What Core Affinity should I Use for Games ???

[jonathan1107]

Hi,

I would like to know what Core Affinity I should set for playing games on my I7 875k... I'm overclocked at different rates depending on how many cores are working...

I have an unlocked radeon 6950... I've been playing Crysis and Dragon Age 2 recently and would like to know if you think the game is going to perform better with say 2 cores active or 4... (I've got 4 virtual and 4 physical)

And please don't give me advice if you don't know what I'm talkin about. (If you have never owned a i7 or such...)

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

just leave it the way it is core affinity should only be messed with if multi tasking to an extreme and you need to dedicate processing power to something. or setting it when a game crashes otherwise aka Dragon Age awakening with 4 cores for me crashes constantly using core affinity to 1 or 2 cores stops that, so unless your having issues solved with setting core affinity just leave it alone and get your gaming on.

 

[ShiBDiB]

And please don't give me advice if you don't know what I'm talkin about. (If you have never owned a i7 or such...)

to u sir.. cause clearly your more clueless then u think.. Dont touch the affinity as 99% of the time it makes no difference or actually makes the game slower.

 

[DRDNA]

I would let it stay the way it is by default>>>>UNLESS your having a heat issue or trying to keep it cooler.
I have done this with video conversion software and knocked it back to 4 threads instead of 8 threads to keep the heat down and when I wasn't in a rush for the conversion but I have never done it with a game.

 

[ctrain]

Windows is aware of what cores are from Hypethreading and will schedule them appropriately. You generally never need to play with this.

edit: oops 3 day old bump :/

 

[slyfox2151]

Windows is aware of what cores are from Hypethreading and will schedule them appropriately. You generally never need to play with this.

edit: oops 3 day old bump :/

i dont think this is correct, afaik windows just sees 8 normal cores it can use.

 

[Mussels]

i dont think this is correct, afaik windows just sees 8 normal cores it can use.

modern windows is aware. it uses the regular cores first, i have seen that behaviour first hand.



jonathan1107: Being rude here will tend to only get you sarcasm and rudeness back. This forum isnt like many others where they're made up of 12 year old kids without a clue.


To answer your question, as has already been done: you dont need to change it. windows knows when the cores are, or are not in use and intels turbo mode (and AMD's) adjusts accordingly. its designed to do it on its own, in the background, without needing anyone to tweak anything.

 

[Deleted member 74752]

If you address core parking you will see improvement in your games...http://ultimatecomputers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3644

 

[alexsubri]

modern windows is aware. it uses the regular cores first, i have seen that behaviour first hand.



jonathan1107: Being rude here will tend to only get you sarcasm and rudeness back. This forum isnt like many others where they're made up of 12 year old kids without a clue.


To answer your question, as has already been done: you dont need to change it. windows knows when the cores are, or are not in use and intels turbo mode (and AMD's) adjusts accordingly. its designed to do it on its own, in the background, without needing anyone to tweak anything.

Do I smell a thread closing?

 

[slyfox2151]

modern windows is aware. it uses the regular cores first, i have seen that behaviour first hand.



jonathan1107: Being rude here will tend to only get you sarcasm and rudeness back. This forum isnt like many others where they're made up of 12 year old kids without a clue.


To answer your question, as has already been done: you dont need to change it. windows knows when the cores are, or are not in use and intels turbo mode (and AMD's) adjusts accordingly. its designed to do it on its own, in the background, without needing anyone to tweak anything.

Good to know

 

[RejZoR]

Leave it. Core affinity is only for old games that work propeerly with just one thread.

 

[T3kl0rd]

Single Core affinity is for older titles that weren't coded right in the first place. I.E. games I should be maxing with ease on my PC but still can't lock @ 60 FPS. Dungeon Siege II is one example, Neverwinter Nights 2 is another. A few games actually gain a performance boost from alt+tabbing out of them and setting the affinity to one. Most do not.

 

[T3kl0rd]

just leave it the way it is core affinity should only be messed with if multi tasking to an extreme and you need to dedicate processing power to something. or setting it when a game crashes otherwise aka Dragon Age awakening with 4 cores for me crashes constantly using core affinity to 1 or 2 cores stops that, so unless your having issues solved with setting core affinity just leave it alone and get your gaming on.

Something is seriously wrong with your PC. That game is optimized for quads with a 75% performance increase with a quad core CPU.

http://www.grandtheftpc.com/2010/03/7-pc-games-that-run-noticeably-better.html

 

[caleb]

modern windows is aware. it uses the regular cores first, i have seen that behaviour first hand.

What do you mean a regular core first? All threads run on regular cores
Maybe its even/odd so it gets split evenly but that should be done automatically by the CPU itself. I think that it'd be kinda stupid because the core is ready for jobs on the 2nd thread anyway its not like it will put its 2 threaded capability into 1 just like that. All 8 threads are have equal computing power unless that turbo thing comes in and increases single CPU Mhz.

I don't see how any game can benefit or loose from changing (down) the affinity. Either its designed for multi threading (benefits from it) or it doesn't. Either way messing with affinity is when you really know what you are doing.
The OS handles what goes where anyway game task's can only spawn thread's but its up to the OS anyway who is gonna do the job at that particular moment.

PS. +1 on dropping affinity to 2 cores from 4 stops crashing = 99,9% hardware malfunction.

 

[Mussels]

What do you mean a regular core first? All threads run on regular cores
Maybe its even/odd so it gets split evenly but that should be done automatically by the CPU itself. I think that it'd be kinda stupid because the core is ready for jobs on the 2nd thread anyway its not like it will put its 2 threaded capability into 1 just like that. All 8 threads are have equal computing power unless that turbo thing comes in and increases single CPU Mhz.
http://www.dcacomputers.com.au/blog/whats-the-difference-between-an-intel-i3-i5-and-i7/intel-i7/

I don't see how any game can benefit or loose from changing (down) the affinity. Either its designed for multi threading (benefits from it) or it doesn't. Either way messing with affinity is when you really know what you are doing.
The OS handles what goes where anyway game task's can only spawn thread's but its up to the OS anyway who is gonna do the job at that particular moment.

PS. +1 on dropping affinity to 2 cores from 4 stops crashing = 99,9% hardware malfunction.

sorry, i used bad wording. i meant to say regular THREADS, as opposed to hyperthreading.

HT isnt some magical half core, it shares the same hardware. if you get an app trying to use a real thread and a HT thread at the same time, it takes a performance hit compared to if it was running on two proper threads.

HT threads do not have the same performance as regular threads. many programs take a hit from HT being enabled.

 

[T3kl0rd]

All HT is, is computational power left over on a physical core during its calculation cycle. It is squeezing the unused computational power of the core. You don't want to use HT, a theoretical core, the same as a physical core.

HT helps Windows do things in the background more than increase game performance. My i7 950 has HT and so does my P4.

You shouldn't have to disable cores to get modern software to run properly, especially software optimized to utilize a quad. Possible unstable OC.

 

[Mussels]

All HT is, is computational power left over on a physical core during its calculation cycle. It is squeezing the unused computational power of the core. You don't want to use HT, a theoretical core, the same as a physical core.

HT helps Windows do things in the background more than increase game performance. My i7 950 has HT and so does my P4.

You shouldn't have to disable cores to get modern software to run properly, especially software optimized to utilize a quad. Possible unstable OC.

you shouldnt have to, but sometimes you do. not a hardware problem. some programs are just poorly coded, and werent made with HT in mind.

 

[jonathan1107]

agreed

 

[T3kl0rd]

you shouldnt have to, but sometimes you do. not a hardware problem. some programs are just poorly coded, and werent made with HT in mind.

No way should you be disabling cores for Dragon Age:Origins when that game is designed for quads. That is what I am talking about.

 

[Mussels]

No way should you be disabling cores for Dragon Age:Origins when that game is designed for quads. That is what I am talking about.

you can disable four threads on an i7 without disabling any cores. if for some reason it was sticking with only two cores and four threads instead of four cores and four threads, that could reduce the performance. you could also fix the problem by disabling HT outright.


what you're not getting here is 'should' vs 'reality' - whatever is controlling this stuff, be it the game or windows, sometimes it fucks up. setting affinity manually is the fix.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

i think the biggest issue here is people still seem to think HT = cores when it reality it dosent,

a game might take advantage of the extra 4 threads but if the 4 real cores are already bogged down 4 more threads on top dosent help.

Its also well know that while Dragon Age Origins will use more cores and keep scaling, its expansion Awakening is known to crash if more then 2 cores are used on many machines meaning its a title where manually setting affinity to 1 or 2 cores results in stability where as more cores = crash. It all depends on the situation at hand, but in general on an dual core quad core hexa core whatever core, 99% of the time manually setting affinity will do next to nothing, unless the game is unstable using extra cores, again awakening is an example of this.