CPU-Control: New program to handle your cpu affinity!

[daveybrat]

http://www.majorgeeks.com/CPU-Control_d5875.html

Seems like a neat program for those of us Dual and Quad-core cpu users.

Here's a synopsis:

CPU-Control handles the CPU-affinity for multicore-systems (supports quadcores as well). Instead of running each process on both CPUs you can define it as you want it. For example, if you want to seperate the firewall and the anti-virus-software from the graphics-application.

CPU-Controls offers five different ways to control the CPU-affinity:

Automatic: It chooses alternatingly one CPU for each new process

Manual: You define a list, where you can set the way to handle each process

All processes run on CPU 1, which is useful for old applications which crashes on a dual core system

All processes run on CPU 2

Deactivated

 

[Ika]

Good to know :thumbsup: I've always thought Task Manager was a crappy way of assigning affinity.
On the other hand, I don't think I've run into a problem that requires affinity switching... but I'll keep up with the thread.

 

[Crumbelievable]

Funny I just reinstalled Thief Deadly Shadows to resume where I left off (before my old PC died). Anyway it wont run on a dual core without some sort of permanent affinity fix. Well I eventually fixed it through imagecfg and detailed instructions. But this program is good to know for a hopefully easier solution to the problem. BTW I can't recommend Thief deadly shadows enough. Superb, get it.

 

[tallman45]

Originally posted by: Aflac
Good to know :thumbsup: I've always thought Task Manager was a crappy way of assigning affinity.
On the other hand, I don't think I've run into a problem that requires affinity switching... but I'll keep up with the thread.

Any programs that run on a Quad Core require the affinity to be set as part of even basic performance tuning

The reason is becuase there are 2 completely separate L2 caches and if you do not force a process to allways run on one set of cores your performance is actually worse than a single core or Dual core since the cached data comonly is old and must be retrieved again. It is worse than running without L2 cache because the app actually gets fed bad data that it needs to determine is NG and do a refetch

This is a great example of why synthetic tests of a Quad are meaningless and real world performance can ve a vastly different story in terms of performance

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: tallman45
Any programs that run on a Quad Core require the affinity to be set as part of even basic performance tuning

The reason is becuase there are 2 completely separate L2 caches and if you do not force a process to allways run on one set of cores your performance is actually worse than a single core or Dual core since the cached data comonly is old and must be retrieved again. It is worse than running without L2 cache because the app actually gets fed bad data that it needs to determine is NG and do a refetch

This is a great example of why synthetic tests of a Quad are meaningless and real world performance can ve a vastly different story in terms of performance

When you learn something about computers or CPU's, let us know. Until then, please stop with the FUD, you're embarassing yourself.

 

[tallman45]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: tallman45
Any programs that run on a Quad Core require the affinity to be set as part of even basic performance tuning

The reason is becuase there are 2 completely separate L2 caches and if you do not force a process to allways run on one set of cores your performance is actually worse than a single core or Dual core since the cached data comonly is old and must be retrieved again. It is worse than running without L2 cache because the app actually gets fed bad data that it needs to determine is NG and do a refetch

This is a great example of why synthetic tests of a Quad are meaningless and real world performance can ve a vastly different story in terms of performance

When you learn something about computers or CPU's, let us know. Until then, please stop with the FUD, you're embarassing yourself.

Sadly I am correct

Tell us how you would illustate the fact that each L2 cache on a QC is separate and if an app runs back and forth between sets of cores on a QC that stale data is not in the cache, Please we are interested in reading

In the mean time, Remember Google is your friend, don't take my word for it, look it up for yourself (as you say I have a lot to learn, but apparently we all do)

L2 Cache of Quad Cores

Here let me save you some time

" So although you have 8MB of cache between the 4 Cores, it is not shared Cache and suffers from the same problems that the Dual Core Pentiums suffered from. Cache not being shared means that data has to be rewritten from one core to the other and spare cache space cannot be taken advantage of by the other dual core. To put in more professional terms:
As a multi-chip package, the QX6700 contains two copies of a relatively well-integrated dual-core design. The two cores on each chip share a 4MB L2 cache between them, complete with dynamic partitioning and the ability to hand off ownership of data from one core to the next. Unfortunately, the integration between the QX6700's two chips is less than ideal?"

 

[A554SS1N]

Originally posted by: Crumbelievable
BTW I can't recommend Thief deadly shadows enough. Superb, get it.

I played it around this time last year, and I agree, it's a great game!

 

[GundamF91]

Is that Thief I or Thief II? I always wanted to play these games, but never got around to as my computer wasn't powerful enough at the time.

As fro this program, does it overwrite Task Mgr's setting? I'm thinking that could be a conflict since TaskMgr is part of Windows system program that always run.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: tallman45

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: tallman45
Any programs that run on a Quad Core require the affinity to be set as part of even basic performance tuning

The reason is becuase there are 2 completely separate L2 caches and if you do not force a process to allways run on one set of cores your performance is actually worse than a single core or Dual core since the cached data comonly is old and must be retrieved again. It is worse than running without L2 cache because the app actually gets fed bad data that it needs to determine is NG and do a refetch

This is a great example of why synthetic tests of a Quad are meaningless and real world performance can ve a vastly different story in terms of performance

When you learn something about computers or CPU's, let us know. Until then, please stop with the FUD, you're embarassing yourself.

Sadly I am correct

Tell us how you would illustate the fact that each L2 cache on a QC is separate and if an app runs back and forth between sets of cores on a QC that stale data is not in the cache, Please we are interested in reading

You're assuming the OS's scheduler isn't smart enough to take that into account when deciding which threads to run on each processor during a given timeslice. From here:

Windows 2000 uses soft processor affinity, determining automatically which processor should service threads of a process. The soft affinity for a thread is the last processor on which the thread was run or the ideal processor of the thread. The Windows 2000 soft affinity thread scheduling algorithm enhances performance by improving the locality of reference. However, if the ideal or previous processor is busy, soft affinity allows the thread to run on other processors, allowing all processors to be used to capacity.

Windows 2000 also provides hard affinity, meaning that the processor affinity mask restricts the threads affected by the affinity mask to the processors specified by the mask. Threads restricted by a hard affinity mask will not run on processors that aren't included in the affinity mask. Hard affinity used with partitioning can improve performance of an SMP system substantially. However, be cautious when using hard affinity because it might cause the processors to have uneven loads. If processes that have had their affinity set to a specific processor are causing high CPU utilization on that processor while other processors on the system have excess processing capacity, the processes for which a hard affinity has been set might run slower because they cannot use the other processors.

I'm sure XP and Vista have even smarter schedulers.

 

[Crumbelievable]

Originally posted by: GundamF91
Is that Thief I or Thief II? I always wanted to play these games, but never got around to as my computer wasn't powerful enough at the time.

It's the 3rd Thief. I believe it's on the Unreal2.5 engine though you wouldn't guess as it really looks incredible. I have the first one (Thief the dark project) which was (is) amazing but never did finish it (time restraints). The Thief series are really a genre unto themselves. The sheer atmosphere and immersion, level design, well most everything is unmatched IMO. The 3rd one does suffer slightly from some console aspects since it was also made for console, but it's nothing too detracting and the game as a whole is still incredible. There is a demo for Thief Deadly Shadows for anyone interested. I'm sorry for the thread hijack. Resume topic.