How to tell if CPU Strategy Round Robin is actually working?

So I have been trying to troubleshoot my own performance issues with ISboxer's Round Robin CPU strategy with STO but this isn't a question specific to that game.

What should i see happen with my PC CPU cores when Round Robin is working properly?

Is it different behavior between AMD and Intel chip sets since Intel I7s and such use Hyper threading technology? If so what?

While i found a found a work around for my specific problem (posted in the STO forums) the fact that I didn't know what I 'should' have been seeing with this CPU strategy meant I could not tell Lax if ISboxer was just not working on my hardware (hardware listed in OP here), the Innerspace tool wasn't working, or the STO client was the issue.

Any explanation would be appreciated.

[lax]

If it's not working then it probably has nothing to do with AMD vs Intel, and everything to do with either something in the game itself (for example they may be using some unexpected API that Inner Space is not correctly handling) or your ISBoxer conifiguration.

In your configuration I would ensure your Slots in your Character Set are assigned to different cores as you expect. (In the top left pane select your Character Set, then in the bottom left pane select each Slot number i.e. 1, 2, 3)

After checking that, I would open the Windows Task Manager with Ctrl+Shift+Esc, find the game clients, right click and select "Set Affinity...". The selected cores should match those configured in ISBoxer for each game instance; if not, then this would most likely be something in the game itself that I'd need to update Inner Space to handle.

Is it different behavior between AMD and Intel chip sets since Intel I7s and such use Hyper threading technology? If so what?

Intel's Hyper-threading is basically splitting a physical CPU core into two, and the CPU Strategy Wizard will then use 2 cores instead of 1 for a round-robin. The second core from each can't run a full game instance and we get better performance by making sure these are paired. So yes there is different behavior -- with HT (good Intel) you're setting it to use 2 cores and without (all AMD) you're setting it to use 1 core.

I haven't seen your configuration see if you've done something that broke it. http://isboxer.com/wiki/Configuration_Sharing For example an easy way to make it not work is to create a Computer, change it to have "CPU Cores" set to 1, put the Character Set on it and then use the CPU Strategy Wizard (or just use the Quick Setup Wizard for that Computer). This would be easily recognized by checking the setting per Slot (as suggested above) though. Anyway, happy to take a peek.

Here is the link to my test Character Set. http://privatepaste.com/85d4cb236b

However even though I expicitiedly ran the CPU Strategy wizard for the character set and saved the configuration. I can see that it is setting load Round Robin to false in the xml file.

Thoughts?

[lax]

However even though I expicitiedly ran the CPU Strategy wizard for the character set and saved the configuration. I can see that it is setting load Round Robin to false in the xml file.

The Round Robin that you're looking at in the XML is for a Mapped Key. CPU Strategy does not save a round-robin value. If you want to see it in the XML instead of in the toolkit, search for "CPUCores".

Checking what I suggested you check in your config (or in the XML), I see that:
1. "STOTest" has exactly one Slot and this Slot is assigned to use CPU core 1 (or "CPU 0" in Windows Task Manager). This may have been done with the Round-robin CPU Strategy, but as there is only one Slot on the team there is really no purpose for the round-robin on this particular team.
2. "STOClients" has 5 Slots, and none of them have any CPU Cores selected. This means the CPU Strategy for this team is "Select no CPUs, let the game do it" -- NOT round-robin.

In your configuration, the game gets to decide which CPUs to use for all of your "STOClients" team, and it may choose to use one (the same) CPU core for all instances. That would result in extremely poor performance.

My apologizes for the confusion Lax as I gave you the configuration not well set up.

Here is my config using the Round Robin CPU Strategy for 5 clients on a single computer. Here

The question I have is when I reviewed the core assignments in ISboxer, as you suggested, each client was only set to 1 cpu core each with 3 remaining un-assigned. Is this normal?
- If so should the other 3 remaining cores ever be utilized or shared as needed as you run this setup?

Thank you again.

[lax]

The question I have is when I reviewed the core assignments in ISboxer, as you suggested, each client was only set to 1 cpu core each with 3 remaining un-assigned. Is this normal?

That's what round-robin is, each game instance gets 1 (or 2 if Hyper-Threading is enabled during the wizard) core, rotating between cores for each one. I see that your ISBoxer Configuration is indeed using round-robin, for each Slot 1 through 5, on cores 1 through 5.

If you're asking me "if it's actually working", the way to find out is simply to check whether the activated cores as shown in Windows Task Manager match the selected cores in ISBoxer. Each gets one core (as per the round-robin selection), but the selected core will rotate.

Ok thank you for the reply and confirming what I suspected.

With the Delta Rising expansion for STO the client is too resource hungry for a single core (AMD) to support a single instance of the client by itself as it caps out the single cpu core and you don't get past the Character Select screen after 15 minutes.

For intel I7 chipsets the hyper threading alleviates this above problem allowing the round robin cpu strategy to operate normally. I confirmed this with my room mate who also uses ISboxer for STO and runs a 5 client configuration on Round Robin.

[MiRai]

Ok thank you for the reply and confirming what I suspected.

With the Delta Rising expansion for STO the client is too resource hungry for a single core (AMD) to support a single instance of the client by itself as it caps out the single cpu core and you don't get past the Character Select screen after 15 minutes.

For intel I7 chipsets the hyper threading alleviates this above problem allowing the round robin cpu strategy to operate normally. I confirmed this with my room mate who also uses ISboxer for STO and runs a 5 client configuration on Round Robin.

This doesn't sound like anything too out of the ordinary because one core is usually not enough to handle a single game client these days unless your settings are set very low (and it's still game dependent). The Wizard is easy to use, but it can't predict what is going to work best for each and every player which is why it offers numerous default configurations for you to choose from -- But even even then you can still manually adjust your CPU affinity under the Performance tab of each Slot of your Character Set.

And as Lax already stated above, if you enable the Hyper-Threading option in the Wizard it's just going to pair two cores together instead of one which ends up still working fine on AMD CPUs. Honestly, the word on the internet is that you should be pairing two of your cores together anyway on the AMD CPUs as it is since it's recognized as a "module."