P3D running but CPU not running at max speed

[SteveW 1,792]

12 hours ago, jagabom said:

Ray, how is that CPU 8087 working.  Frames etc.  I am looking at one myself.  

Jim

CYWG

I've been using the similar larger die 3960x for six years and looking to increase core count now.

[Nyxx 6,993]

1 hour ago, SteveW said:

With no AM the system will allocate every LP to P3D which pushes out the resources the FSL modules are actually using.

Steve it was reading people having the same kind of problems as myself over on there forums, the replies were all along the same lines, “Turn of HT”

Well I did not want to turn it off, so I started to read up yet again on your thoughts/finding on AM. You now know the outcome. 🙂 

[Oli Lei 1]

Hi! I am on of the forum users Nyxx mentioned. The fsl a320/a319 was unusable for me. I had stable 30 fps on the ground, as soon as I get airborne the fps dropped to 8-12 rhytmical. I dont have a high end system, at least not for P3D (i7-8750H, 16 GB RAM, GTX1070) and cant expect too much, but this looked very strange and "to less" to me.  

My CPU runs stable  at 4 GHz (i7-8750H) and the support ignored me completely. I was not able to turn off HT in BIOS as mentioned in the forum, there is no option for that. I used AffinityMask=1365 (101010101) to use my 6 physical cores as David used 85 (1010101) for 4. Now its smooth and the stutters are completely done!

Steve, should I also try another mask?

Thanks again David for sharing and Steve for figuring it out. 

[Pete Dowson 558]

This is a question for Steve.

I've always allowed P3D4 all cores on my 10-core 7900X PC (all cores overclocked to 4.8GHz, HT off at present).

With that set and otherprocesses restricted to using codes which prior testing shows are rarely used by P3D -- only during scenario loading does P3D appear to use more than 3-4 cores to any extent.

In that arrangement, in a heavy setting (Aerosoft EGLL with 100 or so UTlive aircraft), the frame rates rarely get above 20, and Core 0 seems mostly hitting 100% usage according to Task Manager.

After reading about some of the more successful experimants in this thread, I decided to limit P3D4 to cores 0-3 only, and use cores 4-9 for the add-on processes.

The result astonishes me. The frame rates now average a little over 20, even with the traffic hitting my UTLive limit of 200, and cores 0-3 are all pretty equally used by P3D, averaging about 60%, with none of them hitting 100%!

Seems this arrangement gives me some headroom for increasing some settings I've deliberately had to set low.

The reason I'm posting here is to ask "why?"  Why does retricting P3D4 to only 4 out of 10 cores make it use those 4 more evenly and not load any up to 100%? It doesn't seem logical to me, especially since, when allowed to use all 10 it only uses 3-4 (except when loading scenarios).

[LATER]

I'm now not so sure that restriction to 4 cores for P3D4 is a good idea. I flew from EGLL over London towared EGLC, and all 4 cores were hitting 100% quite often.  There were a few stutters (as I usually get over London), but I presume the 100% core usage is the reason ...?

Pete

 

Edited January 19, 2019 by Pete Dowson

[GSalden 4,657]

 

Pete, surely Steve will come around here.

Like you I am having a multiple view setup where all displays are connected to 1 pc.

Imho you probably should try 6 cores to start with as you need more terrain cores than someone with just 1 display.

Myself ( 7940x = 14 cores ) I am using 8 cores for P3Dv4 and the other 6 for Fs addons.

In that way I have the P3D cores running at 4.8 Ghz and the others at 4.0 Ghz.

Edited January 19, 2019 by GSalden

[Pete Dowson 558]

3 hours ago, GSalden said:

Imho you probably should try 6 cores to start with as you need more terrain cores than someone with just 1 display.

Myself ( 7940x = 14 cores ) I am using 8 cores for P3Dv4 and the other 6 for Fs addons.

Hmm. Yes, interesting. I was just so surprised that Core 0 loading went down from its normal locked 100% (in my test scenario) with all cores enabled for P3D, to 60% or so (along with three other cores), by actually restricting it! Just didn't make sense to me!

But, yes, I agree. I think P3D definitely needs more cores when loading stuff, not just loading new scenarios, but when traversing ground needing new terrain texture, autogen, etc.

I'm upgrading next month to an severely overclocked 9900K system, so I'll restrict myself in my experiments to the 8 cores it has rather than the 10 my 7900X has.

Pete

 

[fluffyflops 1,858]

26 pages of tweaks 🙄

Saying that I've put an affinity mask in and the fsl seems to like it, so thanks dave 

Edited January 19, 2019 by tooting

[Dirk98 354]

3 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

Hmm. Yes, interesting. I was just so surprised that Core 0 loading went down from its normal locked 100% (in my test scenario) with all cores enabled for P3D, to 60% or so (along with three other cores), by actually restricting it! Just didn't make sense to me!

But, yes, I agree. I think P3D definitely needs more cores when loading stuff, not just loading new scenarios, but when traversing ground needing new terrain texture, autogen, etc.

I'm upgrading next month to an severely overclocked 9900K system, so I'll restrict myself in my experiments to the 8 cores it has rather than the 10 my 7900X has.

Pete

 

Many users report that 6-8 cores are optimal for P3D. You might want to try on your current system this setting:

AffinityMask=4090

Allowing all other apps on Cores 7-9 only

 

Edited January 19, 2019 by Dirk98

[Pete Dowson 558]

2 hours ago, Dirk98 said:

You might want to try on your current system this setting:

AffinityMask=4090

Well that's FFA in hex (1111 1111 1010), which is either a 12-core CPU, or a 6-core with HT enabled. On my CPU the nearest to that I could get would be hex 3FA or 1018 in decimal. but that would actually leave cores 2 and 0 free, not "7-9".

Thanks anyway.

Pete

 

[Cruachan 705]

3 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

Well that's FFA in hex (1111 1111 1010), which is either a 12-core CPU, or a 6-core with HT enabled. On my CPU the nearest to that I could get would be hex 3FA or 1018 in decimal. but that would actually leave cores 2 and 0 free, not "7-9".

Hi Pete,

Your 7900X has 10 Physical Cores (20 HT LPs, 2 per Core)

With Hyperthreading=Enabled

An AffinityMask=4090 yields the pattern 00,00,00,00,11,11,11,11,10,10

This is using the first 6 Cores (12 HT LPs), leaving 4 Cores (6,7,8 and 9) or 8 HT LPs (12,13,14,15,16,17,18 and 19) free for use by assigning AffinityMasks to various Addons.

LP 1 has been assigned to the Prepar3D main thread

LP 3 has been assigned to the second main Prepar3D task.

——————————————————————————-

5960X

I prefer using AffinityMask=4085 = 00,00,11,11,11,11,01,01

Main thread on LP 0 and second task on LP 2.

This leaves 2 Cores (6 and 7) or 4 HT LPs (12,13,14 and 15) free for Addons on my 8 Cored 5960X and this configuration also works well.

Regards,

Mike

[GSalden 4,657]

4 hours ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Pete,

Your 7900X has 10 Physical Cores (20 HT LPs, 2 per Core)

With Hyperthreading=Enabled

An AffinityMask=4090 yields the pattern 00,00,00,00,11,11,11,11,10,10

This is using the first 6 Cores (12 HT LPs), leaving 4 Cores (6,7,8 and 9) or 8 HT LPs (12,13,14,15,16,17,18 and 19) free for use by assigning AffinityMasks to various Addons.

LP 1 has been assigned to the Prepar3D main thread

LP 3 has been assigned to the second main Prepar3D task.

——————————————————————————-

5960X

I prefer using AffinityMask=4085 = 00,00,11,11,11,11,01,01

Main thread on LP 0 and second task on LP 2.

This leaves 2 Cores (6 and 7) or 4 HT LPs (12,13,14 and 15) free for Addons on my 8 Cored 5960X and this configuration also works well.

Regards,

Mike

Why 0,1 for the main thread and second taak , but 1,1 for the other P3D terrain calculations ?

Windows has no core ?

Edited January 20, 2019 by GSalden

[kevinfirth 1,396]

12 hours ago, tooting said:

26 pages of tweaks 🙄

Saying that I've put an affinity mask in and the fsl seems to like it, so thanks dave 

@SteveW should now be picking up a retainer from FSL for resolving chunks of their support issues ;)

[Cruachan 705]

2 hours ago, GSalden said:

Why 0,1 for the main thread and second taak , but 1,1 for the other P3D terrain calculations ?

Windows has no core ?

Hi Gerard,

My understanding is that Windows does not need specific core assignments as the Scheduler moves jobs around efficiently (dynamically) using any cores/HT LPs that it determines as having sufficiently available free resources. In the case of AM=4085 I’m assuming it will employ LPs 1 and 3 (as these are not used by Prepar3D) and also any HT LP that may be relatively inactive at any particular point in time. If you watch Prepar3D activity in Task Manager you will note that those LPs used for texture loading are rarely maxed out and then only briefly while a Scenario is loading.

If Windows were to keep threads running on LP 0 then at some point it is likely there would be contention for resources with the main thread when Prepar3D is started in its assigned Affinity. So, the Windows Job Scheduler will move Windows activity off this HT LP and instead use those that are either free or relatively less active.

Regards,

Mike

Edited January 20, 2019 by Cruachan

[fluffyflops 1,858]

9 hours ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Pete,

Your 7900X has 10 Physical Cores (20 HT LPs, 2 per Core)

With Hyperthreading=Enabled

An AffinityMask=4090 yields the pattern 00,00,00,00,11,11,11,11,10,10

This is using the first 6 Cores (12 HT LPs), leaving 4 Cores (6,7,8 and 9) or 8 HT LPs (12,13,14,15,16,17,18 and 19) free for use by assigning AffinityMasks to various Addons.

LP 1 has been assigned to the Prepar3D main thread

LP 3 has been assigned to the second main Prepar3D task.

——————————————————————————-

5960X

I prefer using AffinityMask=4085 = 00,00,11,11,11,11,01,01

Main thread on LP 0 and second task on LP 2.

This leaves 2 Cores (6 and 7) or 4 HT LPs (12,13,14 and 15) free for Addons on my 8 Cored 5960X and this configuration also works well.

Regards,

Mike

Mike you seem to know your stuff 

What would you recommend for a 8700k with HT on?? 

Thanks in advance 

[Pete Dowson 558]

9 hours ago, Cruachan said:

With Hyperthreading=Enabled

An AffinityMask=4090 yields the pattern 00,00,00,00,11,11,11,11,10,10

Yes, but as I think I said, HT is not currently enabled.  This allows me to achieve 4.8GHz on all 10 cores. With HT enabled I'd need to reduce most of them if i'm to avoid generating too much heat (unless I changed the cooling system significantly. Currently it's a simple Corsair H100 arrangement).

And received wisdom used to be to avoid HT because of the clashes for each core. I have noted Steve's opposite advice, and would consider experimenting with HT re-enabled but in a few weeks I will have an expertly built, really well watercooled system, using a 9900X with 2 x 2080Ti GPUs and probably running at 5.3GHz at least (fingers crossed). Other parts will also be overclocked, and it wil be using 4500 MHz DDR4 memory. 😉

Pete