12 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@IanHarrison, try 60 for the P3DCoreAffinity setting.

That will assign cores 2-5 for P3D leaving 0-1 for the OS and 6-7 for your programs like ASP3D etc.

If you don’t see any difference just revert to your current values.

Flew EGLL to EGCC with those settings. Core 0 and 1 hardly used (+/- 10%), core 2 and 3 100% nearly all the time, Core 4 and 5 about 20-30%, core 6 and 7 80-90 % most of the time.

Really quite smooth, maintained locked 30 fps once in the air. Only one dip to 3fps on descent to EGCC.

As core 1 seems not to be used, I will add that to the scheduler and try again.

Scheduler now reads 255, 62,0,2 and 3. (for new test).

@IanHarrison, if you feel that’s better, great. I just followed Rob’s guidance to keep P3D away from the first two cores assigned to the OS.

Still in experimental phase. 😉

35 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@IanHarrison, if you feel that’s better, great. I just followed Rob’s guidance to keep P3D away from the first two cores assigned to the OS.

Still in experimental phase. 😉

Yes, I followed you and Rob's video. The latest test was really an eye-opener. 30 fps on ground at LHR not one major dip during flight, including descent through heavy cloud, maintained 25-30fps. Approach into EGCC smooth. Core 0 minimal use, all the others used at various times. All this with Orbx TE and textures at ultra.

Am a very happy chappy.

Will try an inter-continental flight in a day or so and see how that goes.  So far, so good.😁

 

Process Lasso is way easier to sort these ‘affinities’,

& get a real good view on what your system is doing,

maybe, give it a try…

1 hour ago, craigeaglefire said:

Process Lasso is way easier to sort these ‘affinities’,

& get a real good view on what your system is doing,

maybe, give it a try…

As Rob's video says, PL is good to sort out the other processes but with the P3d cfg settings doing most of the work.

@Rob_Ainscough, thanks very much for your PL video. I use SimStarterNG to assign programs and P3D to specific cores. Regarding the JobScheduler entries I now understand the MainThreadScheduler setting but still unsure about RenderThread and FrameWorker. I have 2 and 3 respectfully. Could you explain how those work please?

20 hours ago, IanHarrison said:

MainThreadScheduler=2

After watching Rob's video you should change that value back to 0.

It represents the first core assigned to P3D. So the number doesn't represent the actual core number but the first one in the group assigned to P3D.

13 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

This is on my AMD 5950X 16 core SMT disabled (SMT = HT).

Rob.  Thanks for the video.  And since I have the same processor, I don't even have to translate the work to another CPU!  Can't get more convenient than that!

59 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

It represents the first core assigned to P3D. So the number doesn't represent the actual core number but the first one in the group assigned to P3D.

@IanHarrison You can also use the tool that is the focus of this thread - It will handle figuring out the numbers in your Prepar3D.cfg file for you, letting you lay out the topology of your cores visually.  The presets labeled "First Core Free", either all cores or physical only, is a good starting point that aligns with many of the recommendations in this thread, including the excellent info and video posted by @Rob_Ainscough.  Maybe I'll add a "Rob A Special" preset that also has the last core free.  🙂

http://izn-flightsim.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/affinity.html

The XThreadScheduler= settings are relative to the cores in the P3DCoreAffinityMask setting, indexed at 0.

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Rob_Ainscough, thanks very much for your PL video. I use SimStarterNG to assign programs and P3D to specific cores. Regarding the JobScheduler entries I now understand the MainThreadScheduler setting but still unsure about RenderThread and FrameWorker. I have 2 and 3 respectfully. Could you explain how those work please?

Ray, your setup interests me as it seems the closest to mine. I have an i7 8700K (6 Cores, 12 LP's). My JobScheduler was derived from the calculator using the Preset "First Core free", and I seem to be getting fairly steady frames using this:

[JobScheduler]
AffinityMask=4095
P3DCoreAffinityMask=4092
MainThreadScheduler=0
RenderThreadScheduler=2
FrameWorkerThreadScheduler=4

As far as assigning executables', such as AP3D (ActiveSky), EzDok (EZCA), Pilot2ATC, FFTF Dynamic, should they be assigned to specific non-P3D cores (LP's), or just randomly assigned? I am referring to the use of "SimstarterNG" or "Process Lasso", of which I have not used, but I do want to try. I did watch Rob's video which was very enlightening.

Regards

@TomCYYZ, you have HT enabled which I don’t. But the same principles can be applied to your CPU.

4095 is fine for the first entry. All 12 VCs should be used.

For P3DCore change to 1020. This ignores the first and last pair of VCs leaving the first free for the OS and the last for 3rd party programs like ASP3D and ChasePlane.

The MainThread, Render and FrameWorker values seem okay.

You should assign those programs to the last pair of VCs either manually each time you run them or automatically via either Project Lasso or SimStarterNG which is excellent.

12 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@TomCYYZ, you have HT enabled which I don’t. But the same principles can be applied to your CPU.

4095 is fine for the first entry. All 12 VCs should be used.

For P3DCore change to 1020. This ignores the first and last pair of VCs leaving the first free for the OS and the last for 3rd party programs like ASP3D and ChasePlane.

The MainThread, Render and FrameWorker values seem okay.

You should assign those programs to the last pair of VCs either manually each time you run them or automatically via either Project Lasso or SimStarterNG which is excellent.

Ray, thanks so much for that. 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.

Regards

 

@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.

40 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

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

That's a classic. And true as well. 😉

 

Hoe about a 12900K cpu ?

8 performance cores @ 5.2-5.5 Ghz

8 efficiency cores @ 3.9 Ghz

 

I guess 8 p cores for P3D , 2 e cores free for the OS and 6 e cores for addon apps. The OS always used cores that are free or have a low load. It doesn’t have to be core 0 or 0 and 1…

 

 

Edited January 5, 20224 yr by GSalden