Core Confusion!!! Any help please?

[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.

[Codex]

Orville ... have a read of this article, I think it will help.

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/...al-core.aspx/1

[RCAF_FB_Orville]

Thanks for the replys people. Captstubing is right BusterDee, definitely get SP2 as it (and SP1) enables quad core. Apparently the other 4 "virtual" cores on nehelem are also utilised under heavy workload (though not much) what effect this has I have no idea, and as I am no techie I would be loathe to recommend something to you which you may be able to get similar or better results much cheaper financially. As always, there are conflicting opinions. Some saying much better, some saying marginally, some not at all ( GENESIS- "Land of Confusion" LMAO) There are many "tweaks" out for i7 involving the cnfg. file "[JOBSCHEDULE]" command added with various values for each core. I cannot attest to the efficacy of these though, and I really do not have the time at present to test them all. Get some research in obviously.....all I can say is I can play it maxed out ultra high in most situations min 30FPS (most important for me), but in "doomsday" scenarios like JFK and Heathrow I think ANYTHING at present will be brought to its knees. I dont run FSX very often these days and lots of things will effect performance, especially if you have 3rd party add ons like Aerosofts Uk photo scenery and AI programs for traffic for example.

I advise you to consult the oracles of FSX, as I have a policy of not waxing lyrical about things I have limited knowledge of (If only everyone did the same lol ) and I would hate to have giving you bum or incorrect advise on my conscience, I know money doesn't grow on trees!

Thanks for that article link Codex, very useful and maybe priority will make a difference after all. I see many a headache ahead, lol.

Good luck BusterDee and let me know what you dig up.

[Buster_Dee]

Thanks for comments. I won't do much checking, as it's very playable, even at max settings. I think the large airports are rough because of unique textures. I do some modelling, and textures are a bigger FPS killer than complex mesh/high poly counts. I don't mean to sound flippant. Fact is, I'm currently buried trying to refine textures on a current project. At present, it would probably take down a power grid. I only play enough FS to screw up the courage to get back to work

[Feuerfalke]

XP can run multithreaded applications (how many are there?) and it also can use both cores or multiple CPUs, no doubt!

But it does not benefit that much from it. When both CPUs are used for one multithreaded application (like Photoshop, 3DS-MAX or other professional, very hardwareintensive programs), XP always is slower in the benchmarks than Vista, especially in the comparison of XP64 and Vista64. Even with packing- or video-tools and also loading times for games.

And if you assign the program to 2 cores, you'll get stutters. That's not only true for IL2, but also for modern titles like UT3, which even supports multiple CPU and GPU.
But if it was just the game, why does it run smooth as silk with Vista and 2 cores assigned?

Same is for BlackShark. It basically uses the same engine from LockOn1.0, so it wasn't expected to get any performance-gain in Vista and infact the devs always said they take no guarantee it even runs without problems.
People learned it did run and it ran faster with 2 cores assigned. Not only faster than on one core, but most of the time much faster than with XP.
There is a thread about this, with some people reporting a 30% advantage with Vista64bit SP1 over XP SP3!

There's just one big difference between those benchmarks mentioned by CaptStubing and those reported there: AERO.

If you install XP and Vista and run the game on the same system with the same hardware, you will have a slight advantage with XP still. I tested it for weeks with different programs and games. BUT if you activate the option to disable desktop-design while running the program, the advantage is noteable with Vista.

Remember, we have 3 Service-Packs for XP and we all know what things to enable or disable with XP to get the most out of it. But most people running these benchmarks know little about Vista, most of them can't even be neutral, enable sidebar and AERO with full transparency and I've seen no test on a Vista-Rig that is optimized for gaming, except that thread over at the DCS-forums.


Maybe Microsoft is going the wrong way, optimizing their OS for users, not for gamers, but this whole thing has become a holy war: Prejudgements, 3rd hand information and based on test with biased circumstances, with very few people willing to test it first hand.

[JG27CaptStubing]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

XP can run multithreaded applications (how many are there?) and it also can use both cores or multiple CPUs, no doubt!

But it does not benefit that much from it. When both CPUs are used for one multithreaded application (like Photoshop, 3DS-MAX or other professional, very hardwareintensive programs), XP always is slower in the benchmarks than Vista, especially in the comparison of XP64 and Vista64. Even with packing- or video-tools and also loading times for games.

I don't think you really know what you're talking about. Applications such as PhotoShop 3DS Max etc are going to run better on a Vista 64 bit platform simple because that OS is the most supported. Microsoft's support for XP 64 has always been poor and only until Vista64 came out has a 64 bit OS been strongly supported. But... That's apples and trash cans when it comes to XP32 Vista32 and Vista64 especially when it comes to games.

Modern games in general have always been mutithreaded however they have not always been supported ie. IL2. It causes problems such as stutters so for some time now it has been better to assign a single FAST cpu to the game. Well that's changed and it will continue into the future as GAME developers start to take advantage of Multicore platforms since they are becoming the norm.

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

And if you assign the program to 2 cores, you'll get stutters. That's not only true for IL2, but also for modern titles like UT3, which even supports multiple CPU and GPU.
But if it was just the game, why does it run smooth as silk with Vista and 2 cores assigned?

Your deductive reasoning has some flaws. Just because one game runs worse with supposed multi cpu/core support doesn't mean it has to do with the OS. Games have to be specifically tuned to take advantage of the technology. Writing applications that take use of these new cores are much more complex to write. There serious overhead involved and if you don't do it right you can have problems.

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

Same is for BlackShark. It basically uses the same engine from LockOn1.0, so it wasn't expected to get any performance-gain in Vista and infact the devs always said they take no guarantee it even runs without problems.
People learned it did run and it ran faster with 2 cores assigned. Not only faster than on one core, but most of the time much faster than with XP.
There is a thread about this, with some people reporting a 30% advantage with Vista64bit SP1 over XP SP3!

Lets get your facts straight. Vista runs BS better than WinXP with multiple cores no doubt! However when comparing actual performance the 30% you note is not an advantage at all. Its actually running it as fast as the guys who run it in WinXP. In fact there are some known problems running BS in XP.

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

There's just one big difference between those benchmarks mentioned by CaptStubing and those reported there: AERO.

Even with Aero turned off games under both Vista OSs are just now starting to do as well as XP. That's a year and a half later after the release of the OS. Vista promised better performance out of the gate. It's a known fact it did very poorly up until the release of SP1 for Vista.

The new WWI flight sim coming out based upon the IL2 engine is reporting a 30-40% increase with a quad over the dual core.

Here is a recent list of games that support mulitple CPUs or Cores.

==================Quad Core=====================================
Alan Wake - Ground up quad core support.
Bioshock (Unreal Engine 3) - Quad core support.
Call Of Duty 4 - Ground up quad core support.
Company of Heroes - Ground up quad core support
Crysis - MP Beta Dual Core support, full game ground up Quad Core support.
DiRT - Ground up quad core support (up to 8 cores reported).
Flight Simulator X - Quad core support with patch.
Lost Planet - Ground up quad core support. (octa core support as well).
MOH: Airborn (Unreal Engine 3) - Ground up quad core support.
Supreme Commander - Ground up quad core support.
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion - Quad core ground up, can use 5 threads.
World in Conflict - Ground up quad core support.
Unreal Tournament 3 (Unreal Engine 3) - Ground up quad core support.
==================Dual Core=====================================
Age of Empires 3 - Dual core support.
Call of Duty 2 with 1.01 smp patch - Dual Core support
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Native dual core support (possible quad, need confirmation).
EVE online - Dual core (possible quad core, need confirmation)
Falcon 4.0 - Some Support, extent unknown.
Galactic Civilizations II - Dual core support.
Gothic 3 - Dual core support.
HL2: Orangebox - Dual core support
Stalker - Dual core support with 1.0004 patch.
Quake 4 - Dual Core with patch.
Titan quest + Titan quest Immortal Throne - Dual core with patch.
World of Warcraft - Dual Core with patch.

[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!!!!!