Multi-Core Cpu Architecture and WoW / Lag and Graphical tweaks...Guide

[Narshe]

Ty, Strunker, for adding even more tweeks to the nagal fix for Windows 7. I'm looking forward to adding the fix and also disabling the core parking feature to see how it does. Glad you do this!

Out of curiosity, any thoughts on how big my pagefile should be using W7 64 bit with 4gb (2x2gb) ddr2 pc6400 ram? Mine is currently set to 6144mb.

Thanks!

[Elim Garak]

About "core parking" you don't have to change it via registry. It can be changed via Power Plan settings, just for the plan you are using (High Performance - I bet). No need to go thru all the regedit hassle.

[HeatM1ser]

AMD quad core ( Phenom series ) - 14

Would this change if you overclock your processor?

[strunker]

I have not been actively reading this thread, but was advised recently that it is being linked and still read by people.

If you need help or clarification with something send me a private mail.

[Deleted]

I got a 2600K (4core+HT) and have been experimenting with different affinity settings for wow/fraps, while observing cpu activity, and came to some conclusions that I would like to share:

The 84 setting can get fucked up easily if you also fraps at the same time. The behavior I observed was, if windows decides to run any thread on one of the (unused) hyperthread parts of one of the 3 cores wow is running on, wow will stop using that core altogether (and thus only use 2 cores). If you force fraps to run on core 1, and allow wow to only use regular core 2/3/4 (with the 84 setting), windows will move it's OS/services threads to the hyperthread parts of core 2/3/4, and when wow notices some stuff is running there, it will stop using those cores. I ended up with fraps using core 1, wow using core 3, and windows using core 2/4. I could not get wow to use core 2/4 again until I restarted it (and wow on single core is baad fps).

Solution I came up with: tell wow to use a affinitymask of 252 instead of 84. 252 is all cores except 1 regular and 1 HT. In practice, wow ends up using the same cores as with 84, however it's not limited to just the regular part, and can decide to swap to a hyperthreaded part when so desired. This seems to prevent the wow-on-1 core problem, while getting the same "thread layout" / performance as 84.

Adding fraps cpu affinity to the mix, I ended up going with disallowing fraps to use core 1, so that core is dedicated purely to system services/disk access. Giving both wow and fraps full freedom to use any combination of core 2/3/4 normal or HT, fraps ended running with a big thread on 1 core, and some smaller threads on another, while wow took up the remaining 2 cores. End result showed the core 2/3/4 all running at 80-90%, with a few small bumps on the hyperthread parts of those cores. The core 1 graph mostly showed spikes when fraps wrote stuff to the disk, but otherwise was at like 5-10%. This seemed to give me the best fps/fraps performance.

[Rubidium]

There have been numerous articles linked in the pages that follow this guide about how many FPS the human eye can actually see. Some say 30, some say 60, some say 200. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so is your sensitivity to FPS. Some of us who have a more acute sense of sight may notice the jumps in fps even at higher values like I mentioned above.

The bigger issue is how many FPS your monitor can display. Which if you have an LCD is 60.

Turn vsync back on and stop stroking you ep with your huge fps that you cant see.

---------- Post added 2011-06-30 at 01:27 AM ----------

Physx wouldnt increase gpu load as it is a separate chip on the card that is being put to work, not the gpu itself. Physx used to be a separate company, and a separate card that went into the pic slot. Nvidia bought them up, and incorporated their technology onto their boards, not within the gpu.

Fail on so many levels.


1) Wow doesn't have a physics engine.

2) Wow doesn't support PhysX, because it doesn't have a physics engine.

3) nVidia PhysX is handled ENTIRELY by the GPU. Its not a separate chip like the old PhysX cards. Its simply a piece of software for CUDA.

[AnhZone]

excellent essay. Thank you

[Elim Garak]

3) nVidia PhysX is handled ENTIRELY by the GPU. Its not a separate chip like the old PhysX cards. Its simply a piece of software for CUDA.

Not entirely correct. You can assign your CPU as PhysX processor in nVidia Control panel.

[Deleted]

I already knew about some of the latency stuff. But thank's for the information regarding powering on and off cores.

[neen]

hello i have some problem wit my pc, i use 1 nvidia gts 250 and ADM Phenom II 965 i play whit good details but sometime i have some freeze ingame when loot, some spell, on pvp and i set SET processAffinityMask "15".

i did all from first page about regedit but still have problem :|

some1 can help me ?

[Rafy]

the affinity process value is always reset to 0 when you start the game...

---------- Post added 2011-07-16 at 04:00 AM ----------

3) nVidia PhysX is handled ENTIRELY by the GPU. Its not a separate chip like the old PhysX cards. Its simply a piece of software for CUDA.

wrong.
you need 2 gpu cards if you want ALL physx to be used by 1 GPU.
this has been tested in many games like Mafia 2 and Metro 2033 where using 1 GPU, was forcing the cloth calculations to be made by the CPU.
the only way to force ALL physx calculations to be made on 1 GPU is to have 2 GPU's, and in the Nvidia control panel set the dedicated Physx card to one of your GPU's.
Also note, that both GPU's should be nearly the same power.
Because if you force physx on a 9600GT and use a 560GTX as a main card, it will be worse than using only 1 560GTX card.

but then again, WOW doesn't have any physx. probably the water ??? not sure how that's made.

[strunker]

The affinity mask value should not reset to zero. Are you running the game on vista or 7 because you may have to edit the config as admin and run the game as admin to keep the mask value..

In any event, IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS PM ME!!

Said it before but looks like some people didnt see it.

[strunker]

Updated the OP with new download links to the lag.zip file and the latency fix file.

They were being hosted on a friends site, but he took it down so I found a different place to host them.

[Deleted]

I think alot of the cpu stuff is still relivent, i tested this out yesterday using a 6 core 1055t in org during peak hours, i was hitting 25fps on low settings at 1440x900

I did everythhing, including the registry changing, dx 11 and stuck it all on ultra at the same place, 14fps!!!!! so i turned off shadows 37fps!! 12 fps more with everything on ultra!

So then i changed the Setaffinity thing in the config file to "62" i wanted to try running wow on cores 2-6 leaving 1 for everything else, logged back into wow 42 fps, a massive improvent when you take into account all the settings that are set to ultra now! (just missing shadows but meh!)

Thanks very much would reccomend everyone to do this!

[endersblade]

Looks like the naglefreq.zip link is dead. Anyone have another link?

[Myth]

Looks like the naglefreq.zip link is dead. Anyone have another link?

THIS ^^

Wanna get this stuff going but can't due to dead link.

[strunker]

THIS ^^

Wanna get this stuff going but can't due to dead link.

Hey guys I have received numerous pms on this.. the link should be good. I will look into it and bump this thread in the next couple days when I either resolve it or find new hosting. thanks

---------- Post added 2011-09-16 at 02:58 AM ----------

All the links on the front page seem to be active to me. Not sure which ones you guys are having problems with.

---------- Post added 2011-09-16 at 03:00 AM ----------

www.informationleak.net/LINKS/naglefreq.zip

that link should work.

[Deleted]

thank you very much