P3DV4.4 - Tweaks to CFG, Why?

[newtie 533]

49 minutes ago, mpw8679 said:

If u want to take advantage of strong hardware then yes they are necessary.

Optional, not necessary.

[mpw8679 428]

7 minutes ago, newtie said:

Optional, not necessary.

Please explain further unless u were just desperate for a petty critique of my post.

 

[1st fltsimguy 466]

3 hours ago, mtrainer said:

Yes when Prepar3D V4 first came out I made a vow not to delve into the endless "fiddling" cycle anymore, and to minimize add-ons to those which really contributed.  So I made a conscious decision to spend more time flying and exploring.  Once you make peace with not having all the sliders maxed out, your mind can be at ease with all that is right in the world.  The hardware will catch up, in time...although I do hold out hope that the main FS loop can be deconstructed to run smartly across multiple cores before then.

But if it were an easy task, it would have been done already.  The Sony PlayStation PS3 Cell Architecture was brilliant in its day, but ultimately hard to program to keep all cores equally busy.  Multithreaded programming is hard.  While I'm no expert, I've dabbled in it professionally via straight C, and it gives you many ways to hang yourself (and the application).

Mark

 

There you go, I don't want to fiddle around anymore as well. I did some slider adjustment now I'm finished. Just going flying.

[penta_a 428]

3 hours ago, American 833 Heavy said:

 Trust me, nothing would make me happier than never having to open the P3D cfg again. That is still a little ways off... 

 

they can do it if they want to, by just providing all variables/options through sliders in graphic settings UI panel and leave it to the users to decide what to do with it based on their system capability instead of leaking it to testers (unannounced/unofficial) manual editing method to the CFG file.

[Langyboy63 22]

11 hours ago, Bnash00 said:

I'll tell you one more thing that made a HUGE difference in my setup. I disabled hyper-threading in my system BIOS. I find the frame rate is MUCH smoother with hyper-threading turned off. With hyper-threading on I constantly experienced stutters as the frame rate fluctuates. I use the unlimited setting for the frame rate limiter. With hyper-threading off the frame rate is much smoother for me.

I'm running a 4960X @ 4.7GHz with 6 cores 12 threads. With hyper-threading off I'm reduced to 6 cores 6 threads but I find the performance is much better. Honestly I really can't tell the difference with hyper-threading turned off when it comes to regular computing. I'm going to leave it off for now. Would be interesting to see if other people notice a benefit by turning hyper-threading off.   

Bnash,

Hyper threading off?

I have heard this before, could you just explain how you do this, I assume it is at the boot menu somewhere.

The biggest improvements i have seen are when I use Process Lasso to move P3d on the processors 2-7 and everything else onto the remaining processors.

I use a Gaming Laptop with a GTX980m GPU, have tried different tweaks, but find that if the worse blurries occur when using shader enhancers like PTA tweaks, so I only use the Enshade default shaders and find if I regularly delete the shaders this helps. 

There is always a bit of a trade off between performance and appearance, but with Vsync set to 1/2 (60hz monitor) and frame rate limiter to 29.5FPS and Vsync on and unlimited frames with Triple Buffering in P3d, I am getting the best results I have ever seen without any CFG tweaks at all.

[JoeFackel 760]

6 minutes ago, Langyboy63 said:

The biggest improvements i have seen are when I use Process Lasso to move P3d on the processors 2-7 and everything else onto the remaining processors.

If Hyperthreading is ON an AffinityMask setting in the prepar3d.cfg file is mandatory. You should not use Processlasso for P3D itself, whenever possible some should use programs native Affinitymask  setting if available.

Personally i would recommend HT=OFF only for 8-core systems, below 6-core CPU an proper AM-setting will have more or less the same effect but with the advantage of more cores available for lower-ranking processes like SODE, UTL etc.

[joemiller 269]

7 hours ago, SolRayz said:

I thought these types of threads were a thing of the past. 

Nope, it's here to stay. Just like building computers and flying, tweaking is just second nature. We cannot live without tweaking. The day P3D stops us from tweaking, that day I'm done flying.

Long live Tweaking. LoL

But, on a serious note, I actually I just applied the tweak to prevent texture blackouts and,     and   IT     WORKS!!    Are you kidding me? It's like having new sim. WoW

[Langyboy63 22]

12 minutes ago, JoeFackel said:

If Hyperthreading is ON an AffinityMask setting in the prepar3d.cfg file is mandatory. You should not use Processlasso for P3D itself, whenever possible some should use programs native Affinitymask  setting if available.

Personally i would recommend HT=OFF only for 8-core systems, below 6-core CPU an proper AM-setting will have more or less the same effect but with the advantage of more cores available for lower-ranking processes like SODE, UTL etc.

Hi Joe

I have tried various AM settings and find I get a better result with Lasso, I am surprised you say not to use it , haven't tried without in 4.4 as yet.

But I am pretty happy with what I am seeing so if it aint broke etc. 

What AM setting do you use, I have the same i7 processor as yours.

Regards

Chris.

 

 

[JoeFackel 760]

When the program offers native AM support (like P3d) its better to use this as you can never know who "dynamic" PL shovels the threads between the cores which may led to hickups.

I use AM=245 to reserve two native cores for the main P3D threads and move other addons like UTL, couatl, SODE etc. to the last 4 HT-cores to get them out of P3Ds way. So more or less i use my 4/8-core CPU as 6-core.

[ErichB 3,642]

I have made no tweaks for about 2 years to my P3D.cfg.  Never really found the need to

I was scrolling through the config the other day and noticed the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULTI = 30 entry which we used to adjust constantly with FSX - I remember always setting it to 120.  I chuckled and thought , 'those were the days'  (of dread)

 

 

 

[Langyboy63 22]

Thanks Joe,

Perhaps I will have a look next time I am on my Laptop.

 

Eric,

Why leave it, you know 120 makes sense LOL.

[Guest]

No cfg tweaks here either. I'm done with that. Once a year or so I might try a few tweaks but I seldom notice a difference and usually it even screws up something so I always revert to no tweaks.

Obviously getting the right settings using the options menu is tweaking already: a lot of the old FSX tweaks aren't needed anymore simply because LM added them to the settings options. I am sure that in time the tweaks of today will have become legal sim settings and I may have a look at them when that has happened. Until then I like to keep life as simple as possible and I simply enjoy what I've got. 😉

[Langyboy63 22]

I tweak to take my mind off Brexit.

[David Roch 1,982]

1 hour ago, Langyboy63 said:

The biggest improvements i have seen are when I use Process Lasso to move P3d on the processors 2-7 and everything else onto the remaining processors.

 

 

 

22 minutes ago, JoeFackel said:

I use AM=245 to reserve two native cores for the main P3D threads and move other addons like UTL, couatl, SODE etc. to the last 4 HT-cores to get them out of P3Ds way.

So one of you is using 6 cores for P3D and 2 cores for the remaining progs.
And the other one is doing exactly the contrary.

Who's right then?

 

[JoeFackel 760]

The difference is between NATIVE cores and VIRTUAL cores and their usage. I also "use" 6-cores for P3D, i just block P3D from the first two virtual HT cores only.