Changing process affinity

[HairdewX]

Has anyone been able to get any noticeable positive differences by changing the affinity of background and foreground processes?

[Mhurron]

Don't do it. Once you remove a process from being controlled by the schedular it ignores it from then on. It will then begin to schedule processes to that processor/core even if usually it won't.

[InuTrunks]

Works wonders with non dual core programs. if you ever see any "speed up slow down speed up" problems, it useally means you need to turn off a core for a program.

Infact, it works wonders with FFXI and PlayOnline.

[HairdewX]

It will then begin to schedule processes to that processor/core even if usually it won't.

That's what I am trying to do.

Works wonders with non dual core programs. if you ever see any "speed up slow down speed up" problems, it useally means you need to turn off a core for a program.

Infact, it works wonders with FFXI and PlayOnline.

I'm more interested in in which processes to switch to which core.

Assuming a person has 2 cores, would moving the background processes and the PlayOnline process to core 0 and FFXI process to core 1 be the best set-up?

[InuTrunks]

There's a program out there called "Set Affinity" (I think that's the name of it, I can't remember, I don't have it anymore, but it's nice), which will allow the OS to "remember (via the program) which affinity to set which program when it starts up (so you don't have to change it all the time).

Normally, what I do (manually) is set all my major programs to core 0 only (unless they support dual core, then I leave them be), and all my background processes to core 1 (like AIM, FireFox, ect). You want all your MAJOR system processes set to core 0 (windows won't like it on core 1 for some strange reason).

Edit: You have it backwards, even though it's "core 1" that's core "2", logicly, all computer counts start at 0, not at 1.

[HairdewX]

Normally, what I do (manually) is set all my major programs to core 0 only (unless they support dual core, then I leave them be), and all my background processes to core 1 (like AIM, FireFox, ect). You want all your MAJOR system processes set to core 0 (windows won't like it on core 1 for some strange reason).

Edit: You have it backwards, even though it's "core 1" that's core "2", logicly, all computer counts start at 0, not at 1.

Actually I really did mean setting FFXI on the second core. Because the single-threaded system processes almost always have to be on core 0, wouldn't it be better for the second core to handle the game for the least amount of interrupts?

[InuTrunks]

That would be nice and all, but FFXI dosn't have a seperate process, it's all handled under "PlayOnline"

[HairdewX]

That would be nice and all, but FFXI dosn't have a seperate process, it's all handled under "PlayOnline"

So then what about moving PlayOnline exculsively to core 1? I haven't tried it yet, as I am still at work...

I was thinking that moving the non-ffxi related processes to core 0 and moving POL to core 1 would give me much better performance. Having an almost maxed out core 0, with most of core 1 all for POL.

EDIT* If only I could play at work, my work computer is a quad core and it would be much easier to spread out the affinities