thread optimization

i wonder if there are any tech-heads in here who could explain something to me. my system is old; i have a 3ghz p4, which is capable of hyper-threading, and am using a 7900gs graphics card. i noticed that cb has "thread optimization", so i tried it out. but to my knowledge, it seems to reduce performance. weird...

details. i've tried cosmic break with:
1. hyper-threading on and off in the bios.
2. the in-game option "thread optimization," on and off.
3. "threading optimization" in the nvidia control panel forced on and off.
4. combinations of all three.

it seems the best option (by an almost imperceptible margin) is to keep hyper-threading on in the bios, with optimization turned off in both nvidia cp and cosmic break. surely the best would be to have hyper-threading on in bios, with threading on in both nvidia cp and cosmic break. could someone clever explain why this isn't the case?

from what i understand (not my area of expertise)

usually multi thread help you do multiple things at once. However, with it enabled, you are forcing mutli thread to do a "single" thing instead. (single as in 1 program, though many things can happen within a program)

so your system slow down is because the operating system (windows) need to work on other non-game related operations, but you took the resources needed to perform those operations for the game. So in result, your whole system slow down (because it cant perform needed operation), which end with your game performing worse as well.

If you can disable/close everything and play solely cosmic break, you should see cosmic break with thread optimization improve the game.

Chances are, your other programs such as browser, music player, etc already took a ton of resource on an old system. The last time you reinstall the system was probably LONG ago. just a guess. it is a good idea to go to
task manager -> run -> msconfig -> startup -> disable programs you dont use often from auto start when you turn PC on. If you don't know what some of the name are in the menu, search google to find out what they are.

Having a healthy and well behaving operating system need to come before program (game) performing well.

thanks for your reply ^^. i don't know much/anything about threading either, but in response to what you said, i'm fairly aware of the processes i'm running because i have such an old system.

my ram's static and defragmented. i only keep necessary programs and games on my main hd (which is also defragmented). i've disabled all but a few startup items. disabled all services that aren't directly in use. disabled/taken out all hardware devices i'm not using. changed lots of registry entries. keep chipset/graphics card/bios/sound card updated, some with optimized drivers. and so on and so forth. even with a few things like custom themes, rivatuner, and msmq, my idle ram usage is 159mb with 0% cpu. this is the base from which i start cosmic break.

try being a gamer with a 6 year old pc T_T

yeah it was a good theory, but maybe it doesn't apply to me? i don't know.

it will help if you actually post your system spec, instead of me guessing

CPU:
OS:
RAM:
HDD:
GPU: (probably doesn't matter; gpu ram size would matter a bit more)
screen resolution:

another theory would be intel related. If i remember right, there are some things going on with intel processors' multi-threading. It was so long ago, I only remember vaguely. It was something about one thread interfering with the other one. It was a design choice intel made (not being a real dual core).

something i found quickly on google http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3820647/multithreading-not-faster-than-single-thread-simple-loop-test

Quote :

Totally overlooked that you're using a Pentium 4. As far as I know, there's no multi-core versions of the P4 - to give the illusion of multicore, it has Hyper-Threading: two logical cores share the execution units of one physical core. If your threads depend on the same execution units, your performance will be the same as (or worse than!) single-threaded performance. You'd need, for instance, floating-point calculations in one thread and integer calcs in another to gain performance improvements.

The P4 HT implementation has been criticized a lot, newer implementations (recent core2) should be better.

while one more theory is that the thread optimization itself is a new thread that need to be processed. Hence you got one extra thing to worry about. However, since I don't have the code of CB, there will be no way I can know for sure without developer actually give hint. So, it is kind of pointless to discuss about it.

There will be more theory depending on your system spec. While, I can't test your system, to trial and error rule out each suspect... well, good luck

I tried running my PC without Hyper-threading, but both general performance and game performance were reduced significantly, so I'd prefer to keep that on in the BIOS.

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 630 (Prescott) 3.00GHz.
Memory: 2 x 1Gb DDR2 at 266MHz. Pagefile is 3078Mb, defragmented (I've tried 0Mb just for the hell of it - made no difference).
HDD: Barracuda 7200.7 SATA 160Gb. Secondary hard disk is disconnected, for power reasons.
GPU: ASUS NVidia 7900GS 256Mb.
Screen resolution: Doesn't make a jot of difference from testing, but I'm using the 1024x768 option.

I know the parts don't really make sense, but it's because the RAM was from a friend, and the GPU was heavily discounted. I always assumed that the CPU was the bottleneck, but it doesn't really go beyond 60% during Cosmic Break. The GPU isn't particularly stressed either, since graphics options make scant difference. Total RAM usage is relatively low as well during CB. Aion runs on this system with better results. I do lag massively during battles of say 15v15 though - the only lag-less games are 5v5 and lower.

Thanks again for your efforts. I wouldn't ask if I hadn't Googled already, but I still can't understand why a PC would run faster with Hyper-threading on, and then make a game run slower when the supposedly Hyper-threading-friendly "thread optimization" option is turned on. So confusing xD.

GPU don't do alot for cosmic break, but it should use a tiny bit being open GL engine and all.

You will still need the hyper-threading, just don't expect it to run like how you thought it will run. It really is just a work around from intel for switching between programs more quickly. To describe it without too much detail...

a person (cpu) is doing lot of works. new works keep coming in. a multitask person will finish his part then send message to coworker to finish needed part, while the person will start working on something else while waiting for coworker to return the part that was needed. When coworker send parts back, the person will finish current work then continue with the returned work.

a normal single thread CPU will sit there and wait for coworker to finish instead of work on other tasks. Hence alot of wasted time.

That is about all that "multi-thread" cpu do, compared to a single thread cpu.

One big deal to note, thread optimization from CB (and other games) is for real dual cores. Enabling it will hurt your p4 performance, because it is just faking it. It really will be trying to run two things at once, instead of trying to play catch.

To improve your CB performance, you really need more RAM. Java program tend to be less efficient in memory usage, because it use "garbage collector" to erase unused memory. Programmers don't have the ability to decide when a memory is erased. So the longer you play CB, the more "garbage" gather up before garbage collector can come erase them. Once memory clog up, CPU can not input and output the information needed as fast, because now it need to wait for new memory locations.

Page file can help to ease on the ram a bit, but know this, page file are written on hard drive. Hard drive are like snails compared to ram. So when system information use up most of the RAM, majority of your CB information is probably in page file. Page file would work well for document editing etc, it absolutely will not help making your game smoother because it is too slow. You can only hope that somehow your CB information are all in RAM while the non-game information are in page file instead. What you will notice with page file big or small is when you leave your computer operating for a long time (didnt turn off). The larger the page file is, the longer your computer will run smoothly.

DDR2 is just "2nd" generation of DDR.

What you can do to help smoother run for CB without hardware upgrade is try to limit as much ram usage as possible. (You probably already did a bunch of these...)
Disabling sound. Turn off radio. Icon: upper body (so other part can be ignored), while keeping memory size as L. Reduce number of objects to minimum. Keep all but 3 bots in your main garage (put all other in sub garage). Even this, will just make your CB run smooth a little longer. You will need to restart computer every time you feel the system is slowing down.

My cpu is only 2.9 ghz (2.4 ghz if I didn't overclock), but it is a dual core. While I have 6 GB of DDR2 ram (slower than your ram). My page file is over 6GB of hard drive. I leave the computer on for weeks before I need to restart. 64 bit windows vista. Without being 64 bit (32 bit OS are stuck with 3.3 GB ram), I would need to restart my computer quite often. All I did was delay the inevitable (with more RAM and page file)... the need to restart computer.

ubersum1 wrote:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 630 (Prescott) 3.00GHz.
Memory: 2 x 1Gb DDR2 at 266MHz. Pagefile is 3078Mb, defragmented (I've tried 0Mb just for the hell of it - made no difference).
HDD: Barracuda 7200.7 SATA 160Gb. Secondary hard disk is disconnected, for power reasons.
GPU: ASUS NVidia 7900GS 256Mb.

Bold with Thread Optimization? Turn it off.

me, i5 3,3 RAM 16 GB, LAG as hell
turn off the Pagefile, no LAG
if u have many RAM (>=8GB), better turn off your pagefiles,
it might bootleneck and slowdown your PC

a bit information about VGA. I have onboard sandy bridge IGP (which is not even able to handle most post 2009 game), but it doesn't have to do with lag. testing using some benchmark tools, even when total chaos mode in epoch, using bad melee rushing enemy PS with total i_can't_see_anything_except_explusion_not_even_my_own_bot.jpg , it barely ever reach 20% GPU usage

Nymph~ wrote:

me, i5 3,3 RAM 16 GB, LAG as hell
turn off the Pagefile, no LAG
if u have many RAM (>=8GB), better turn off your pagefiles,
it might bootleneck and slowdown your PC

Oh God! Finally, someone said something correct about PageFile and RAM.

Aria wrote:

Nymph~ wrote:

me, i5 3,3 RAM 16 GB, LAG as hell
turn off the Pagefile, no LAG
if u have many RAM (>=8GB), better turn off your pagefiles,
it might bootleneck and slowdown your PC

Oh God! Finally, someone said something correct about PageFile and RAM.

i know a bit about them, well

Spoiler:

Nymph~ wrote:

Aria wrote:

Nymph~ wrote:

me, i5 3,3 RAM 16 GB, LAG as hell
turn off the Pagefile, no LAG
if u have many RAM (>=8GB), better turn off your pagefiles,
it might bootleneck and slowdown your PC

Oh God! Finally, someone said something correct about PageFile and RAM.

i know a bit about them, well

Spoiler:

Meh, I only wasted 200$+ on my rig (only mobo, everything else are free from my uncle lol)

My Rig atm: Click Here!

Aria wrote:

Nymph~ wrote:

Aria wrote:

Oh God! Finally, someone said something correct about PageFile and RAM.

i know a bit about them, well

Spoiler:

Meh, I only wasted 200$+ on my rig (only mobo, everything else are free from my uncle lol)

My Rig atm: Click Here!

u have a good uncle, me jelly

thanks Aria and fhoeng. fhoeng you just answered what i mainly wanted to know, which is why does thread optimization not help. "One big deal to note, thread optimization from CB (and other games) is for real dual cores."

thanks again