With some older games i have when i open them it defaults to core affinity 0 and 1 and for some reason this only uses 0 and non of 1 (making it single threaded). If i set it to 0 and 2 or all four (0,1,2,3) then it uses 2 cores properly. Why is this and how can i make it so i don't have to do this every time i open the games with this issue? Also another problem, in some older games my 7900GT has better performance than the 7660D. It's fine in newer games like bf3 etc but older games it just doesn't have any grunt, why is this? :\ edit: I am talking about older games that can make use of two cores, not single threaded ones.
Here is the prob. This is what my 2500k looks like with default affinity of 0 and 1 only: This is the 5800k with the same default affinity of 0 and 1: Here is it set to 0 and 2: How can i force it to open with affinity 0 and 2 or all four?
Is that Windows 7? If so, install MS patch for FX/Opteron CPU's, i think that should solve your problem. With those patches, CPU should work on ALL cores sporadically, because of AMD architecture, that is better way for that CPU unlike 2500k where is better to work on "locked cores". So, when you play single (less) threaded game, it should work on all CPU's sporadically with low CPU usage per core.
Didn't help. Why do some games set their affinity to only cores 0 and 1? Is there a way to force it to use all cores every time?
You installed both hotfixes and it is the same? Strange. Only by setting affinity to one core, and than back on all cores, it should have same effect as hotfix. But after installing those two, it should switch threads, it should not lock on thread at all, that is strange.
I don't know if this saves core affinity? I found with some googling there are config settings in some games i can change to make some games launch with all four cores used. I'm happy with this solution. It is spiking a bit on core 1 and 3 but the load is mostly on 0 and 2. Without setting the core affinity it randomly picks 0 or 1 and maxes it at 100% even after the patch. So with the game config tweaked (task manager shots running old 2.4.3 WoW) and windows 7 patches i get it launching like this. (yay free 5-10fps gain) Some other games have the same options in config and others perform great on 1 thread anyway so it doesn't matter there. It's GPU performance is still a little lower than i expected in older games but modern ones at lower res run amazingly well. Here are a couple of crysis 3 shots at 950MHz core and 2133MHz ram. http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/961/crysis32013050216293745.jpg http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/9720/crysis32013050216340796.jpg
But it is still strange for me that it locks on threads, i don't know if any game lock on threads on FX CPU's, ok, maybe is a difference because lack of L3 cache on APU? Also, never played that game, so i don't know. For older games, well, APU use system RAM as graphic memory, you can't expect to work as dedicated VRAM, especially on older games, because they are more sensitive to hardware. Also, you have interference on RAM, and if game is not well programed for that platform (as older games), you get that type of experience. You can always fix it by limiting FPS, or using v-sync when possible.
Bump. I done some testing. If you didn't installed both fixes from Microsoft (on Windows 7), don't install KB2646060. Just Install KB2645594. Here is why. KB2646060 removes "core parking" (in most cases, depending on power plan) and there is no way back (even if you uninstall that fix, don't quote me on that, but I think that is the case). Better option is to install KB2645594, and manually disable "core parking" with "UnparkCPU" program, you can do all sort of things with it if needed (but not really), for example, on 8 cores CPU's, you can manually unpark just one core per module, and that will force Windows to use just those cores if more are not needed, or on 4 cores cpu's, just two. There could be benefits from that on older games (not tested), but you can expect more heat from CPU. Here is example, with core parking (default, only KB2645594 installed): With all cores unparked (with UnparkCPU): Same game, game that uses only two cores. Don't get confused by memory usage, I've just alt+f4 on one of the screenshots. Hope that clears up everything, also, if/when needed, with "UnparkCPU" app, you can park specific cores etc. or bring back to parked, so it is better option in my opinion, you should avoid KB2646060 if there is no way back to parked after uninstalling. Sorry for late bump, I was busy. Oh, btw, I DO NOT recommend Intel users to do this, especially on CPU's that don't have HT (Hyper threading), for example i5 CPU's, they benefit more from using just one or two cores.