X2 affinity performace gains (a must read)UPDATED!!!

[Avalon]

Come on guys, give this a try

 

[uhaulball]

im afraid of viruses

 

[letdown427]

yeh, that's right, it'll just assign everything to cpu0 etc. Also, I've updated it again, there's now a good ol' favourite games page, where it'll store the addreses u put into these five boxes, so u dnt have to keep typing them. Also, it's all Alt+ shortcutted, so it's quick to use. I'll probably try to incorporate some more command line stuff, so u can assign a shortcut to a game to automcatily ,and it'll assigna ll the afifnites and then laucnh the game on the other. thaat'll probably be done tomorrow, it's hard to nkow what m workload will be like at work to know howmuch free time i get to work on the app.

 

[letdown427]

i could post some screenshots of it? I dno, i mean, they could easily be fabricated. I'll include a shot of taskmanager showing what processes are running, errrm, i'll see if i can prove it's legit somehow lol.


i could email it to someones account, i dno, hotmail will allow it, then it scans it with some program and concludes no virus found? if anyone has an email account where they trust the cvirus scanning software it incorporates then i could send it there? a lot of accounts just block any .exe's though, like gmail.




http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/letdown427/affinityrunning.jpg

lol, that's a screenshot, dno what else i can do atm lol. oh and soz it's big, im on dual monitors now, hehe


I presume people here have the ability to play .3gp files on their PC? Tomorrow night I could film me downloading the files, then running them, much as you would do if you downlaoded it, then I could send it to youfor verification that it's legitimate? lol, i'll have to use my phone as i don't have a video camera.

hopefully someone will just try it and vouch for it, then someone else might 'risk' it and so on. It's a shame if peope are interested, but won't use it! I'd probably be of the same mind though.

 

[uhaulball]

i tried it. i dont see performance gain in hl2? i have x2 4800+, 2gb OCZ Platinum EL pc3200, and evga 7800gtx ko. im stuck in a level in hl2 where you have to go under the docks to jump a ramp with the boat thing. the scene is like all water so i get 100-130 fps. when i use the program and when i dont, the fps remains the same? Maybe its because i dont have that much background programs running to begin with when not using the program; just aim and mozilla.

 

[letdown427]

Thanks for trying it!

I dno whether or not there'll be gains or not, maybe try using a low resolution and trying to CPU limit it?

Do you have a sound card? I would think it would make a bit more difference if you're using onboard sound, as that would take CPU cycles.

Have you tried any other games/benchmarks? It appeared to make a difference for RFC Rudel, but he doesn't attend here anymore I don't think, so it's a bit difficult to find out any more from him. Hopefully some other people will try it and post results.

Thanks for your efforts uhaulball, nice setup too

 

[letdown427]

bump

 

[SynthDude2001]

The program does seem to work just fine for setting all currently running processes to CPU 0 (and then setting them back to 0+1 when you choose Undo), but I'll have to do a bit more playing around with it...I tried to enter the path and name of a game to run on CPU 1 and it didn't seem to work, just exited the program.

In any case I did use that StartAffinity program to change two of my game shortcuts to make them run only on the second core, since they have massive timing issues if running on multiple processors (Unreal Tournament [original/99] and Painkiller, if anyone cares...which reminds me, I should change my shortcut for Unreal too since it has the same problem)

I haven't done any performance testing yet, I'm not sure what exactly I'd test that would be CPU-limited. I play at a pretty high resolution (1680x1050), especially for my sort-of-aging video card, so I'd probably have to lower the resolution and test or something. In any case, the idea does seem cool, and I'll have to see if I can really get it working later

 

[letdown427]

hey, thanks for trying it out! it didn't work? i think that's probably game specific, erm, what game is it?

if you try it with sa y notepad, it definately works lol, and i've launched many a game with nit ehre.

The long bar is for the address, no speech marks, no bracket at the end (that may cause it?)

then the .exe goes in the bottom, again, no speech marks etc. so it'd be


c:\windows\system32

notepad.exe


in the two boxes. that should definately work, as all the code really does is take the directoy from the first box and launches it from that folder (as this is necessary in some games, and then basically sends launches SA [what you typed] 1 to launch on cpu 2.

either way, i'd be more than happy to try and solve that, so any details would be helpful in helping me fix it. hopefully some more people will try it now.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: letdown427
hey, thanks for trying it out! it didn't work? i think that's probably game specific, erm, what game is it?

if you try it with sa y notepad, it definately works lol, and i've launched many a game with nit ehre.

The long bar is for the address, no speech marks, no bracket at the end (that may cause it?)

then the .exe goes in the bottom, again, no speech marks etc. so it'd be


c:\windows\system32

notepad.exe


in the two boxes. that should definately work, as all the code really does is take the directoy from the first box and launches it from that folder (as this is necessary in some games, and then basically sends launches SA [what you typed] 1 to launch on cpu 2.

either way, i'd be more than happy to try and solve that, so any details would be helpful in helping me fix it. hopefully some more people will try it now.

Doesn't work for notepad either (I had been trying Unreal and UT)...

Just exits the program once I click "CPU 2 it" and doesn't do anything else (like launching the program, lol)

On the plus side, though sort of unrelated...I fixed my timing/stuttering problems with Unreal/UT and Painkiller - in the strangest way though. I've been messing around with BIOS settings trying to increase my overclock a bit today (2.60GHz->2.75GHz now), and to my great surprise...all three games now run perfectly smoothly without having to set affinity. I'm pretty on that one too (no clue what could have caused it...the only thing that's different besides the CPU speed is the RAM speed - which is actually lower now - and the RAM timings, which are faster). But I'm certainly happy that I don't have to mess with affinity just to run those games now

 

[letdown427]

that's weird. if it's exited the program, that means that it has gone through and done what it is meant to do, i.e launch the program,

you may need the visual basic runtime libraries? its a .dll, that might be why. dno, seems odd, as it works on my XP pc at work (i presume it's XP you're on).

i'll find a link to the necessary .dll and edit this post. sorry about that :S



http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/vbrun6.html


Yeah, there's some info a bout it on the site, they're needed to run apps written in vb6, i.e this one. sorry lol, forgot about that.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: letdown427
that's weird. if it's exited the program, that means that it has gone through and done what it is meant to do, i.e launch the program,

you may need the visual basic runtime libraries? its a .dll, that might be why. dno, seems odd, as it works on my XP pc at work (i presume it's XP you're on).

i'll find a link to the necessary .dll and edit this post. sorry about that :S



http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/vbrun6.html


Yeah, there's some info a bout it on the site, they're needed to run apps written in vb6, i.e this one. sorry lol, forgot about that.

That's not it either...I was pretty sure I had the runtimes already (plus the program does run, it just doesn't seem to do the "CPU 2 it" part right for me), no change after extracting those. I'm not sure why it doesn't work

 

[uhaulball]

i dont have that problem letdown. when i used it, it opens the program under cpu 1 as it is supposed to. works fine. i just dont see any performance gain. even without the affinity set, i can pivot my 20 inch LCD (turn the resolution on its side - 1200 x 1600) and play hl2 on the bottom half and watch TV with my tv tuner on the upper half and nothing lags. so i dont see any reason to use the affinity thing.

 

[Matt2]

Ok, I have a question.

I am Dual Prime stable at 2.7 1.47v

Core 0 fails 2.8 prime after a little bit even with 1.55v, but I'm Prime stable on Core 1 @ 2.8ghz 1.5v

If I use this program to assign all OS and non game apps to run core 0 (unstable prime core) and games on Core 1 (prime stable) Is it plausible that I can be game stable at 2.8GHZ?

Or is that too much of a stretch?

 

[letdown427]

That seems perfectly plausible to me lol, I'd definately say try it out. I was thinking some people might use it if they were in your situation, I suppose I should put the option in to assign everything to core 1 and game on core 0, incase core 0 is the 'faster' core in some cases.

definately give it a try, as far as I can see, it should work fine. != guarantee though

 

[misanthropy]

Is it possible to set the priority level for a process in just one specific core? If so, then if you set it to high priority in an empty core it wouldn't affect the performance of your mouse, etc. in the core dedicated to everything else. If this is possible, it would be interesting to see what your results would be with the game set to high priority.

 

[letdown427]

It already doesn't affect the performance of anything else now? I can minimize a game and just use the pc as normal, all with one core at 100% running the game, and the pc runs no different.

Does anyone want to be able to choose which affinity everything is assigned to? I guess those of us with dual core hyperthreading would wouldn't they? Hmm. Thinking about it, the app may not work exactly as planned with HT'd DC Pentiums. I suppose I could put an I have an intel checkbox.lol.

 

[Zebo]

I knew I seen your post somewhere before. Thanks for sharing with us at anadtech and welcome.
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25574

I just use win2k for my 5% performance boost. Lemme know when XP or w2k3 starts winning any of the cyber olympics over at Furture Mark then I might switch.
How much is that sucker anyway? $1000?

 

[letdown427]

i'm on 2k aswell, the program works fine with 2k, why not give it a try?

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: biostud
even though the process is manual, do you need to set affinity every time you reboot or can you save the settings?

No you define policies and they stay that way forever unless you change the policy.

 

[letdown427]

Synthdude

If the rest of the app works ok, then it's probably something to do with Process.exe ? Is it named correctly and in the System32 folder aswell? It might be worth checking that, as if i rename it, i can reproduce your problem (app close without launching notepad [used for example])

 

[letdown427]

bump

 

[letdown427]

Bump for an update. I've added the option to control which CPUs get assigned to what, so if say your core 1 can clock higher than core 2, you can run the game on core 1 and assign windows etc to core 2. It'll remember these changes too, so once it's set u, it's setup.

It'll also work with Dual Core HT CPUs aswell, you can choose which cores get what etc. I'll PM instructions on how to use it if anyone ever decides they want it, which seems unlikely at the moment. Hopefully SynthDude will host the newer version.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: letdown427
Bump for an update. I've added the option to control which CPUs get assigned to what, so if say your core 1 can clock higher than core 2, you can run the game on core 1 and assign windows etc to core 2. It'll remember these changes too, so once it's set u, it's setup.

It'll also work with Dual Core HT CPUs aswell, you can choose which cores get what etc. I'll PM instructions on how to use it if anyone ever decides they want it, which seems unlikely at the moment. Hopefully SynthDude will host the newer version.

Got your email this morning...uploaded the new file, URL is the same as before

Sorry I haven't been able to look at the program much lately, I've been pretty busy with school and other stuff...I'll give the latest version a spin this weekend

 

[letdown427]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

Originally posted by: letdown427
Bump for an update. I've added the option to control which CPUs get assigned to what, so if say your core 1 can clock higher than core 2, you can run the game on core 1 and assign windows etc to core 2. It'll remember these changes too, so once it's set u, it's setup.

It'll also work with Dual Core HT CPUs aswell, you can choose which cores get what etc. I'll PM instructions on how to use it if anyone ever decides they want it, which seems unlikely at the moment. Hopefully SynthDude will host the newer version.

Got your email this morning...uploaded the new file, URL is the same as before

Sorry I haven't been able to look at the program much lately, I've been pretty busy with school and other stuff...I'll give the latest version a spin this weekend

No problem at all, it's not like I'm paying you or anything! Take however long you want lol Hopefully it'll prove useful for those people with dual cores where one core is a higher OC'er than the other.