Another look at HPET High Precision Event Timer

Well I was trying to be naughty, but not to a point of derailing,
so I didn't really get what in my post has angered you...

Regarding other experiences on the web, disabling HPET is more common advice than enabling it. But of course its worth a shot if someone has prob that cant be solved.

 

Exactly the same here. Off far lower but I do notice it spikes higher.

 

Stupid ASUS doesn't put the option in the BIOS for their early Rampage boards.

I can't find the option on my Rampage II GENE, but under system devices in Win 7 Device Manager, I have "High precision event timer"

I read somewhere that enabling APCI 2.0 turns it on. /shrug
EDIT: UGH, I recently updated my MOBO Bios and now I can't get my OC settings to boot with the same settings that were fine before.

And with latencyMon I get CRAZY Hard Pagefaults

 

Take a look at the other tabs to get a clearer indication.
I have seen internet security suites and different combinations of security suites cause spikes on my system, as well as drivers not shown on the main tab on others systems, be the cause of spikes.

The mentioned tweaks are only a workaround, much better to locate and fix the real problem.

 

That's the thing though. I don't have any realtime security enabled.

One time I tested it, Svchost.exe had a bunch of faults, another time Firefox.
But I didn't experience any issues streaming videos over youtube. I think i'm gonna have to try it again once I get my OC back up to 4.2Ghz.

 

Sometimes its just disk trashing, imo not a big deal.

First five values are more important, especially ISR routine and DPC routine.

 

Ok well I got my OC back up by downgrading my BIOS to the old version and re doing all my settings the way they were. Here's the results I get with the same time period (02:33) now.


Hm...i'm not sure what the second listing means and what I can do about it..

 

hm maybe you need to disable core parking?

This is what it looks by me (HPET on), i had winamp + waterfox open, then ran SF4 benchmark.



btw, hardpage faults happen from latencymon or from explorer when it seeks data, for example i got 66k when i opened my games folder and explorer searched for icons.. before that it was ~ 9000us.

 

Oh well that was before W/O HPET on. (It was using one of the others, @~4Mhz I also didn't run a game. That was just from browsing the web with FF)

I turned HPET on (Via ACPI 2.0 in my BIOS) and the CMD line. And win timer tester starts out @ ~1.000 initially, stabilizes within +-0.002 by 30/40 seconds. By 100 Seconds it is a stable 1.000. (HPET w/ 14.31818mhz)

My DPC latency with DPC Latency checker goes about as high (The maximum) as w/o HPET though a little bit higher (Who knows how accurate it is though. This is just with firefox running and the high points are just spikes here and there. Avg is between 70-90)

Here is Latency Mon after running SFIV benchmark (With firefox in the background)

Spoiler

Street Fighter IV w/o HPET

I think I might have had DPC latency tester in the background by accident. Let me try again

Edit: Nope. I get pretty much the same results without it. (Max DPC latency is ~1200 with Latency mon and highest kernel timer latency jumped to ~1000) Gonna finally try to update to 306.23 and test again.

Using HPET with The Last Remnant benchmark seemed a lot smoother with the drops than with out. Though that could be just the Placebo effect. The bench framerate was ~2 frames more avg. But that's well within margin of error.

 

Well highest kernel latency is much better now, before you had 1000us, but dunno why its still reporting is as its not capable of handling real time audio..


Core parking is off?
http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

Just make a new profile and activate it with this tool.

Also what's your NIC driver, are you using onboard? I saw some newer caused some 600us DPC spikes every 5 sec, at least on my old mobo with pcie realtek NIC. Anything before 7.058 is ok, im at 7.053 atm there.


Edit: just saw its also onboard HD audio that's a bit suspicious (causing hard page faults), maybe try older or newer driver?


About The Last Remnant benchmark, nah i doubt its placebo, its HPET doing its job and syncing it so it doesnt cause to much variability by DPC spikes >> smoother picture.

 

Just gunna throw my experiences in here...

Bios/windows HPET on:

Windows is a bit snappier.

Bios/Windows HPET off:

Raw 3D rendering framerates measurably faster. Like 1-2%, If that.


Boot time seems the same to me, but then again, I've a dual RAID-0 SSD with OCZ Vertex3's so it's 12 seconds boot either way

Personally gunna leave it off as I've already disabled Hyperthreading in the interest of maximising raw 3D performance.

Conclusion:

• If you're the kind of guy that optimises Windows to the nth degree and knows exactly what processes are running at any given time, you should disable HPET.
• If you're the type who has Steam/Origin/itunes and whatever gash loading at startup, and you don't care to tweak it, definitely go for pure HPET.

 

Counter argument:

Changing the HPET value can cause a mild change in the feel of your mouse. It feels a tad slower but more accurate. The average player will barely notice it, but people playing competitive games should tinker with it and decide which feel to the mouse they prefer.

(/USEPMTIMER in the boot.ini had a similar effect in Win XP on the mouse)

 

As an aside, core parking is off by default in Win8 Pro. I didn't do extensive testing but with HPET enabled in Windows, my average FPS in Batman AC dropped from 82 to 74. This was repeatable.

 

The boot configuration data store could not be opened.
The system cannot find the file specified.


^^ That's all I get after entering the command in CMD (with admin privileges)

 

What? It's right there in the Advanced power options. Default is 100% on both.

 

I turn it on i get stuttering on games i turned it back off and everything is smooth so i guess its not good for gaming.

 

Assign a letter to the hidden system partition.