Multicore CPU Support coming or not ? A SoE Statement would be nice

[cradeg]

<p>As everyone know we have today no Multi CPU support in Everquest 2 , this means even if you have a Quadcore CPU , only one core will be working for EQ2 .  As today almost every new pc is coming with at least Dual Core ,  i would like to know what Sony is doing in those regards. CPU power is very important for this lovely game and it simply hurts to have so many core not being used.</p><p>I hope i could get a feedback from Sony if a support is planned (maybe with Kunark). </p><p>Looking forward to your hopefully postitive feedback !</p>

[Zichius]

<p>Ciao crad,</p><p>sooner i will post a complete post on this things, now i do not have long time to write but:</p><p>Eq 2 supports multiple CPU (well not real, but you can let the puter use all CPUs to run eq2), 100% tested , simply do this:</p><p>Run eq2, pop up the windows task manager (ctrl+alt+del),right click on everquest2 task, set affinity and click all the CPU you want <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" /></p><p>You will notice that if you have a dual core or better eq2 is 'affinized' to ONLY one core. THIS IS THE CRAP eheheh.</p><p>Sry for short answer but i will post a longer one next days, when i will end all my tests on some new rigs <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" /></p><p>I AM SURE this will help <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" /></p><p>Later bro <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" /></p>

[cradeg]

<p>hi Zichius,</p><p>i do not agree with you , when i have EQ2 running and i go task manager and process i see that one core is running to 100% and one core is doing almost nothing , when i click on the Everquest 2 process and i click on set affinity , i see both CPU cores are enabled for this process.</p><p>As long EQ2 is not supporting more than one core , the process will always be running only on one even if i allow the operating system to use both cores. </p><p>Update : It turns out that Zichius means that you can split mutliple EQ 2 instances on different CPUs , that is of course true ... but i am asking here for a statement when Sony will implement that ONE singel EQ 2 Instance (like normally) would benefit from Multiple Cores or CPUs , this change would requiere a change on the Everquest2.exe (or more) .... as mentioned before the future is multi core systems and when Sony only always uses only one core ... it would be a waste of performance !</p>

[Dark_Grue]

<cite>cradeg wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>As long EQ2 is not supporting more than one core , the process will always be running only on one even if i allow the operating system to use both cores.</p></blockquote><p>Correct.</p><p>EQ2 is not a true multi-threaded application. It can only run on a single core at a time. Setting processor affinity only overrides the OS process scheduler and restricts that process to running on a particular core.</p><p>Microsoft cautions that doing so can actually decrease performance; however, in some circumstances creating a hard affinity can be useful. These circumstances shouldn't arise with a single EQ2 instance running on a machine, as the scheduler will automatically switch the thread to the optimal processor, based on the scheduling algorithm. Setting a hard affinity can interfere with the scheduling process, and actually have a detrimental effect on overall system performance.</p><p>Either way, setting processor affinity doesn't "turn on" multithreading features - which is really where your biggest benefit is in a multiprocessor architecture - the software has to be specifcally written to function as a multithreaded process. Multiprocessor features are already enabled just by virtue of having more than one processor - that's handled by the OS automatically (unless you override it).</p><p>It's unlikely (but possible) that EQ2 will be rewritten as a multithreaded application, as it's a significant recoding effort. It would also only benefit those people who have multiprocessors only. Without knowing the current processor demographics, I'd still wager that the business decision of doing a significant and comprehensive code overhaul (and risking the operation of the entire codebase) to get an unknown and not necessarily significant performance increase, is not a good investment or risk for SoE. I've never seen any messages from the devs indicating that such an effort is under way.</p>

[BungFoo]

EQ2 used to run on both (or multiple) cores but it caused problems, speed running and rubber banding to name a few. So they locked the process to a single core to prevent those things from happening.Yes it would be cool if EQ2, which is incredibly cpu hungry, could use more than one core.It would require a massive rewrite of the game engine to achieve this so it probably isn't going to happen.Luckily, todays 2Ghz processors are quite a bit faster than yesterdays 2Ghz procs.Also, there are dozens of threads on this very topic, search is your friend <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[cradeg]

<cite>Dark_Grue wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>cradeg wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>As long EQ2 is not supporting more than one core , the process will always be running only on one even if i allow the operating system to use both cores.</p></blockquote><p>Correct.</p><p>EQ2 is not a true multi-threaded application. It can only run on a single core at a time. Setting processor affinity only overrides the OS process scheduler and restricts that process to running on a particular core.</p><p>Microsoft cautions that doing so can actually decrease performance; however, in some circumstances creating a hard affinity can be useful. These circumstances shouldn't arise with a single EQ2 instance running on a machine, as the scheduler will automatically switch the thread to the optimal processor, based on the scheduling algorithm. Setting a hard affinity can interfere with the scheduling process, and actually have a detrimental effect on overall system performance.</p><p>Either way, setting processor affinity doesn't "turn on" multithreading features - which is really where your biggest benefit is in a multiprocessor architecture - the software has to be specifcally written to function as a multithreaded process. Multiprocessor features are already enabled just by virtue of having more than one processor - that's handled by the OS automatically (unless you override it).</p><p>It's unlikely (but possible) that EQ2 will be rewritten as a multithreaded application, as it's a significant recoding effort. It would also only benefit those people who have multiprocessors only. Without knowing the current processor demographics, I'd still wager that the business decision of doing a significant and comprehensive code overhaul (and risking the operation of the entire codebase) to get an unknown and not necessarily significant performance increase, is not a good investment or risk for SoE. I've never seen any messages from the devs indicating that such an effort is under way.</p></blockquote><p>correct !  </p><p>I would like to know if Sony is planning to implement it or not , because right now a fast single core cpu can be better than a dual core with 2 slower cores ! </p>

[Dark_Grue]

<cite>cradeg wrote:</cite><blockquote>I would like to know if Sony is planning to implement it or not , because right now a fast single core cpu can be better than a dual core with 2 slower cores ! </blockquote><p>Shh! Don't say that too loud, or the processor manufacturers will hear you and bundle you off in silent black helicopters to an undisclosed location for "reeducation"!</p><p>But you're correct, for single-threaded applications, multi-core doesn't do you much good. For <i>multiple</i> single-threded applications, the situation is better with multiple-core, of course (because multiple singles threads don't have to fight over a single processor). However, when you're just running one massively hungry thread, you want to throw the biggest single processor at it. Two dinky processors does not a single big processor make in such a circumstance.</p><p>I've already speculated above that it's not in their best interests to rewrite the EQ2 application to be multi-threaded. But you're unlikely to get anything other than speculation here on the boards, as the SoE devs don't usually answer big business roadmap questions like this (who knows though, maybe one will read this and surprise us all). Even if they were planning something so drastic, I doubt they'd announce it ahead of time, as it would just be a constant source of grief ("is it done yet?&quot<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />. If it were to be done at all, I wouldn't be surprised if the first mention of it was a single line in the patch message that reads "performance improvement on muti-core machines" with no other explanation, and then an announcement once they either get caught out by someone running a binary debugger, or they have all the bugs worked out (because, believe me, there would be a lot of crippling bugs to work out).</p>

[cradeg]

<p>i am maybe wrong but wasn´t there mutlicore support in the beginning with the site effeckt that someone people were running very fast ... and in the next patch it was removed again ?</p><p>nevertheless i hope for some feedback and make peope aware that a quadcore system is not bringing you the big performance gain in regards to EQ2 ... <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Theramor-GoV]

I did ask this at the Vegas FF a month or so ago, and was told that it is in the works, but with Kunark and other higher priorities that it will be quite a while before anything is done on this.And yes, it does mean nearly a complete engine re-write.  They just can't "flip a programming switch" and get full mutli-core usage.T

[cradeg]

that sounds at least positive if they are working on it ... it is of course alot of work , but as we pay every month for it i would hope they invest some parts of it in improving to the new hardware out there <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Tebos]

<cite>cradeg wrote:</cite><blockquote>that sounds at least positive if they are working on it ... it is of course alot of work , but as we pay every month for it i would hope they invest some parts of it in improving to the new hardware out there <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" /></blockquote><p>I am certain they realize if they don't, then they will loose some subscribership to those games that do get coded as being multi-core aware. Alot of home computer's are still single proc.</p>

[Wingrider01]

<cite>cradeg wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>As everyone know we have today no Multi CPU support in Everquest 2 , this means even if you have a Quadcore CPU , only one core will be working for EQ2 .  As today almost every new pc is coming with at least Dual Core ,  i would like to know what Sony is doing in those regards. CPU power is very important for this lovely game and it simply hurts to have so many core not being used.</p><p>I hope i could get a feedback from Sony if a support is planned (maybe with Kunark). </p><p>Looking forward to your hopefully postitive feedback !</p></blockquote>do a search there have been numerous threads on thbis subject, alomng with responses from TSR's and the QA people answering your question

[cradeg]

i did but i was not able to find an official statement what they are planning how to support it in the future