Core Confusion!!! Any help please?

[RCAF_FB_Orville]

~S~ All,

Hi there people, I got a new rig in November with the new "Corei7 940" processor, and although it runs IL-2 great, I hate the niggling feeling that maybe I am not getting the best out of it. Now, as I understand it, IL-2 runs on one core only. However, I have seen many posts claiming that on Core duo/Quad processors it is possible to get better performance by tweaking task manager settings for the processor, namely core affinity. I also see that there is a "priority" setting, the uppermost being "real-time". Does this make any difference at all to performance, and is there any verifiable data for this? Though I am a tech Neanderthal (only used single core beforehand so new to this) I suspect it may be a "placebo effect" for some, but please correct me if I am wrong. I have messed around with the confi "Processaffinitymask=" trying numerous different combinations and values, and in very limited testing can see no real difference. Ditto with priority (which is not "saved" for IL-2 for some reason after I restart the computer) Can anybody confirm this for me please, any suggestions for the best settings for IL-2 would be most welcome, and save me a lot of testing and time. Thanks kindly

PS did anyone read that PC Pilot interview with Oleg? He has confirmed that SOW will DEFINITELY utilise both duo and quad technology as well as 6DOF too which was less of a surprise (Hallelujah! My tenuous nehelem gamble has hopefully payed off ) Some of you will probably know this already, but for those who don't, there you go.

Best regards

[mondo]

When I first got an AM2 chip IL2 would run very badly, it was quite choppy but giving it an affinity to one processor seemed to sort the problem out.

I'd advise against playing with the priority settings though.

[Feuerfalke]

Technically speaking, you won't benefit from a multicore-CPU or a multiprocessor-board, as long as you use XP. This OS was build for a different generation of computers, does not natively support these features and draws little to none benefit from it. Users posted about stutters and other problems when setting it to two cores, others, as yourself, that the effect is minimal, or rather placebo as you put it.

Switching to Vista gave me a performance boost when playing IL2 with both cores assigned, especially over urban areas, but since IL2 is an old engine, you also have some side-effects. The only really important I personally ran into was with my new ATI4780 graphics card. It didn't render the light from the muzzle-flashes in yellow, but in purple, which was quite psychedelic.
With my nVidia everything runs fine, though.


In other words: Never change a running system unless you are willing to pay the price. A brandnew system doesn't mean an 11 year old sim will run like silk on it and the benefit for IL2 is not really worth the price (especially not for an i7, looking at the actual price!)

Wait for BoB or for another new program you want to play, then decide on that.

[RCAF_FB_Orville]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

Technically speaking, you won't benefit from a multicore-CPU or a multiprocessor-board, as long as you use XP. This OS was build for a different generation of computers, does not natively support these features and draws little to none benefit from it. Users posted about stutters and other problems when setting it to two cores, others, as yourself, that the effect is minimal, or rather placebo as you put it.

Switching to Vista gave me a performance boost when playing IL2 with both cores assigned, especially over urban areas, but since IL2 is an old engine, you also have some side-effects. The only really important I personally ran into was with my new ATI4780 graphics card. It didn't render the light from the muzzle-flashes in yellow, but in purple, which was quite psychedelic.
With my nVidia everything runs fine, though.


In other words: Never change a running system unless you are willing to pay the price. A brandnew system doesn't mean an 11 year old sim will run like silk on it and the benefit for IL2 is not really worth the price (especially not for an i7, looking at the actual price!)

Wait for BoB or for another new program you want to play, then decide on that.

Hi Feuerfalke and thanks very much for the reply . I should have elaborated further RE: My specs, my mistake. I have Vista 64 bit, so no problems there....6gb Corsair 1600mhz Ram and a ATI 4870x2 card. I agree with you completely RE: Nvidia playing IL-2 much better, I have been a lifelong Nvidia customer and this is my first ATI card. Not that its bad, far from it....It runs other demanding titles fantastic I feel its drivers letting it down regarding IL-2, and probably as you say the old engine, though I am certainly no expert. I had the exact same problem as you with the "PURPLE HAZE" Jimmy Hendrix muzzle flashes lol, I assume you know the vertex arrays fix for this in setup? If not just untick the two vertex arrays boxes and it is fixed ( it tooks me a whole month to find this out! Not the greatest googler).

I did not buy this system for only one application, I use for work related stuff too but IL-2 is definitely my main sim. It runs DCS Black Shark brilliantly as well as flight sim X, and I am pleased to see that the forthcoming RTS title "Empire:Total War" has "plays best on Corei7" approval, though whether it does or not and if its just a marketing ploy remains to be seen. Apart from flight sims this is the only other kind of game I play....FPS, you've played one you've played them all *Yawn, lol*

I could not afford to wait for SOW to upgrade, (very) Old computer was dying on me and I cannot base my life around one sim.....as much as I am looking forward to it.

Thanks for the help anyway Feurfalke, and I will try your suggestion with 2 cores being enabled, and I assume I then have to set =2 in confi file too?. I guess priority makes no difference then.

Cheers mate

[JG27CaptStubing]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

Technically speaking, you won't benefit from a multicore-CPU or a multiprocessor-board, as long as you use XP. This OS was build for a different generation of computers, does not natively support these features and draws little to none benefit from it. Users posted about stutters and other problems when setting it to two cores, others, as yourself, that the effect is minimal, or rather placebo as you put it.

Switching to Vista gave me a performance boost when playing IL2 with both cores assigned, especially over urban areas, but since IL2 is an old engine, you also have some side-effects. The only really important I personally ran into was with my new ATI4780 graphics card. It didn't render the light from the muzzle-flashes in yellow, but in purple, which was quite psychedelic.
With my nVidia everything runs fine, though.


In other words: Never change a running system unless you are willing to pay the price. A brandnew system doesn't mean an 11 year old sim will run like silk on it and the benefit for IL2 is not really worth the price (especially not for an i7, looking at the actual price!)

Wait for BoB or for another new program you want to play, then decide on that.

Just for clarification. XP is very capable of running multi threaded applications and it recognizes and uses multple CPUs and Cores for that matter.

The problem with IL2 is it was never meant to take use of multiple CPUs or cores. Even though it's a multi threaded application it can cause stuttering if you use it across more than one core.

Applications have to be written to take real advantage of multiple cores or cpus and there are always compromises because ALL of it has to be managed which adds overhead. This leads to scaling issues with more cores and you will eventually get diminishing returns.

Vista isn't any better at processing than XP. It used to be XP would beat the pants off of vista in almost every regard in terms of performance. That gap has lessoned since SP1.

Here is an example. Black Shark was released about a month ago. Guys had learned to have it use more than one core in Vista. What they found out was they did get a performance boost. Guys that are running in XP wouldn't get any performance boost the guys in Vista did because the XP guys were ALREADY getting the same performance out of the gate on one core.

There is an excellent artical over on Simhq that talks about the i7 and it's effects on flight sims.

[WTE_Galway]

Many people claim assigning the trackIr to a different core from the game makes a big difference.

[Buster_Dee]

Orville, I'm dying to know: can your rig run FSX maxed out? I got my system just before the i7s and could max all sliders, but with a bit of choppiness when panning with TrakIR. Basically, it's an E8500 (about 3.7G) dually with two GTX 280s in SLI and 8G DDR3 (slower stuff) running Vista 64. I actually considered upgrading when I heard the i7 throughput was exceptional, even when running slower.

I bought it to do 3D work, but it somehow got ahold of my games....

[JG27CaptStubing]

Originally Posted by Buster_Dee

Orville, I'm dying to know: can your rig run FSX maxed out? I got my system just before the i7s and could max all sliders, but with a bit of choppiness when panning with TrakIR. Basically, it's an E8500 (about 3.7G) dually with two GTX 280s in SLI and 8G DDR3 (slower stuff) running Vista 64. I actually considered upgrading when I heard the i7 throughput was exceptional, even when running slower.

I bought it to do 3D work, but it somehow got ahold of my games....

Make sure you get the Service Paks as it really makes a difference.

[TX-EcoDragon]

Originally Posted by JG27CaptStubing

. . .Here is an example. Black Shark was released about a month ago. Guys had learned to have it use more than one core in Vista. What they found out was they did get a performance boost. Guys that are running in XP wouldn't get any performance boost the guys in Vista did because the XP guys were ALREADY getting the same performance out of the gate on one core.

That's not so, at least not for BlackShark.

I had wondered if that was the case, I saw that people with Vista had nice gains with the second core enabled, but I couldn't determine how that might compare to what I was seeing with XP. Along came the Windows 7 beta, so I decided to find out. I set up a dual boot, and compared BlackShark on Windows XP 32bit to Windows 7 64bit. The difference between identical hardware at identical graphics settings was quite obvious (OK so some had 2 gigs vs 4 gigs of RAM but my benchmark comparisons suggested that it made no fps difference, also different is the much older slower HDD for Win7) Performance with both cores enabled is much better than in XP with one or more cores enabled - minimum fps went way up, and max and average saw nice gains as well. . .better than any hardware upgrade would get anyone with a fairly recent computer, and better than a 1GHz overclock on the CPU!! My other sims didn't see such gains, most saw slight losses - but very, very, slight. I did only one comparison with AERO on vs OFF and honestly think there was no change. Some sims do have issues with it being on (Like FSX, which disables it for you when you launch), but supposedly it should be disabled when in the background anyway. In any case, I even run my XP installation with all the transparent text backgrounds, animated windows, and colored titled bars etc turned off. So my benches are comparing the leanest possible XP, against Win 7 with all the fluff running.

Here's the few benchmarks I did in some of my sims comparing Win XP to Win 7: http://www.txsquadron.com/forum/index.php?topic=2675.0

OK, the TX site is down for maintenance for a bit, since that link might not be working I'll post the full BlackShark results for an extremely hardware challenging mission here:



Windows 7 Preliminary testing in BlackShark has some very interesting results!!

Remember the run posted above for 3.06 GHz? Well, no need to go look up there for it. . .here it is:

Windows XP E8400 @ 3.06 GHz (speedstep enabled) DX9.0c 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 850Mhz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 178.24 drivers
Frames: 16232 - Time: 480193ms - Avg: 33.803 - Min: 5 - Max: 61

The following is the same run as above, but in Windows 7, with DirectX11, all other settings the same ( more than 2 gigs of RAM doesn't appear to make a difference in BS):

Windows7 core 0 E8400 @ 3.06 GHz (speedstep enable) D11 2x2gigs PC8500 at 850Mhz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 178.24 drivers
Frames: 13802 - Time: 480225ms - Avg: 28.740 - Min: 7 - Max: 60

So that's not so great. . .at this point it's not looking very good for Windows 7. . .but it's supposed to run like a better version of Vista, which supposedly is strong in Black Shark. . .so what gives? Ahhh, the CPU affinity trick you say?? Well, lets see if that makes up the lost performance!

For this run, settings are the same, only I enable both CPU cores in the taskmanager:

Windows7 (64) core 0+1 core E8400 @ 3.06 GHz (speedstep enabled) DX11 2x2gigs PC8500 at 850Mhz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 178.24 drivers
Frames: 21729 - Time: 480340ms - Avg: 45.236 - Min: 23 - Max: 62

So umm. . . can you say AWESOME?!??!!!?! Not only did I get the lost performance back, but I set something of a personal record for this benchmark!!! If you take a look at my previously posted Windows XP runs the best I ever managed, when overclocked to 3.9GHz was - Avg: 42.185 - Min: 10 - Max: 62. Nearly a 1GHz Overclock doesn't do as much as just running Win 7 instead of XP!!


Even my runs at 3.960GHz with 2x2Gigs of PC8500 RAM at 1100MHz, only averaged: 44.439fps. . .so simply running Windows 7, and using both CPU cores gave me .8 avg fps better performance at a stock 3.06 Ghz than at just about 4.0 GHz on XP!!!!!!

Now to see how this performance scales with overclocking, here's some 3.96GHz runs:

Windows XP 32 E8400 @ 3.960GHz 2x2Gigs of PC8500 RAM at 1100MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks vSynch and triple buff on on 178.24 drivers
Frames: 21281 - Time: 480107ms - Avg: 44.439 - Min: 10 - Max: 63


Windows7 (64) core 0+1 E8400 @ 3.960GHz 2x2Gigs of PC8500 RAM at 1100MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 178.24 drivers vSynch ON
Frames: 26647 - Time: 480074ms - Avg: 55.506 - Min: 27 - Max: 62

OK, since most review sites and such disable vSynch to generate fps data, here's a run in that situation which shows the all out performance increase:

Windows7 (64) core 0+1 E8400 @ 3.960GHz 2x2Gigs of PC8500 RAM at 1100MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 178.24 drivers vSynch OFF
Frames: 28235 - Time: 479994ms - Avg: 58.823 - Min: 32 - Max: 93

Impressive results no? Under the same conditions I had an increase of 11.1 frames per second better on average when overclocked to 3.96 1100MHz DDR2, and 14.4 frames per second better when vSynch and triple buffering are forced off in the driver control panel (the normal way in which benchmarks are run).

Perhaps most impressive is the minimum fps. . .they are almost as good as the average fps at stock clocks!!!! My track really killed the fps in a flew places on XP, but with 7, and both CPU cores, that's gone!!!!!

[Feuerfalke]

Thanks for posting, TX-EcoDragon!

I'd like to add, that this is NOT due to the DCS-Engine supporting multiple-core architecture. It is still the old LockOn-Engine, enhanced by modern DX-features and increased workload through physics, polygons and texture number and size.


Looking at the comments and pre-release statements, even ED didn't expect that advantage.