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Originally posted by Watson & Crick:

Hmmm, well I have a hyperthreading 2.8, so that might explain the differences from others I noted above. I am running Windows XP. How does one shut off one of the processors? Not sure if I would want to do that just for CM.

In the BIOS at boot time. Windows XP and 2000 should automatically detect it and start the multiprocessor capable variant of the OS kernel.

Given what I learned about Hyperthreading so far I would say you should only turn it on if you find something that benefits from it.

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Watson & Crick, There's another (non-permanent) way to disable hyperthreading without fiddling with the BIOS:

- Start the game (go only as far as the menu).

- Alt-Tab out of it.

- Bring up the task manager.

- Click on the processes tab.

- Find the CM Afrikakorps process.

- Right click on it and go to 'set affinity.'

- Uncheck one of the cpu's.

- Alt-Tab back into the game and play.

This will need to be done every time you start the game as this is not a permanent solution.

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Juju, that won't keep Win2K or XP from running other programs on the second virtual CPU - which is the original problem.

The only thing your procedure does is to prevent CM from constantly switching from one virtual processor to the other. That shouldn't happen anyway when no other programs are competing for the processors. No OS would be that dumb. Or would it? What about trying and reporting? :D

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Originally posted by Redwolf:

Juju, that won't keep Win2K or XP from running other programs on the second virtual CPU - which is the original problem.

Oh, I know that. I was responding to this particular question from W&C:

How does one shut off one of the processors? Not sure if I would want to do that just for CM.

That way he could only disable it for CM without any BIOS hassle (should he want to, that is).

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But it would be of no use for this benchmark.

You want the second processor out of the way, so that

1) the OS uses the kernel for single-processor machines

2) activity of other processes on the second virtual CPU does not disturb the virtual CPU CM is running on

You can only do that by rebooting with hyperthreading disabled. You can probably do that in Windows, not the BIOS (Linux and FreeBSD certainly can), but you cannot do it at runtime.

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Pentium-M 1.6Ghz

512k RAM

1:02 av

The RAM usage hardly blipped during the run - maybe an extra 50-80Mb of RAM was used during the calculations according to Cacheman.

For me, however, I hardly care about the battle calculation time. I care much more about the frame rate and the time-to-load the graphics.

In fact, my highest performance related frustration for CMAK is the long wait to load the graphics.

GaJ.

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- the times you got for the blue bar without computer player

- what kind of CPU you have, clockspeed

- overclocked, if yes what is original and what is overclock speed?

- how much RAM?

- (EDITED to add: how fast is your RAM, e.g. "333 MHz" or "800 MHz dual-channel")

- (EDITED to add: if you know, the processor core you have (Prescott, Thunderbird etc.) or if you don't know that, post your cache sizes and socket)

My system:

Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2

AMD Athlon XP Thoroughbred Core 2800+ 2.25ghz running at 333mhz (NOT OVERCLOCKED)

Chaintech GeForce Ti4600 128MB Video Card

1.5GB RAM Kingston PC2700 333mhz

Chaintech motherboard 7NJL1 Apogee 400mhz bus capable. BIOS set to 333.

I left sound on and all graphics at Full.

My times were:

50, 49, 48, 50, 51 - Seconds that is.

Thinking about an upgrade? Your times didn't appear poor really.

I can upgrade to the 3200+ processor and invest in PC3200 RAM but I'm not sure what kind of a return I would get. The 3200+ has more memory on the processor and I would be operating at a better bus speed but the actual clock speed of the 3200+ is slightly less than my Thoroughbred 2800+ 2.2 vs 2.25.

Maybe in a few more months when the prices make it possible to do this for $200 or less I will try it.

This was a good test. Just an FYI on my system. I have all of the unnecessary services that load at boot-up turned off. The operating system from a services perspective is stripped down for maximum processor freedom. AKA - Black Viper website.

[ September 02, 2004, 06:53 AM: Message edited by: Jack Carr ]

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Originally posted by GreenAsJade:

In fact, my highest performance related frustration for CMAK is the long wait to load the graphics.

To solve this you need fast harddisks. And if you put two or more together in a RAID-0 (stripe) you will get much better performance.

Another (brutal) solution is to use a network server which holds all the BMPs in RAM, connected via Gigabit ethernet to the Windows machine.

If you have enough RAM, say two gigabytes, you can probably load CMAK from a RAMdisk in one Gigabyte. I don't know whether Win2k or XP allow you to create a RAM-disk which is never paged out.

But the stripe/RAID-0 will probably do good enough.

[ September 03, 2004, 09:34 PM: Message edited by: Redwolf ]

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Originally posted by Jack Carr:

Quick question for anyone who may know the answer. Both my CMAK and CMBB environments are heavily modded with higher resolution BMP's. Will this increase the wait time at all upon hitting the "GO" button?

It should not.

It should only make the "loading 3 graphics" phase longer, and that not even much because most of the overhead is by file, not by megabyte (CM loads lots of small files).

There is a possibility that RAM is being taken up by the textures or data managing or associated with the textures, from the previous phase where you were moving around in the 3D display. This could make the turn calculation live in less RAM. But since we only need 50-80 MB and most people have at least 256 that shouldn't matter.

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Given what I learned about Hyperthreading so far I would say you should only turn it on if you find something that benefits from it.

I am not sure that this is good advice. I have seen considerable benefits at work with my hyper threaded computer. Run 2 processor expensive programs at once and the speed gains can be quite impressive. I am a programmer and often run multiple compilers and have found that the time required to compile a single program is often little different from the time required to compile 2 programs at once. Maybe you do not get much benefit from CM but computers are not usually used for only one purpose. One thing that has surprised me with hyper threading is that you do seem to get much benefit with multi threaded programs. I have not looked into this much though
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Originally posted by Redwolf:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by GreenAsJade:

In fact, my highest performance related frustration for CMAK is the long wait to load the graphics.

To solve this you need fast harddisks. And if you put two or more together in a RAID-0 (stripe) you will get much better performance.

</font>

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Originally posted by Runyan99:

Okay, I'll play

My results:

- Intel 3.0 gig Pentium (1066 MHz bus)

- not overclocked

- 1024 MB RAM at 1066 MHz

One trial at about 75 seconds.

Odd, other people with slower processors are posting better results...

I didn't know they even made 3 GHz Pentium-4 and mainboards for them that can take RAMBUS/RDRAM.

Can you be more specific about processor and mainboard?

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