isn't making it any easier LOL I just can't understand what I am reading. I am surprised there isn't a utility out there by now that takes care of all this calculating and tests your hardware with a single click. 😉 Imho we shouldn't have to deal with all this stuff... Luckily I mainly use AFS2 now, which doesn't need any of this AM stuff, but recently I installed P3D again (for my ATC controlled flights with real time weather in a study level sim) and AFS2 really spoils the fun of P3D when it comes to performance. Which is why I tried to make sense of AM once more by reading this topic. It's all in vain though. I guess I'm too stupid to get it. 😉 But anyway, now I know you have to go through all of this just for a 6% improvement I think I'll stick with what I've got. Until that utility is there or someone has written a AM-guide for total newbies. 😋

24 minutes ago, J van E said:

So... all this talk about AM is just to get a 6% improvement in... what? Fps? Loading times? Somehow I never understood all this AM talk and this topic isn't making it any easier LOL I just can't understand what I am reading. I am surprised there isn't a utility out there by now that takes care of all this calculating and tests your hardware with a single click. 😉 Imho we shouldn't have to deal with all this stuff... Luckily I mainly use AFS2 now, which doesn't need any of this AM stuff, but recently I installed P3D again (for my ATC controlled flights with real time weather in a study level sim) and AFS2 really spoils the fun of P3D when it comes to performance. Which is why I tried to make sense of AM once more by reading this topic. It's all in vain though. I guess I'm too stupid to get it. 😉 But anyway, now I know you have to go through all of this just for a 6% improvement I think I'll stick with what I've got. Until that utility is there or someone has written a AM-guide for total newbies. 😋

If you had an aircraft you would care about 6% of it. LMAO