New P3D 5.3+ Affinity Mask Calculator

[Ray Proudfoot 8,964]

3 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Hoe about a 12900K cpu ?

8 performance cores @ 5.2-5.5 Ghz

8 efficiency cores @ 3.9 Ghz

That’s an odd CPU with Efficiency Cores. No idea. @Rob_Ainscoughmight know.

Regarding the OS and what it uses, I’m just going off the advice posted here.

[Sparkrite 188]

Isn't that old joke more like this ? :-

There are only 10 types of people in the world – those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

[Swe_Richard 1,172]

1 minute ago, Sparkrite said:

Isn't that old joke more like this ? :-

There are only 10 types of people in the world – those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

You are entirely correct on that. 

[Swe_Richard 1,172]

With version 5.3 my interest in P3D has rekindled. Got to say I like it. One thing that stands out to me is the AA performance. Last time I used P3D (I guess that might have been v 5.1) the AA was absolutely horrendous. Shimmering no matter what; especially at night. I have none of that now. I have been impressed by 5.3 to the point I am contemplating the CS 733 (would like to know from you guys if it is decent enough.. 😉). Earlier today I flew into KBFI overflying KSEA (all stock) with solid FPS (and settings) in the PMDG777. At night. Sure. There is no denying p3d is orders of magnitude behind "the other" sim in the GFX dpt, but it was really enjoyable non the less. I think I might like it here while I wait half an eternity for something nice in the 7XX family joins the party in MSFS. 

[MammyJammy 124]

14 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

That’s an odd CPU with Efficiency Cores. No idea. @Rob_Ainscoughmight know.

Regarding the OS and what it uses, I’m just going off the advice posted here.

If you enter in the 16 cores and 24 threads of the 12900K into the tool I have built and linked, it will label the cores with performance, HT/SMT, and efficiency correctly.  From there you can use a preset or manually configure until your heart's content.

Edited January 5, 2022 by MammyJammy
clarity

[MammyJammy 124]

1 hour ago, TomCYYZ said:

I would never have known to come up with "P3DCoreAffinityMask=1020". Would that have been derived from the "Calculator" if I knew what I was doing? This makes the whole "Affinity mask" subject so much easier for me. I will give this a go.

Yes, the tool calculates out the Affinity Masks converting binary into the proper order (last-to-first) and then switching to the decimal value (Base-2 to Base-10 conversion).  It also sets the XThreadSchedulers relative to the masks (you can move them around if you'd like - point being you don't need to worry about the numbers themselves).  All you need to do is point-and-click with how you want to set each core.  You can select a preset and then customize from there.

For your CPU, I entered in 6 core, 12 logical processors and clicked begin.  I clicked the first core free preset, then using the radio buttons selected the P3D Core Mask and simply clicked on the last physical core and HT core to remove the mask from it.  It's pretty quick and easy and looks like this when done:

 

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,964]

21 minutes ago, Sparkrite said:

Isn't that old joke more like this ? :-

There are only 10 types of people in the world – those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

Sounds about right. It was a long time ago.

[virtualstuff 759]

9 minutes ago, MammyJammy said:

Yes, the tool calculates out the Affinity Masks converting binary into the proper order (last-to-first) and then switching to the decimal value (Base-2 to Base-10 conversion).  It also sets the XThreadSchedulers relative to the masks (you can move them around if you'd like - point being you don't need to worry about the numbers themselves).  All you need to do is point-and-click with how you want to set each core.  You can select a preset and then customize from there.

For your CPU, I entered in 6 core, 12 logical processors and clicked begin.  I clicked the first core free preset, then using the radio buttons selected the P3D Core Mask and simply clicked on the last physical core and HT core to remove the mask from it.  It's pretty quick and easy and looks like this when done:

 

 

 

Have to say a great tool, thank you appreciated  🙌

[GSalden 4,665]

39 minutes ago, MammyJammy said:

If you enter in the 16 cores and 24 threads of the 12900K into the tool I have built and linked, it will label the cores with performance, HT/SMT, and efficiency correctly.  From there you can use a preset or manually configure until your heart's content.

That indeed is working.

However I prefer not to use HT on as my experience with my former 14 core cpu was that with that many cores HT is bringing performance down. 

Is there a way to use the tool for a 12900K with HT off ? 
 

And it would be nice if one could set non P3D cores too (for addon apps). The table cell part then would need an extra grey part.

Thanks 

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by GSalden

[MammyJammy 124]

27 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Is there a way to use the tool for a 12900K with HT off ? 

Yep - Just enter in 16 cores/16 threads.  It won't label the perf./efficiency cores (it has no way of knowing it's a 12900K as if the cores/threads are equal, there's no way to distinguish different core types).  The efficiency cores on the 12X000 processors are the last set of cores.  For the 12900K, it's the last 8.  I have a 12900K with HT off and run with the following:

[JobScheduler]
AffinityMask=65535
P3DCoreAffinityMask=65534
MainThreadScheduler=2
RenderThreadScheduler=0
FrameWorkerThreadScheduler=5

I have moved the ThreadSchedulers around to the coolest and highest frequency cores of my CPU.  Yours will differ but the presets in the tool will assign reasonable cores.

 

28 minutes ago, GSalden said:

And it would be nice if one could set non P3D cores too (for addon apps). The table cell part then would need an extra grey part.

It supports this.  Using the radio button for the P3D affinity mask (blue) you can turn off cores from P3D all together.  There's some recommendations in this thread from Rob A. to not do so, but the tool and the Prepar3D.cfg both support this.  Otherwise you can limit the P3DCoreAffinityMask (green) as a subset of the AffinityMask such that other add-ons in the P3D process space are on cores separate from the primary P3D processes (with limitations on CPU thread scheduling and how the add-ons are written).

[GSalden 4,665]

14 minutes ago, MammyJammy said:

Yep - Just enter in 16 cores/16 threads.  It won't label the perf./efficiency cores (it has no way of knowing it's a 12900K as if the cores/threads are equal, there's no way to distinguish different core types).  The efficiency cores on the 12X000 processors are the last set of cores.  For the 12900K, it's the last 8.  I have a 12900K with HT off and run with the following:

[JobScheduler]
AffinityMask=65535
P3DCoreAffinityMask=65534
MainThreadScheduler=2
RenderThreadScheduler=0
FrameWorkerThreadScheduler=5

I have moved the ThreadSchedulers around to the coolest and highest frequency cores of my CPU.  Yours will differ but the presets in the tool will assign reasonable cores.

 

It supports this.  Using the radio button for the P3D affinity mask (blue) you can turn off cores from P3D all together.  There's some recommendations in this thread from Rob A. to not do so, but the tool and the Prepar3D.cfg both support this.  Otherwise you can limit the P3DCoreAffinityMask (green) as a subset of the AffinityMask such that other add-ons in the P3D process space are on cores separate from the primary P3D processes (with limitations on CPU thread scheduling and how the add-ons are written).

Thanks for explaining. Great tool 👍

[TomCYYZ 215]

4 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@TomCYYZ, it’s easy if you understand binary. 0=off; 1=on.

On your 12 virtual cores for each one to be on the binary value is:-

111111111111

We read binary values from right to left. The first decimal equivalent value =1; the second=2; the third is 4. Each subsequent value is double the previous one. In a 12 virtual core (VC) CPU the last number is 2048. Or...

2048, 1024, 512, 256, 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.

Where all 12 VCs are to be used just add up the numbers above and you get 4095.

So if we want the first two and last two virtual cores to be off we ignore 1, 2, 1024 and 2048. Adding up the remaining numbers gives 1020. Convert that to binary gives:-

001111111100

So the first pair are off as are the last pair. All the other cores are on. When Hyperthreading is enabled in the BIOS each pair of virtual cores should be treated the same. So don’t have one on and the other off.

Hope that helps. There’s an old joke about binary. Only 10 people in the world understand it. 🤣

Of course you don’t need to work it out manually. The programmer mode of the Windows calculator does it for you. Switch to BIN mode and enter the binary for each VC and when you press DECimal the answer is provided.

This is awesome Ray! Thank you  for taking the time to educate me. An excellent presentation, well said and easy to understand, even for a layman like myself. Very much appreciated.

Regards,

Tom

[TomCYYZ 215]

3 hours ago, MammyJammy said:

Yes, the tool calculates out the Affinity Masks converting binary into the proper order (last-to-first) and then switching to the decimal value (Base-2 to Base-10 conversion).  It also sets the XThreadSchedulers relative to the masks (you can move them around if you'd like - point being you don't need to worry about the numbers themselves).  All you need to do is point-and-click with how you want to set each core.  You can select a preset and then customize from there.

For your CPU, I entered in 6 core, 12 logical processors and clicked begin.  I clicked the first core free preset, then using the radio buttons selected the P3D Core Mask and simply clicked on the last physical core and HT core to remove the mask from it.  It's pretty quick and easy and looks like this when done:

 

 

This is awesome! Thank you so much for your time and patience in providing a very concise and easy to understand explanation. You’ve made my P3D life easier and more enjoyable.

Regards

[grandfred29 180]

on the p3d forum rob posted an informative video on using the process lasso program. It is instructive, but it is still having to tinker to have a game that runs fully. I understand better why msfs is so closed to external program developers.

[sonny147 579]

i suppose someone's checked navigraph simlink ?