1 minute ago, Luke said:

Maybe. Will it do the same thing the next time a freeze happens? 😉

I missed the part about three CPUs not being at 100% - those are the 3 you've defined in your JobScheduler section for the main P3D threads?

Cheers

I’ll try a flight between Canberra and Sydney again tomorrow. It’s short and a fixed route. If it locks then I’ll immediately bring up HWInfo and see what happens.

Yes, they’re 0, 2 and 4 with HT off. 16777215 is the AM value which converts to 24 VPs all on. The P3DCoreAffinityMask value is the same. Is that ideal?

I wonder if @SteveW has any thoughts about this. I let P3D decide on the AM and also the core assignments. Might this be a factor?

The AM values above are using all cores (24) and include core0. In the SDK it suggests moving P3D Main Thread Scheduler to another core if you want to keep 0 free for the OS. It suggests 6. It also suggests the other two Thread Scheduler values are not changed.

https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv5/prepar3d/getting_help/advanced_configuration.html

I do have a few other executables running but nothing of any significance. I’ll make that change before tomorrow’s test and see what happens.

The other day I had a CTD above Canberra (only Australia v2, no other scenery there). My next flight will be to test new settings and repeat that flight.

8 minutes ago, Juliett Alfa Romeo said:

The other day I had a CTD above Canberra (only Australia v2, no other scenery there). My next flight will be to test new settings and repeat that flight.

I also have AUS v2 scenery and that is quite demanding I think. Also, P3D never closes cleanly with ORBX scenery active. I had a terrain.dll CTD yesterday which is extremely rare for me.

3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’ll try a flight between Canberra and Sydney again tomorrow. It’s short and a fixed route. If it locks then I’ll immediately bring up HWInfo and see what happens.

If it does unfreeze immediately, that will be a *very* strong hint as to where the problems might be.

I'm not touching the AffinityMask settings, you know my thoughts on the matter. 🙂 I'm about 99.9% certain that your issues are unrelated, although there may be a race condition involved somewhere that will make the behavior change if the AM changes.

Cheers

4 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Luke, many thanks for your diagnosis.  But this is software I’ve had for ages and never caused a problem before. But there are some differences…

1) New computer obviously but running W11, not 10.

2) EA mode enabled. Previous computer it was off. The 1080Ti couldn’t handle it.

3) P3D v5.4 versus v5.3HF2.

And that’s it.

I will ask them once Christmas / New Year is over. As far as I can tell from Defender logs a scan was not running and no other process in task manager was hogging resources. Interesting that as soon as I made HWInfo active by displaying it P3D unlocked. Coincidence?

One other question. Why were cores 0, 2 and 4 not at 100% when P3D prioritises them?

Ray,

Sorry to hear about this.  My 1080 runs P3d5.4 with EA on perfectly, and I do turn off Defender for my flights as you recommended.  The ONLY difference I see is that my hardware seems to handle this situation quite satisfactorily. This is of course, my humble opinion.  My computer is a JETLINE SYSTEMS computer, and I in no way work for them or have any involvement in their company.  It's my 3rd Jetline and those guys there are real pilots and strong flight simulator enthusiasts.  I have trusted them for over 10 years and I believe they build a computer that is SPECIFICALLY for flight simulation people. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with your hardware, but you seem to be focusing now on the hardware rather than software.  I have talked to them many times, and their service is LIFETIME.  They answer the phone within a few rings and they help you immediately.

I will get my next computer from them, and I feel they really do build a system that is up to date on the latest simulation products.  I hope you are able to sort out your specific problem soon, because your system does indeed seem to be quite powerful.

 

I'm on my second trouble free Jetline and wil buy from no one else.
But that's just me.

I encountered a freezing problem recently.
I built a new PC, Asus Strix Z790 motherboard, i9 13900K, 32 GB Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5 memory (7200 in XMP) 4800 MHz by default, BeQuiet power supply! 1600W
It turns out that by applying the XMP profile, I got the blocking, no blocking with the default profile.

Edited December 23, 20232 yr by vjeanmarc

11 hours ago, Juliett Alfa Romeo said:

The other day I had a CTD above Canberra (only Australia v2, no other scenery there). My next flight will be to test new settings and repeat that flight.

Completely off-topic (and I believe the error is my fault), but I'll report it anyway:

9 hours ago, Luke said:

If it does unfreeze immediately, that will be a *very* strong hint as to where the problems might be.

I'm not touching the AffinityMask settings, you know my thoughts on the matter.

There’s no point testing things without something changing. The fact that LM suggested moving the primary thread scheduler to another core is good enough for me. If it still continues to cause freezes that’s another change I can eliminate.

 

9 hours ago, spilok said:

My computer is a JETLINE SYSTEMS computer,

Stan, I’m sure it’s a great company but so is Chillblast. It’s won awards. The problem is frustrating but I’m sure it will be resolved eventually. It’s not as though I can buy a Jetline with home support for two years.

 

1 hour ago, vjeanmarc said:

It turns out that by applying the XMP profile, I got the blocking, no blocking with the default profile.

I haven’t touched the memory settings in the BIOS. I leave that to those who know what they’re doing.

I made the change to the Prepar3d.cfg swapping the mainthreadscheduler from 0 to 6. I also edited the AM for those programs started by SimStarterNG to exclude them using cores 2, 4 and 6. Those are used by P3D exclusively.

The flight from YSCB to YSSY locked up half-way to Sydney. That's the earliest it's done it. All cores were running at 100% bar the three assigned to P3D - 2, 4 and 6. I have no idea why those weren't running at 100% if the problem is in P3D.

Why wouldn't P3D show a message if there was a problem? It can't be scenery since the lockups are random in this flight. There was a second much shorter lockup NW of Sydney but the turn to finals and landing was butter smooth.

You can see the lockups on the screenshot below. During the first one I couldn't display HWInfo or even Task Manager. RTSS showed all cores at 100% bar the three mentioned above.

I can't help feeling this is a hardware problem with P3D being the victim, not the culprit. I've never seen a situation like this in 10 years of running P3D. I'm going to have to wait until 2024 for Chillblast support but at least I have a scenario I can reproduce the problem on.

If anyone has any other suggestions I'm all ears. For now I'm leaving the core assignments alone as they seem more logical to keep P3D away from core 0.

One final observation. Looking at Defender logs it failed to run due to an "Unspecified error". That was when the lockup had started. So even Defender was a victim.

I’ve seen stutters recently in V5.4 as well, but I am in W10.  Will follow some of the advice here to do some testing myself.

 

 

I'm also flying Australia at the moment and have no problems. As you can see below i use Fan Control to keep my system cooled. You can also see my temperatures. I fly at internaly locked 30 fps.

The curves I made myself, adjusted the cooling to have a little overpressure. 

I use Steve's recommended settings for AM. I run all cores and HT on.

Sim Version is 5.4 and OS is Windows11. So from this side, certainly no problems.

I have a XMP mode fitting the brand and speed of my RAM (2 x 32GB, 5600 MHz, DDR5-RAM, DIMM). I saw you have 6000 MHz. It can work, but intel does not guarantee it for the cpu.

XMP is critical. If you use the wrong mode, you get crashes usually bsod.

You could do some hardware stress tests outside the flightsim with your system settings. Your mobo manufacturer may have something or you google for it e.g. computer stress test.

Dan

3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

All cores were running at 100% bar the three assigned to P3D - 2, 4 and 6. I have no idea why those weren't running at 100% if the problem is in P3D.

Two questions: 1) What were the cores that were at 100% doing? What process was using the CPU? 2) What does the system log say? If there was a hardware issue or timeout (which this seems like) it may be logged there.

Cheers

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Two questions: 1) What were the cores that were at 100% doing? What process was using the CPU? 2) What does the system log say? If there was a hardware issue or timeout (which this seems like) it may be logged there.

Cheers

Impossible to say as task manager was unresponsive. I looked in the hardware log and nothing there.

Since this morning I tried slewing in a GA towards Sydney from Canberra at 320kts to replicate a real flight.

Whilst it didn’t lockup I noticed HWInfo recording 100°C for the CPU on occasions. Nearer Sydney there were black textures with what appeared to be night lighting embedded in them. I decided to verify Aus 2 files.

After verifying and also running the Sync option in ORBX help I deleted shaders and loaded the sim at YSSY. A message appeared. DXGI DEVICE HUNG. Never seen that before. I aborted P3D.

I uninstalled AUS 2 and tried loading P3D again. Okay this time. Installed AUS 2 and it still displays these black texture squares. I’ve had this before so will search tomorrow for the fix.

I’m wondering if it’s possible these texture issues are the cause. The fps plummeted to single digits. That’s crazy with a 4090 limited to 30. If the system was stressed trying to load files perhaps that explains the problem in Australia.

I’ll try flying in Europe and USA for a few days and see what happens.

@blaunarwal, I take your point but Chillblast reassured me the memory would be fine. I’ll see what they say when they contact me. Thoughts on this texture problem? Related to the freezes?