cpu affinity

[r3pent]

hi all, pretty new here, and i dont have time to trawl through the forums to see if this has been said already, but when i started playing CM:SF patched up to latest version, i was getting poor framerates on what i consider to be a more than ample machine.

so anyway, i decided to try enabling/disabling multicore's using a little cpu affinity program, and i got better frames when i forced the game onto 2 core's, seemed it is set to run on one core.

[BlackMoria]

I would think that the video settings for the game are the more likely culprit for the slow frame rate rather than the number of cores.

Check the threads in this forum. The slow frame rate issue has come up lots of times and it is usually either:

1. The video settings setup for CMSF;

2. Video driver issues; or

3. The size of the scenario. Some maps are huge and framerate issues arise as a result.

I am running CMSF on a Quad Core Dual processor absolutely fine without having to play with the cpu settings which is why I think one of the above three is the most likely source of your issue.

[r3pent]

yer i already played with the GFX settings, and i they made no difference either high or low, setting cpu affinity to use both cores gave me 100% increase, from 19fps to 38fps on loading a scenario

heres my system

c2d E6850 @ 3.6Ghz

4GB corsair ddr 800

Nvidia GTX260

AUDIGY 2

im running xp64

[slug88]

Hmm, very interesting. There's a similar story with the recently released Black Shark flight simulator, which gives very large FPS increases when forcing multi-core affinities, even though the game was programmed to be single-threaded. However, in that case, the "affinity trick" as it's called only yielded an FPS increase on Vista and W7 systems, while you're reporting a benefit on an XP system. Anyway, this is very intriguing. I'm going to try this out on my W7 system later tonight and report back with the results.

[hcrof]

just out of interest, how do you force the cpu affinities to use both cores? I am using vista 32

[slug88]

just out of interest, how do you force the cpu affinities to use both cores? I am using vista 32

There are a few utilities out there that will do it for you, they should be easy to find with google. Also, you can do it manually through the task manager; right click on the process, and click 'Affinity'.

I've done some preliminary testing, and unfortunately there seems to be absolutely no benefit on my end. This is with:

Windows 7 x64

E6750 @ 3.2Ghz

4gb

8800GTS 320mb

I tested by manually setting affinity, and I tried toggling multithreading in the nvidia control panel as well. Ultimately I found that my FPS was completely unchanged no matter which combination of multithreading and affinity I used.

[r3pent]

i use a program called "get and set cpu affinity"

and indeed i had heard of the trick in black shark, i tried it and it yielded no increase in xp 64

[hcrof]

Thanks guys, I'll try that out now!

[SlapHappy]

From what I am able to gather in attempting to increase my performance in CMSF with my Q6600, additional clock cycles mostly helps to improve your minimum frame rates.

Another text to indicate whether or not an application is cpu-limited is to dramatically decrease resolution settings. If this does not lead to an overall increase in FPS, then the application is most likely cpu-limited.