Performance degradation with FS2004+FSUIPC on Intel HT CPU

[One Tin Soldier]

Hi Guys,

I just wanted to say that although I've seen these posts around about issues with H/T and FS2004, I didn't expect to see any difference on my system by either, disabling H/T or setting the processor affinity. I had noticed that whenever I pulled up TaskInfo2003(equivalent of the Task Manager) that only one of the logical processors was loaded by FS2004. But when I saw the post on avsim about a performance increase in FS2004 for H/T enabled machines, I decided to go ahead and try it, even though I expected no change in performance. Sure enough, there was no change after setting a processor affinity. As far as disabling H/T in the BIOS, I didn't see in change in performance for FS2004 there either. But, I did have a problem when I first started using the RealityXP Garmin 530XP, which starts up a Garmin Trainer 500 helper application(it talk to the Garmin 530XP). This program is a 16-bit application. When I would load up a plane with this Garmin 530XP installed my FS2002/FS2004(take your pick, the 530XP has been made for both versions now) would slow to a crawl. At least when viewing complex scenery, such as a city, or mountains. It took my a while to figure out what the fix was, but it was to turn off H/T in the BIOS. I believe this has to do with the fact that the Garmin 500 Series Trainer uses the Windows XP 16-bit subsystem(emulation layer?). As soon as I turned off H/T in the BIOS I was back to normal in MSFS and could use the Garmin 530XP from RealityXP. Yeah! I was the original person to find the fix for this problem and now Jean Luc is telling folks in the RealityXP forum, that have H/T systems, that this is how to fix the problem. :) Again, this is the only time I have had an issue with H/T on my system.

Cheers,

Jim Richards

One Tin Soldier

System Specs:

3.06 Ghz Intel P4 on Asus P4T533-C(533 MHz FSB), 1 GB PC1066 Samsung RDRAM, NEC MultiSync FE2111SB 22" Monitor, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Videocard w/Omega Drivers v2.4.74a, DirectX 9.0b, Creative Audigy2 Soundcard, 120 GB w/8 MB Cache Western Digital HD, 36 GB Seagate 15,000 RPM SCSI HD, WinXP Pro SP1

[airforce2]

I'm not sure why on some systems FS2004 seems to already have an affinity to run on a single vCPU. On mine, with FS2004 running I saw both vCPUs running at 100% before setting processor affinity.

I feel certain that this is why some folks see a marked improvement, and others nothing.

Just out of curiosity, was your system built with the HT CPU from the beginning, or was the CPU upgraded after the OS was first installed?

Cheers

[One Tin Soldier]

Hi Bob,

Well, it's good that some are getting a big boost out of setting the processor affinity. :) My system was built with H/T CPU from the beginning.

Cheers,

Jim

[SeanMcLeod]

Maybe FS2004 decides at installation time based on whether it detects a HT enabled CPU whether to adjust it's process affinity from the norm of running on all CPUs and not each time it starts.

Do they people who see big gains by manually adjusting the processor affinity for FS2004 remember whether they had HT enabled when they installed FS2004?