(Autenil) Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:about the multicore support in the next patch.

[Official Forums]

Detor wrote:

Autenil wrote:

I really suggest against setting the process affinity to one core, especially with multicore mode turned on. Setting the affinity to one core basically un-does all of the good that multicore mode does, plus it causes the game to run as if you're on single-core hardware. The game does have other threads for I/O-bound operations (such as loading textures, meshes, etc) and it's better (especially when zoning) when these run on separate cores. This occurs naturally through the Windows task scheduler when you leave the affinity alone

Depending on which stats you're looking at, the percentage values you mentioned could include all other applications (and the Windows kernel), not just the game.

Yeah, setting it to one core only would hurt performance, but at least for a quad core system it helps performance to tell windows to not run EQ2 on CPU 0. (that way it puts EQ2 processes on CPU 1/2/3) The default behavior of EQ2 is to try to run on CPU 0, and it pegs CPU 0 at 100%. Windows was typically using almost none of CPU1/2/3, but pegging CPU0 at 100%. If you told it don't run EQ2 on CPU0, only on the other 3 cores, it would typically come out to CPU0 being at 35-50% (other tasks that windows always seems to put on CPU0, EQ2 was having to share procesing power with those other tasks when it was also on CPU0) while EQ2 could then have almost the entire CPU1 to itself.

You said the client picks a core when it is first launched - eg your trick with two clients then closing one. Why not have EQ2 default to picking the highest core? Right now your first client would pick CPU0 right? Second, CPU1, Third, CPU2, etc. Why not make that so that EQ2 tries to pick the highest core you have then work backwards? Eg, First client - if you're on dual it uses CPU1, if you're on quad CPU3, second client on dual CPU0, on quad CPU2, etc. Basically instead of the game defaulting to counting up why not have it default to picking your highest number core for the first client then counting down from there?

*SNIP*

On somebody running multiple clients the change would do nothing, but for those running 1 client on multicore machines I think we'd see a healthy boost from a change like that. EQ2 would have a core all to itself if it defaulted to something other than CPU0 without having to do anything like opening a second client and closing the first.

It's true that changing affinity to be three cores on a quad-core system won't hurt performance.

When I get a chance, I'll take a look at your suggestion to use the cores in reverse order.

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