Got a Dual/Quad Core? Here's how to speed up WITP:AE

[jazman]

The problem with a program that is not specifically written for multi-core CPUs (or multi-CPU machines), but that churn a lot of CPU continuously, is that the OS tries to balance the load across the CPUs, and so with WITP-AE MS Windows is switching the exe between the two cores constantly. That is a performance hit, in this case a major one, I remember seeing it with IL-2 way back.

Binding it to a CPU means it will run on that core and only on that core. You cut out the OS switching the exe back and forth between the cores, so there goes the overhead, overboard.

If you right-click on the windows taskbar and select "Task Manager" and look at the "Performance" tab (and I think on XP you select a check box to show CPUs independently), you can see the difference. Before: the CPU load is balanced across the two cores (or four, as applicable). After: one CPU is pegged. This is good (and assumes nothing else is eating CPU).

Also, it ought to work for AMD CPUs, since setting the affinity is an OS kernel-level activity, not CPU chip related. Thus, the executable is probably inserting some Windows-specific junk to make this work. After all, you can manually do this, as shown earlier, by right-clicking the process and setting it. It's all OS, not CPU.

I think.

[jazman]

It's possible that Windows has Intel-specific codepaths for making this work, so AMDers may be out of luck. Worth a try. I would, except my gaming box is off, trying to keep the heat down (in Seattle, it is all-time record heat today). If no one else posts about AMD later tonight, I'll give it a whirl.

[OldCoot]

ORIGINAL: aztez

Damn teeth still hurts after dentist.

Here is an link to Microsoft Vista forums. You can actually setup Set Affinity on your shortcut icon.

http://www.vistax64.com/gaming/197915-s ... -easy.html

Just copy and paste on to your shortcut icon and you are set to go.

I tried with my dual core AMD Turion processor (Vista Home Premius 32) and seems to have made the run much smoother.

I tried that, but it doesn't go. Here's what I have as the shortcut properties target. Am I missing something?

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "War in the Pacific Admiral Edition" /high/affinity 1"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe"

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: OldCoot
I tried that, but it doesn't go. Here's what I have as the shortcut properties target. Am I missing something?

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "War in the Pacific Admiral Edition" /high/affinity 1"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe"

Add some spaces between high and affinity and 1 and "C:\, should be:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "War in the Pacific Admiral Edition" /high /affinity 1 "C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe"

[OldCoot]

Thanks Eric - worked like a charm!

[jrcar]

Woeked a treat on my Laptop, Dell M6300!

Cheers

Rob

[fcam1387]

Nah, makes no difference for me. But for some reason when I copy and paste Erik's target, the "high / affinity" part disappears.

Still reckon its a graphics problem.

Does anyone here use an NVIDIA 9600M GT card?

[fcam1387]

Is there a fast way to temporarily disable your graphics card in Vista and revert to the default factory installed vga chip? It's pretty last ditch but it worked for me when I uninstalled my drivers last time.

[Toddr22_slith]

Should this make the turns run faster?

[Erik Rutins]

The other fix that seems to work on some systems is to run DxDiag and turn off DirectDraw acceleration.

[fcam1387]

Erik,

Yeah, but my only problem is that for some bizarre reason I cannot turn of my video acceleration in display settings or dxdiag because it says: "your current display driver does not allow changes to be made to hardware acceleration settings". I think a few other users have this issue as well.

Sorry to consume your time with this, but the game really isn't playable for me. It's a damn shame too!

[jazman]

Ach, I get the same error:

"IMAGECFG: Unable to update configuration information in image."

AMD Dual-core CPU. I have AMD's Dual-Core Optimizer running, too.

Looks like it's Intel-only. I'll try the exact same thing on my laptop at work tomorrow, it's Intel dual-core.

(Running on Windows XP x64)

When I start WitP-AE, and manually set the affinity in Task Manager (once WitP-AE is running), I can see the expected effect. In Windowed mode, screen refresh is downright snappy!

[jazman]

Sorry for the number of posts, I'm trying to work through this completely.

For AMD users with Windows XP, it's worth manually setting the affinity in the Task Manager, once it's running. Here's a pic of the CPU usage once I've set affinity. CPU 0 is doing little, and CPU 1 is doing AE work. It's very quick and snappy, it's worth the 15-30 seconds it takes to set it.

I Googled setting processor affinity with AMD, and didn't come up with much where I could pass in command-line options (like -w -altFont).

Found later:

Users can use the cmd.exe hack mentioned earlier. That works on XP, too (at least on mine, which is 64-bit XP Pro). If you want it in windowed mode, add the -w AFTER the "witp.exe" chunk, outside the double quotes. Thusly:

cmd /C START "WITP AE" /high /affinity 2 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -w -altFont

I may just do the latter. Either way, the performance gain in-game is worth it.

[Chad Harrison]

I will admit up front: I am not a computer hardware guy. Some of this stuff is over my head. So let me be specific as to what I have:

My new Alienware just showed up and it has a Intel Core i7-920, which is a quad core on Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

Questions:
1. Has anyone else ran AE on a similar, if not the same, rig?
2. Is it worth going through the trouble to get it to use multi-cores?
3. Can doing this screw up anything else? I know that's a loaded question, but again, I don't mess with my computer much.
4. Are there any problems with running AE on Vista?

Thanks in advance!

Chad

[jazman]

Here's a batch script I put together to make this work easily. Modify to suit your flavor. You'll probably want to modify the WITP_HOME path.

HOME_DRIVE is the install drive; I am using the C: drive
WITP_HOME uses the HOME_DRIVE, I'm not using the default, so buyer beware!
WITP_EXE here is the default exe name
WITP_OPTIONS for windowed and altFont are given; I like windowed mode, and the altFont
USE_CPU is to use the second core here; if you set this to 1 it'll use the first core
CPU_PRIORITY is to make it high priority. WitP AE will pretty much take over the CPU core.

Save the text that follows this line to a file with a .bat extension (say, on your desktop), then you can double-click it to run; I've also included this as a text file attachment:

set HOME_DRIVE=C:
set WITP_HOME="%HOME_DRIVE%\Program Files (x86)\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition"
set WITP_EXE="War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe"
set WITP_OPTIONS=-w -altFont
set USE_CPU=2
set CPU_PRIORITY=/high

%HOME_DRIVE%
cd %WITP_HOME%
cmd.exe /C START "WITP AE" %CPU_PRIORITY% /affinity %USE_CPU% %WITP_EXE% %WITP_OPTIONS%

[jazman]

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

I will admit up front: I am not a computer hardware guy. Some of this stuff is over my head. So let me be specific as to what I have:

My new Alienware just showed up and it has a Intel Core i7-920, which is a quad core on Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

Questions:
1. Has anyone else ran AE on a similar, if not the same, rig?
2. Is it worth going through the trouble to get it to use multi-cores?

Chad

I have a dual-core AMD system, it's WinXP x64.

Once you've seen it go fast, you can never go back. I'll even hold your hand to help you get it working. But you can try out the two approaches already described here: the imagecfg hack (which looks easier), or the batch script I just put up (which may be just as easy, now that I've done it for you). Either one should work for you. My script you may need to modify, as I've stated.

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: fcam1387

Erik,

Yeah, but my only problem is that for some bizarre reason I cannot turn of my video acceleration in display settings or dxdiag because it says: "your current display driver does not allow changes to be made to hardware acceleration settings". I think a few other users have this issue as well.

Sorry to consume your time with this, but the game really isn't playable for me. It's a damn shame too!

This may be due to a permissions issue. If you don't have administrator privileges, I don't think you can change the settings.

Bill

[fcam1387]

Nah, unfortunately, that's not the case because I'm running it as an administrator. I think some graphics cards prevent changing these settings (especially on Vista).

[Erik Rutins]

Some additional possible suggestions here:

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p ... ostcount=1

[myros]

For some reason using the CMD options or even the bat file suggested doesnt work for me. The command box flashes up then vanishes with no game starting. This is on XP home edition (regular 32 bit).
 
So I went ahead and downloaded that little tool and hacked the original game .exe file. What a difference it makes ... startup took about 2 seconds, compared to about 15 normaly. I guess AE doesnt like to use multiple cores to much.
 
Nice job on finding this tweek.