Cores

[Olderndirt]

Since FSX was designed to run with a single core CPU, what, if any, are the advantages of having more than a single core. Does FSX use these extra cores and what can a user do to enhance the process?

[HueyTeam]

QUOTE (Olderndirt @ Jan 17 2011, 04:32 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Since FSX was designed to run with a single core CPU, what, if any, are the advantages of having more than a single core. Does FSX use these extra cores and what can a user do to enhance the process?

yes, X use them. Try google with "affinity mask"

X with SP2 you have to do nothing.

X with SP1 you have to edit the fsx.cfg with that:


[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=n

where
n num of cores scheduled
1 = 1 core 0001
3 = 2 cores 0011
7 = 3 cores 0111
15= 4 cores 1111

[Charl]

I have a 6 core which is sp2 acceleration and i have a affinity mask of 62 which you just add this line to fsx CFG

QUOTE

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=62[/quote]

I make the other 5 cores run the sim while the no1 core is for windows processes ,sp2 didnt do this for me at all infact it run my no1 core hard and the others just bounce up and down helping alittle ,now with the mask the 5 cores run full tit while no1 takes a good break from hard processes ..
this on my PC masking makes a 70% difference in performance for the better ..

Last edited by creator2003 on Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Olderndirt]

Okay, I have an E8500 -coreduo and FSX/Acceleration so what should I be doing?

[Dontcopy]

You need to add [JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=3
to the top of your Fsx CFG

[AndrewJamez]

X with SP2 you have to do nothing.

Dito. You have exceleration which includes SP2. So you dont need to add anything. I tried with my Quad and it makes no difference. An up to date FSX install will use up to 256 cores. Believe it or not. Only time you need to use this tweak is as Mike said, when you need to asign less cores to FSX to to free up a core for windows, other services etc. If you want proof, start your task schedular while running fsx and check the cpu usage.

[Charl]

QUOTE (Olderndirt @ Jan 17 2011, 05:32 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Since FSX was designed to run with a single core CPU, what, if any, are the advantages of having more than a single core. Does FSX use these extra cores and what can a user do to enhance the process?

Phil Taylor explained all this stuff in his various blogs while developing FSX SP1 and 2
In a nutshell:

QUOTE

Multi-core
As my blog post here stated, we do use multi-core today. We use it primarily during loading when our thread and fiber system used to schedule the various parts of the simulation are not so highly coupled. And various people have measured this.
What we don’t do today is make extensive use of threads across cores during rendering. The threads we do have are scheduled by the OS across cores, but we don’t do that ourselves.

So again it is incorrect to state FSX doesn’t use multi-core. It is just a question of how much.[/quote]

[markll]

QUOTE (Charl @ Jan 17 2011, 08:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Phil Taylor explained all this stuff in his various blogs while developing FSX SP1 and 2

Yep - he also pointed out, and so have various others, that the only reason you would have for using the affinitymask property in config is if you want to RESTRICT the number of cores used by FSX. By default it will use ALL AVAILABLE CORES.