Core Affinity Constantly Resetting. [Archive]

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Sydares

11-17-2009, 11:01 PM

So, I've found that I can boost my performance by a great deal by only running on two of my four cores - I get about a 10-15 fps increase, which is pretty marked.Problem is that when I change the core affinity, it doesn't STAY that way. I'll change the affinity in taskman, it'll stay assigned to Core 0 and Core 1 for approximately 5-10 seconds, and then revert to running off of all 4 cores.How do I stop that from happening?

DarkDragon66

11-18-2009, 12:31 AM

I posted in this forum months ago with this same issue, unfortunately no resolution was reached. Can we get some help with this? The performance boost is pretty significant..

TSR-DanielH

11-18-2009, 09:13 PM

Greetings,Open your Everquest 2 directory and find the Everquest2.exe file. Right click on that file and select 'run as administrator'. That should bypass the launcher and assign your access level high enough that the core affinity setting will save. Let us know if the problem persists after trying that step.

Sydares

11-19-2009, 03:18 AM

<cite>TSR-DanielH wrote:</cite><blockquote>Greetings,Open your Everquest 2 directory and find the Everquest2.exe file. Right click on that file and select 'run as administrator'. That should bypass the launcher and assign your access level high enough that the core affinity setting will save. Let us know if the problem persists after trying that step.</blockquote>I'm afraid that did not work, either. Same results of staying assigned for 10ish seconds then resetting.Initial settings:<img src="http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/1326/capture1zz.jpg" />After setting affinity:<img src="http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1459/capture2l.jpg" />Then literally 10 seconds later, just pretend the settings look exactly like screencap 1 again. (There'd be no point uploading a third shot)The usage stats especially depress me.

TSR-DanielH

11-20-2009, 09:13 PM

<cite>Sydares wrote:</cite><blockquote>Then literally 10 seconds later, just pretend the settings look exactly like screencap 1 again. (There'd be no point uploading a third shot)The usage stats especially depress me.</blockquote>The processor affinities should be saved in a Windows file but I'm not sure where exactly. If it is not retaining those settings then you might want to contact Microsoft support to get information on possible causes. I'll continue looking around but everything I have indicates that it should be saving with your current setup.

Sydares

11-21-2009, 01:11 AM

<cite>TSR-DanielH wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Sydares wrote:</cite><blockquote>Then literally 10 seconds later, just pretend the settings look exactly like screencap 1 again. (There'd be no point uploading a third shot)The usage stats especially depress me.</blockquote>The processor affinities should be saved in a Windows file but I'm not sure where exactly. If it is not retaining those settings then you might want to contact Microsoft support to get information on possible causes. I'll continue looking around but everything I have indicates that it should be saving with your current setup.</blockquote>I'm not certain why it's happening, either - but it only seems to be ocurring with EQ2, hence why it's so perplexing.

DarkDragon66

11-21-2009, 05:27 AM

I tried running as administrator as well, and the same thing happens unfortunately, it resets within a few seconds to using all four cores.Daniel I heavily appreciate your looking in to this, I hope we can resolve this!

Nillons

11-21-2009, 05:34 AM

I can't even set my affinity... I get a pop up window. The title of it is "Unable to Access or Set Process Affinity" then for the text it says operation could not be completed, access denied.<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/1069449046bcd664c21db15b1dfedaee.gif" border="0" />

BDoodle

11-21-2009, 06:36 AM

Something else to try:As most OS processes run on the first core (Core 0), setting an application to run on the other cores can improve overall system performance.Also, it seems that the EQ2 client app. contains instructions to set the affinity to the later cores, therefore after the user sets core affinity to the primary cores the app. proceeds to set them back. This could be what we are seeing here.The root of the performance issue though, seems to be how the app. is accessing memory. Changing the way the app. accesses memory is likely to have a greater impact on how it performs.A further suggestion is to set the EQ2 client process to having a lower than normal priority, there-by giving it less opportunity to cause a conflict with other processes when accessing memory. This can be set via the same menu in task manager that you use to set the core affinity.Good luck,BD

Sydares

11-21-2009, 02:16 PM

<cite>BDoodle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Something else to try:As most OS processes run on the first core (Core 0), setting an application to run on the other cores can improve overall system performance.</blockquote>Actually, I've been finding this not to be the case. If I set it to run on Cores 3 and 4, I get the same performance I generally get. Cores 0 and 1, and my performance jumps up drastically.

DarkDragon66

11-21-2009, 05:07 PM

<cite>BDoodle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Also, it seems that the EQ2 client app. contains instructions to set the affinity to the later cores, therefore after the user sets core affinity to the primary cores the app. proceeds to set them back. This could be what we are seeing here.The root of the performance issue though, seems to be how the app. is accessing memory. Changing the way the app. accesses memory is likely to have a greater impact on how it performs.A further suggestion is to set the EQ2 client process to having a lower than normal priority, there-by giving it less opportunity to cause a conflict with other processes when accessing memory. This can be set via the same menu in task manager that you use to set the core affinity.</blockquote>I would think DanielH would know if the program was written to do this? I had figured that must not be the case as others seem to be able to set their affinity just fine.Wouldn't that have to be done by Sony? Not something we can change?Running the process in the various lower than normal priorities didn't seem to do anything performance wise, increase or decrease.

BDoodle

11-22-2009, 06:48 AM

Sydares, yes, the info that I was looking at indicated that this helped only in some situations.DarkDragon66, the tech support team would likely only know if these instructions were implimented in the code if they asked the devs directly about it. Something I hadn't considered is whether setting affinity through Task Manager will override those instrustions or not, (I still dont know the answer to this question.) Looking at the performance and crashing issues that are affecting gameplay for some people using multicore CPUs, it looks as though multiple cores are trying to access the same memory resources at the same time and causing a bottleneck. This was why I suggested changing the process priority. Of course, this will only help if the EQ2 process is conflicting other processes, but it wont change a thing if multiple threads from the same process are competing for a single resource.Some of the info I have read recently also indicates that older games running on multicore processors can have timing issues. One of the main things these reviews say is to make sure you're running with the latest BIOS update for your system. Among other things they also suggust updating Intel or AMD drivers. While still on the subject of process priorities, I noticed the RealTime setting in the priorities list but haven't had the oportunity to play with it yet, and am unwilling to do so until I find out more about it. First pass searches indicate that running a process in Realtime gives the illusion that the process has sole use of the machine. This could be good or bad, but again refers to the process as a whole and how it interacts with other processes.A poster on another forum has this to say in reply to the question of whether running in Realtime can be harmful:<div>"Depends on what you're running. From my experience, it's never really affected the computer itself. It was just harder to actually close the app I was running in Realtime. But the good thing is, that if something does happen, priorities aren't saved, so it'll most likely shut your computer off. Then just reboot and learn from it. No real threat as far as I can tell."</div><div>Yet another poster suggests using a third party process manager, it can be found here: <a href="http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/proctamer/index.html">http://www.donationcoder.com/Softwa...amer/index.html</a></div><div>Changing the process priority to Realtime also affects power management features, so it's not for laptops. If you are going to try it, make sure your power supply has a good amount of head room or you may end up overloading it.</div><div>Back to the core issue, you may find the info at the following link helpful: <a href="http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=983781">http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=983781</a></div><div>Tell us what you try and the results you get, good luck,</div><div>BD</div><div>EDIT: spacing/formatting.</div>

Sydares

11-22-2009, 09:31 AM

Fiddling with the priority had absolutely nil impact on performance, from Realtime all the way down to Low.I'm not particularly surprised, because I've yet to ever see the priority system have any impact on any PC I've ever run on.

DarkDragon66

11-22-2009, 03:31 PM

I appreciate your continuing to help,The only adverse effect I have ever had from setting realtime is that if the program locks up - it's priority is higher than the task manager or any other windows processes, this will make it extremely slow to get the task manager to open, and shut down the program. It does not offer any performance benefit for me sadly.My BIOS is already up to date, and unfortunately a few fixes I have tried today is leading me to believe this is either intentional programming or something that is simply not reacting well with windows vista (depends on if anyone else can set their affinity in Vista or other windows OSes?)I have tried creating a shortcut that uses the command prompt to launch EQ2 with the affinity already set, this is done by creating a shortcut with this target field:C:WindowsSystem32cmd.exe /C START "Everquest 2" /d "C:EverQuest II" /realtime /affinity 2 "C:EverQuest IIEverQuest2.exe"For testing reasons, this will start the game with an affinity to CPU1, you can edit the affinity to select 2 processors by changing (/affinity 3 for CPU0 and 1, /affinity 12 for CPU3 and 4), but I just want to try and get the thing to accept ANY affinity changes first.The program will launch with the correct affinity, but a few seconds after launching it will set itself to using all 4 cores again.I have also tried Runfirst and Startaffinity, the same thing occurs, the game launches with the correct affinity and sets itself to 4 cores again.Out of desperation I made a test copy of everquest2.exe and used the windows imagecfg utility to set the program to run on 1 core. Imagecfg permanently modifies the executable it's targeted at, so making a copy for testing is reccomended. This meathod is much more forceful, yet the same result happens - everquest2 starts with 1 core before setting itself to use all 4 again.

DarkDragon66

11-22-2009, 03:37 PM

Since the edit button seems to be missing for me, I must state for anyone trying this:I have tried creating a shortcut that uses the command prompt to launch EQ2 with the affinity already set, this is done by creating a shortcut with this target field:C:WindowsSystem32cmd.exe /C START "Everquest 2" /d "C:EverQuest II" /realtime /affinity 2 "C:EverQuest IIEverQuest2.exe"That for testing reasons I set this to realtime, remove the "/realtime" field.

BungFoo

11-25-2009, 02:31 PM

I spent a half hour or so playing with this and could not reproduce any of what you guys are talking about. The only weird thing I saw on my system is that eq2 seems to be set to cores 3 and 4 by default and, there is no performance change at all if I toggle the dual core support option in the game settings and restart the game.

BDoodle

11-25-2009, 05:05 PM

I've been using Cacheman to keep an eye on memory and core usage.The main difference that Ive found, with multicore support turned on, is that load times and zoning times are considerably quicker.BD

Trellium

11-26-2009, 12:28 AM

<cite>DarkDragon66 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since the edit button seems to be missing for me, I must state for anyone trying this:I have tried creating a shortcut that uses the command prompt to launch EQ2 with the affinity already set, this is done by creating a shortcut with this target field:C:WindowsSystem32cmd.exe /C START "Everquest 2" /d "C:EverQuest II" /realtime /affinity 2 "C:EverQuest IIEverQuest2.exe"That for testing reasons I set this to realtime, remove the "/realtime" field.</blockquote>Under WIndows 7, I also can't seem to adjust the CPU affinity for EQ2 although we can for other programs.The edit button issue: you are logged in on an account that isn't subscribed, that is the deciding factor as I recall.

Trellium

11-26-2009, 12:32 AM

<cite>Dennika@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote>I spent a half hour or so playing with this and could not reproduce any of what you guys are talking about. The only weird thing I saw on my system is that eq2 seems to be set to cores 3 and 4 by default and, there is no performance change at all if I toggle the dual core support option in the game settings and restart the game.</blockquote>When they were doing the testing of the dual core support, someone mentioned that they got much better response when the game defaults to the last core and uses the second last core when dual core mode is activated. The OS uses the first core by default, and so this makes sense.Our systems only have dual cores, so thats all I can test. But, we get the same performance and the same dual core useage with or without the dual core being checked (same as you). I don't think it used to do that, so will bug it.

DarkDragon66

11-26-2009, 04:09 PM

<cite>Trellium wrote:</cite><blockquote>Under WIndows 7, I also can't seem to adjust the CPU affinity for EQ2 although we can for other programs.The edit button issue: you are logged in on an account that isn't subscribed, that is the deciding factor as I recall.</blockquote>Ah that would be it, I just realized the account I have logged in is inactive, I've been using a different one..Anyway, still nothing to report, most I can do is get the game to launch with the right affinity and reset, one day that huge performance benefit will be mine though.. I hope.

Trellium

11-27-2009, 01:00 AM

You might also try logging in to Test to see if it's reacting differently (my guess would be no). But, its good to check Test server once in a while especially if SOE is optimizing some of that code ... or deoptimizing as some tricky optimizations work out. (lol) Its a complex system, with a lot of different hardware combinations.Shader 3 support should be activated "soon"(tm) for Test server testing. They have missed a few expected dates, and its best that they have the time to work things out as they need. But, eventually it will be released and you might want to try your system out and feedback it while its got dev's looking at the optimizations. Most of the Shader 3 changes appear to be moving code off to the graphics card.

Prez

11-28-2009, 03:05 PM

I was searching around since this thread intrigued me and found this:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://usuarios.lycos.es/coreaffinity/coreaffinity.htm" target="_blank">http://usuarios.lycos.es/coreaffini...oreaffinity.htm</a>This tool is intended to assign automatically a single core or multiple cores to an application by default, without using the 'Task manager' of Windows. Once your target application is selected, its core affinity will be shown. Now proceed to check or uncheck the desired cores and then push 'Save'. Now your software will use only the cores you want to, and will remember your preferences in the future.Anyone want to give it a try?

DarkDragon66

11-28-2009, 05:00 PM

<cite>Prez wrote:</cite><blockquote>I was searching around since this thread intrigued me and found this:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://usuarios.lycos.es/coreaffinity/coreaffinity.htm" target="_blank">http://usuarios.lycos.es/coreaffini...oreaffinity.htm</a>This tool is intended to assign automatically a single core or multiple cores to an application by default, without using the 'Task manager' of Windows. Once your target application is selected, its core affinity will be shown. Now proceed to check or uncheck the desired cores and then push 'Save'. Now your software will use only the cores you want to, and will remember your preferences in the future.Anyone want to give it a try?</blockquote>Prez! Wow! That program has solved my problem almost entirely, my FPS is through the roof and is stable as my thread months ago had said. Thank you so so so sooo much for finding that and telling us!I can see in the utilization graphs where EQ2 constantly attempts to change, but is forced to the specified cores moments afterwards, not sure if the threads being tossed around like that will affect stability in the long run, but it's a fix for now.I lose about 5 FPS or so every time EQ2 reverts for a moment or so, but it's by no means the massive 20+ FPS and stuttering penalty I was taking from constantly running with the games affinity wacked out... Now to back up copies of that program on every media I have avaliable, hehe.I hope this works for you as well Sydares!<a href="../user/profile.m?user_id=5501"></a>

TSR-DanielH

12-04-2009, 04:48 PM

Oink

01-08-2010, 07:13 PM

Any word on when we'll be able to disable the "feature" that automatically resets affinity every few seconds? When multicore first came out, it was alluded to that we'ld be able to manually override it:<a href="http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/game_updates.vm?date=11/13/2007">http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/g...date=11/13/2007</a>Multi-core CPU Support: If you have a Multi-core CPU you no longer have to manually set their processor affinity! EverQuest will automatically assign itself to an available core. If you run multiple copies of the client, each new copy running will assign itself to the next available core. Those interested in customizing which core or cores EverQuest clients run on, check the forums.however, there is nothing on the forums saying how to do it, instead just several frustrated people that are now no longer able to set it manually - via task manager, imagecfg, etc.It's been over 2 years since they implemented this, and still no solution.This "feature" has serious flaws for multiboxing (notice the patch note even mentions running multiple copies - so the excuse multiboxing isn't supported doesn't hold water). Anyone who tries to run two copies of everquest2 on a brand new i7 machine will see a huge drop in performance as logical cores 7 and 8 which the games will run on, are the same physical core.Why is it the developers think they can manage cpu load balancing better than the operating system by just forcing a task to a particular core?

TSR-DanielH

01-08-2010, 07:22 PM

<cite>Oink@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote>Any word on when we'll be able to disable the "feature" that automatically resets affinity every few seconds? When multicore first came out, it was alluded to that we'ld be able to manually override it:<a href="http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/game_updates.vm?date=11/13/2007">http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/g...date=11/13/2007</a>Multi-core CPU Support: If you have a Multi-core CPU you no longer have to manually set their processor affinity! EverQuest will automatically assign itself to an available core. If you run multiple copies of the client, each new copy running will assign itself to the next available core. Those interested in customizing which core or cores EverQuest clients run on, check the forums.however, there is nothing on the forums saying how to do it, instead just several frustrated people that are now no longer able to set it manually - via task manager, imagecfg, etc.It's been over 2 years since they implemented this, and still no solution.This "feature" has serious flaws for multiboxing (notice the patch note even mentions running multiple copies - so the excuse multiboxing isn't supported doesn't hold water). Anyone who tries to run two copies of everquest2 on a brand new i7 machine will see a huge drop in performance as logical cores 7 and 8 which the games will run on, are the same physical core.Why is it the developers think they can manage cpu load balancing better than the operating system by just forcing a task to a particular core?</blockquote>Isn't that Everquest 1? I'm not aware of a feature like that in Everquest 2.

Oink

01-08-2010, 07:37 PM

Oops, I guess that was patch note was from EQ1, maybe they should steal the devs from EQ1 for us.either way, it's an issue that's not being addressed.

TSR-DanielH

01-08-2010, 10:50 PM

<cite>Oink@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote>Oops, I guess that was patch note was from EQ1, maybe they should steal the devs from EQ1 for us.either way, it's an issue that's not being addressed.</blockquote>I think it sounds like a nice feature and I hope it gets added at some point in the future. That said, I haven't heard of any plans to do so and I'm not sure how hard that would be.

Kenstin1983

01-20-2010, 02:23 PM

Hello,I was having the same issues trying to set the affinity for EQ2, i'm running Quadcore and wanted to set it to the first two cores to see if it improved performance but it kept defaulting back. To fix this you simply need to adjust the UAC controls in windows 7 and windows vista. Set the values down as low as they can go, this should fix the issue.do you guys recommend setting the cores to 0 and 1? or 2 and 3?

TSR-DanielH

01-22-2010, 09:34 PM

<cite>Kenstin1983 wrote:</cite><blockquote>do you guys recommend setting the cores to 0 and 1? or 2 and 3?</blockquote>It shouldn't make any major difference. I tend to use 0 and 1, but 2 and 3 should work just as well.