WinEQ and dual core processors

Nefigah · Post by **Nefigah** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 2:30 am

Question. I'm running an Athlon dual core processor. This usually causes problems in EQ, so normally I set EQ's afinity to use only 1 core. Is there a way, when running 2 instances of EQ through WinEQ, to have 1 instance use 1 core and the other use the other?

Post by **Lax** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 8:35 am

Sure. Unless you mean to ask if WinEQ can set the affinity for each automatically

It has been on my mind since I got this dual core for testing, so I may implement that pretty soon.

Nefigah · Post by **Nefigah** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 4:36 pm

Alright, how to do this then? Because I can set affinity for the first instance before it actually opens by setting affinity for WinEQ. However, it doesn't let me set an affinity after eqgame is already running, so how would I set it up for the second instance?

Post by **Lax** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 7:03 pm

Ah, was not aware that it prevents you from setting affinity. How silly is that

I will implement this in the next couple days.

Nefigah · Post by **Nefigah** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 12:01 am

Word, thank you

shuttle · Post by **shuttle** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 8:31 am

Nefigah, what issues are you seeing on your dual core? After a few hours on mine I seem to get super speed and frames not rendering (skipping)

shuttle

shuttle · Post by **shuttle** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 8:53 am

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/boa ... .id=100224

Post by **Lax** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 11:31 am

WinEQ 2 now sets CPU affinity automatically, rotating between processors for each new session. SysInfo.txt now also reflects the "affinity mask" which should show 1 for "CPU 0", 2 for "CPU 1", 3 for "CPU 0 and CPU 1" and so on.

shuttle · Post by **shuttle** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 11:10 am

Works like a Champ.

Thanks Lax!

anonguy · Post by **anonguy** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:59 am

Is there a way to set the first instance to run on the 2nd cpu first? Im thinking i'll get better performance that way when i only have one client running (most of the time for me).

Also there are beta forceware drivers floating around, 81.26, that are supposed to have some dual core optimizations.

Post by **Lax** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 3:14 pm

anonguy wrote:Is there a way to set the first instance to run on the 2nd cpu first? Im thinking i'll get better performance that way when i only have one client running (most of the time for me).

You CAN disable WinEQ 2's setting of CPU affinity, and set the affinity manually if you want to try it.

But, better performance wont be the case unless you are setting the CPU affinity for other applications to the first CPU. By default, Windows sets affinity for all processes to use all available processors. The thread scheduler is already rotating things between all processors in this way. The difference with WinEQ is simply that it is setting an entire application to a specific processor. Unless you are setting other individual applications to specific processors, then the CPU used by any single application is arbitrary (e.g. 1 application is set to only use CPU 1, where all other apps are using both 1 and 2). And then even if you do set other applications, you can just set them to the other processor anyway if you want.

Overall, best performance is achieved by letting Windows select the processor for each thread. The reasons for setting affinity for EQ actually have more to do with game stability and performance of EQPlayNice (because the CPU/FPS limiter fails to operate correctly otherwise).