Lag on One Client

For most people, you want all cores available and just to let Windows manage which thread is running where

I use dual hex core HP Z800s so I've 12 cores plus 12 hyper thread cores to play with. In the past I've found it best to assign cores to characters (minimum of 2 cores each) as that assures that no character is lagged out. Recently I've experienced problems similar to that of the title of this forum. Namely, one or more windows will lag out. And sadly my main, while not showing greater latency in the onscreen window, seems to fall behind the others in where they are in a fight. Main will show the boss mob at say 40 percent, and rest of raid will show the same mob at 20 percent. The health bar of the mob on my main will then flick back and forth between 20 and 40 etc.

So I have had a huge number of cores given to the main, as many as 12, THIS ACTUALLY SEEMS to make the problem worse. It seems as if doing this forces my computer to use all 12 cores even when less efficient and speedy to do so. The ideal might be to have a CPU strategy that says, in effect, you can have these 12 cores exclusively for my main but only use them as needed as opposed to you must use all 12 cores all of the time.

I've recently heeded the above quote and just assigned all 24 cores to every character and let windows 10 sort it out. BUT, I still find my main having the above issue...latency is same as others but he falls behind. I'm now playing with giving him more fps, it seems like with him at 80 fps and all others at 10 fps things are better. Now why this would be in cross-fired Sapphire Toxic R9 280xs is unknown to me but may have something to do at the rate at which information from in internet can be processed locally.

[MiRai]

I've split your topic because that other one had a solution. When in doubt, start a new thread.

Main will show the boss mob at say 40 percent, and rest of raid will show the same mob at 20 percent. The health bar of the mob on my main will then flick back and forth between 20 and 40 etc.

I've never heard of this happening, and honestly, it doesn't make any sense at all since the server tells the game client what percentage health the target is at, and this shouldn't have anything to do with how many cores are assigned to a game client. Unless you're running multiple computers or from multiple NICs, I haven't the slightest idea why this would be happening.

I'm now playing with giving him more fps, it seems like with him at 80 fps and all others at 10 fps things are better. Now why this would be in cross-fired Sapphire Toxic R9 280xs is unknown to me but may have something to do at the rate at which information from in internet can be processed locally.

Unless AMD came through with their new Crimson drivers, then Crossfire doesn't work in any sort of windowed mode.

As always, we ask for a diagnostic (for game crashes) when troubleshooting these things.

Well, I do box on 3 computers and I can watch a mob at 40 percent on one screen and see him at 20 percent on another screen. When looking at my main at 40 percent the health bar flickers back and forth between 20 (what it says on the other screen and other computer) and 40 what it says on my computer. And when the mob is dead on one screen, my main can continue the first for several minutes before the mob is down on his screen . I have one internet adapter per computer but I am running 4 internet connections through a load balancer (Peplink). The computers are identical and have identical adapters.

Too bad cross fire doesn't work in windowed mode...didn't know that. But the two video cards look right, both run at same temp and are both running on Sapphire Trixx. I don't know how to test to see if cross fire really is or is not working in windowed mode.

You didn't comment on how assignment of cores actually works....does it force windows to use all those cores or does it allow windows to use them if needed?

[MiRai]

Well, I do box on 3 computers and I can watch a mob at 40 percent on one screen and see him at 20 percent on another screen. When looking at my main at 40 percent the health bar flickers back and forth between 20 (what it says on the other screen and other computer) and 40 what it says on my computer. And when the mob is dead on one screen, my main can continue the first for several minutes before the mob is down on his screen . I have one internet adapter per computer but I am running 4 internet connections through a load balancer (Peplink). The computers are identical and have identical adapters.

You haven't mentioned what game you're actually playing, but what you describe is something I've personally never encountered in any tech-related troubleshooting post, multiboxing or not, so trying to troubleshoot it now is quite difficult. If this type of behavior that you're describing ever happened to anyone else in game, recent past or present, then players who play with their guilds or friends would be reporting such behavior, but are they? Such behavior would be easy to spot, as well as quite a hindrance to all players involved, so I would imagine that others would be reporting this if it was indeed an issue with the game that you're playing.

However, I would probably assume that however you have your multiple machines hooked up to the internet with your load balancer is what is causing your issue.

Too bad cross fire doesn't work in windowed mode...didn't know that. But the two video cards look right, both run at same temp and are both running on Sapphire Trixx. I don't know how to test to see if cross fire really is or is not working in windowed mode.

You can monitor the load of your GPUs with the software listed on this Wiki page (or several other choices of hardware monitoring software found across the internet). It should also be as straightforward as putting a game client in fullscreen mode, uncapping the FPS, observing it, and then pulling the game out of fullscreen mode and observing it again. (WoW has a built-in FPS counter (Ctrl+R))

nVidia's SLI does work in windowed mode, and there is a large difference in FPS between when I'm using it, and when I'm not.

You didn't comment on how assignment of cores actually works....does it force windows to use all those cores or does it allow windows to use them if needed?

Assigning cores through ISBoxer is the exact same thing as opening the Task Manager, right-clicking on a process, and setting the CPU affinity in there. Beyond that I do not have the specifics, but I'll assume that it's up to both the OS and the game client to do what they want from there.

[bob]

You didn't comment on how assignment of cores actually works....does it force windows to use all those cores or does it allow windows to use them if needed?

Assigning cores through ISBoxer is the exact same thing as opening the Task Manager, right-clicking on a process, and setting the CPU affinity in there. Beyond that I do not have the specifics, but I'll assume that it's up to both the OS and the game client to do what they want from there.

Affinity is the limiting of your process or thread to only execute on a specific set of 1 or more cores. You can't force windows to use specific cores if it does not need to. eg. your Process has 1 thread, but you set affinity to 4 cores, then it just doesn't apply because you only have 1 thread, and it only needs a single core to execute; by setting affinity you are limiting the choice of 1 or more cores that the Windows Scheduler will execute the process/thread on.
If you happen to have 12 cores, but set affinity to 4 cores, then that Process will ONLY execute on those 4 cores. If those cores happen to be busy doing something else, then your process will wait until they are free, and will not be scheduled to execute on any of your remaining 8 cores

Affinity is normally set via 2 methods, Process Affinity, where you assign a process to a specific set of cores, or Thread Affinity, where you can assign a specific Thread within a process to a set of 1 or more cores. The Task Manager method that MiRai mentions, is setting Process Affinity. Inner Space will be doing the same thing. There is no reason for it to be attempting to set Thread Affinity (and this would be difficult without doing some funky stuff with the game client). It is possible that a game might try and set Thread affinity, but that would be very rare. The Windows Scheduler is usually going to make a much better decision at which process/thread should execute where, which is why it is recommended to use the "Select all cores for all games" option, and only set Affinity if you really need to; which should be fairly rare.

There are a couple of Windows features that can affect your computer performance, and can have a less than desirable impact.
1. CPU Throttling
2. Core Parking

Both of these are covered here.. http://isboxer.com/wiki/HOWTO:Disable_C ... in_Windows

The fact that Crossfire doesn't work, generally, in windowed mode but has been implemented in some games (below) indicates some interfaces can use Crossfire in Windows mode. Now this suggests to me, at least, a possible real opportunity to make the Isboxer interface the ideal intermediary for making crossfire work in windowed mode for most games. If IsBoxer could work with AMD to implement this it sure would be a coup for IsBoxer to position itself as being a goto interface. It would also, incidentally, allow ME to use crossfire and IsBoxer

Here's the ref showing Crossfire has been implemented in windowed mode for some games:


https://community.amd.com/thread/180730#2651649

Why does CrossFire still not work in windowed mode
This question has been Answered.
pb7280
Decahertz
pb7280 Jun 5, 2015 10:25 AM
I, like a lot of people, think that borderless windowed is vastly superior to exclusive fullscreen. You can multitask without worrying about your game crashing, use second monitors, resize the window if you want, all sorts of things. One of the games I play, ESO, didn't even have exclusive fullscreen when it came out (and it still doesn't for D3D9). SLI supports windowed modes, why does CrossFire still lack in this department? It's very frustrating!
amdmattCorrect Answer
by amdmatt Employee on Jun 5, 2015 10:33 AM
I understand your concern and will pass your feedback on, so thanks.

As it stands, we offer CrossFire support in Borderless/Windowed mode in the following Mantle titles.

Battlefield 4
Plants Vs Zombies
Battlefield Hardline
Civilization Beyond Earth
Thief
Dragon Age Inquistion

[bob]

Sadly, Crossfire is a driver implementation item, and not something that ISBoxer (well, Inner Space really) will be able to control, nor implement (and even if it could, there are other things vying for the dev time).

It is more than likely that a DX12 game will directly support Crossfire in Windowed Mode, because DirectX12 supports multi vendor graphics processing, so, Crossfire in Windowed Mode should effectively be baked into the direct support of the graphics library. We shall have to wait and see which MMO's come out with DX12 support .

[pazgaz]

I have seen something similar.
Sometimes, after playing for a while, one of my chars "loses sync". I never had this happen during a boss fight, but for example:
Talking to an NPC, then hitting the follow button and moving away from it.
On the leader (but can be any other) I see that two chars are still standing near the NPC, but on every other window I see them with everyone else.
It usually sorts itself after some time (20-30 seconds of me doing things like interact with said npc and moving away over and over). Happened only 3-4 times in about 2 months.