Windows 8 High DPC latency Fix

Everytime I end MsMpEng.exe it just keeps coming back, how do I prevent it from trying to turning back on?


Edit: also are there any specific settings while using HD_speed I should assign or can I leave things like block size on auto? Should I test my actual hard drive with the assigned letter of the drive assigned to it like C and D or should I test the physical drive option of the hard drives?

 

This is the scan process from MS Security Essentials or Windows Defender (if you are on Windows 8). On my systems (Windows 7 and 8) this process is also responsible for nearly all the hard pagefaults. Try disabling the realtime protection and see what's happening.

 

Very cool info, this actually helped my hard pagefaults by 97% or so give or take.

I noticed turning this off pretty much solved my stutter problem I saw in games with HPET 64 bit in bios and in windows activated.

Games with HPET 64 bit in bios and activated in windows with the the cmd line really makes a noticable difference and seems a lot more responsive and seem as if things are more in tune or produced in real time.




It was mentioned to deactive livecomm which I suppose to responsible for windows live communication? I am having a hard time assuming why disabling windows live would also have a benefit, does this also constantly scan something or reduce hard pagefaults?


Also is there anyway to have real time protection from windows defender without producing so many hard pagefaults?

 

You're welcome. Regarding your last question: During my last tests I ended up trying either AVG, avast as well as Avira (all in their respective free edition) and did not observe any problems with hard pagefaults. See if you can verify this.

 

You may try to solve the stutter in games by excluding their folders from the real-time check.

 

Ah so there's no winning with windows defender huh, lame lol. Yeah I'll try another real time protection service and be glad to post my results to you, what is the least taxing on the system when it comes to all the anti virus protection programs? How is bitdefender? Any idea how it competes with the ones you mentioned? I'm even open to buying an anti virus protection program if it can protect me efficiently and be least taxing software of all the anti virus softwares

Very cool, thanks for the tip. Is there any disadvantage from preventing a directory or folder from using real-time check? Or rather what's the benefit of using it?

Edit: Oh you mean excluding folders using the windows defender interface. Would excluding a game directory help specifically with that game while it's running? Or wouldn't the overall hard pagefaults that windows defender as a whole in the background effect and produce stutters in the game even with the game directories being excluded?

 

Leave it auto, benchmarking a letter test only the partition, so full HDD is better.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/windows-defender#1TC=t1

Disable it in the Settings tab.

And frankly why using an AV in the first place? I never do. I never get infections. And I'm a big "utorrent" user... AV are overrated.

Be sure of your sources.
Browse with Opera, javascript, plugins and cookies disabled by default. Enable them only when necessary per site, you can do that easily with Opera.
Use SRware Iron (Google Chrome anonymous) as a backup for untrusted sites with javascript+plugins (Adobe Flash), because Chromium derivatives are sandboxes.

When necessary install the last free Avira to do a scan. Avira is good AND fast. Uninstall it after with Geek Uninstaller.
Pretty much my method, and Windows 8 build-in protections should be enough for a while before exploits surface.

Use online AV for small zip, rar, 7z, exe untrusted files.
https://www.virustotal.com/
http://virusscan.jotti.org/en

 

@woken: It may be different in reality but I thought it made sense that if the game stutters while its directory/executable is being scanned, the same stutter should stop if the directory was being excluded from the check.
As it's only excluded from the real-time scan there shouldn't be any problem to the overall system safety, especially without "external" patches and updates for these games.

 

For some reason I keep getting these high measured kernel latency spikes

With HPET 64 bit enabled in bios and operating system it's quite noticeable in games when it occurs. It just sort of skips whenever I get these spikes. I have no idea what's causing it as my DPC routine and ISR routine are all low. This is with windows defender disabled

 

Have you tried with minimal services started?

Why HPET On? HPET OFF Useplatformclock Off Disabledynamictick Yes is better.

 

So, I'm really not to sure what this thread is all about. I just purchased windows 8 pro 64. Is windows 8 ready for gaming currently? Or should I stay with vista 64 for a few more months allowing the OS to mature?

 

TSC+LAPICs Low performance (slow timers + syncing) = 2.76MHz
LAPICs low performance (slow timer - no syncing) = 3.5Mhz
TSC+HPET medium performance (slow and fast timer + syncing) = 3.8Mhz
HPET high performance (fast timer - no syncing) = 14.3MHz

HPET + platformclock=true will give you best timer resolution, frame rate and lowest DPC latency.

I wanted to use no syncing and a fast timer rated at 14mhz. I do notice a huge difference in games with a 14mhz timer over TSC or whatever windows 8 uses

but the only bad side about using a high timer for me that I notice is that whenever I get spikes of 1ms or more on my system I can really notice it as my screen will go from really fluid production on my display to just everything kinda of skipping a bit then producing the next frame after the spike leaving no way to blend in what's being skipped

 

It's good for gaming after tweaking it and replacing that metro ****. Read all the thread, you'll find good stuff.
Still, copying over and deleting files is one of those thing not feeling right compared to Win7. Watch out not hitting Del key inadvertently...

@Woken I agree.

 

Is there any way to modify timer on AMD chipset? I didn't found HPET related stuff on my motherboard BIOS.

 

I don't think it's amd or intel specific, I think it's just required that your motherboard supports it for you to use it. I'm not sure

 

ASUS mobo had HPET enforced years ago with no option to disable it, maybe it still the case now.
Check in your Device Manager/System devices if you see High Precision Timer.

You may have to live with it, use Useplatformclock On Disabledynamictick Yes so at least you will have the best out of it.

 

Thanks for your help. I will check when return home.

 

Von Dach, I know it's kind of hard to tell where my spikes are coming from. I honestly have no idea since the diagnostic stats on latencymon tell me nothing about my 2600 us kernel timer, but by a long shot do you have any idea what could be causing this?

This was happening when I was playing planetside2 just now and everything is incredily fluid, but when I get those 1600-2600 us spikes in/on my kernels I can really notice a skip in the game and they happen kind of frequently.

I'm going nuts trying to fix it



EDIT: at maco07

When you've enabled HPET in your OS with the cmd line succesfully you should notice if you have HPET forced on your mobo also if it's successful with using WinTimerTester 1.1 to see your QueryPerformanceFrequency

Without HPET enabled in both bios and OS:



With HPET enabled in both bios and OS:



Enabling HPET in BIOS is just half way of enabling HPET, it needs to be enabled in OS too, and in a way that it's the only timer used.

By default windows uses combination of TSC+ACPI timers, not matter if HPET is enabled in BIOS.

TSC+LAPICs Low performance (slow timers + syncing) = 2.76MHz
LAPICs low performance (slow timer - no syncing) = 3.5Mhz
TSC+HPET medium performance (slow and fast timer + syncing) = 3.8Mhz
HPET high performance (fast timer - no syncing) = 14.3MHz

HPET + platformclock=true will give you best timer resolution, frame rate and lowest DPC latency.

You can test timer ratio and QueryPerformanceFrequency with WinTimerTester 1.1 http://www.mediafire...xzo9n84d8lze9nb
The higher the QueryPerformanceFrequency is the better is performance. You only get high frequency with HPET. The other timers will give you significantly less frequency. Also note that if your ratio is not 1.0000 you are off set (or you have wrongly OC'ed), enable HPET and you should be without sync problems.

 

Look it may be background disks writing.

Do you have a pagefile? Your Windows partition is on a HDD or SDD?
Whatever You should disable it (pagefile). People think they need it, nope.

You still have a dynamic MEMORY pagefile just not a HDD/SDD pagefile with slow writing.

No issues with that with +8GB of RAM and if you don't do big multimedia creations on specialized softwares.

And if I'm right, the bigger the amount of memory you have, the bigger the pagefile will be.

So when Windows choose to do a "dump" of it on HDD/SDD, the bigger that dump will be related to your total physical memory amount.
No dump, no system IOPS spikes.

That's why also I disable so much services, minimizing background events/writing done by services like Windows Event Log.

 

Core parking OFF (high performance plan)?

In nvcpl per game profile - prefer maximum performance enabled?
Also manual frame to render ahead can help too, 2 seems the most stable.

Selective usb suspend disabled?

Bios EIST off? - this can be buggy.

Loosen ram timings may help too. Especially higher/manual tRTP (read to precharge delay) 7, default is usually 4-5.