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Hyper-Threading and Lag
Posted: 01 April 2013 08:56 PM   [ Ignore ]  
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At this moment I am playing the game with hyper-threading disabled on my CPU.  I have a Core i5 650 (dual core processor).

Right away, I can see this game uses a lot of processing power.  Both CPUs were maxed out while loading the game.  Once I got into game, I immediately began sending SS out on adventures attempting to gobble up RAM and produce lag.  I failed. 

The game is now using 400 MB - 600 MB LESS memory than with hyper-threading turned on.

Lag is no more than a couple seconds, and then the game bounces right back.  That’s mainly for loading screens.  Button clicks are nearly instantaneous with results showing on screen in less than a second.  After sending nearly 10 SS on adventures, the game is still running smoothly and cleanly.  No waiting for the screen to catch up.  Those little gears never pause or stop turning.  The game keeps chugging onward.

Also, CPU usage drops, occasionally rising to 60% overall, but runs mostly in the 30% - 40% range.

I have noticed some delays on some screens, but that has no resource correlation, nor does it have an overall effect on the game so far.

I’ll be playing like this for the next couple hours.  If I do notice a lag problem creep up, I will post here again.  The whole point of tonight’s experiment is to see if hyper-threading and the game do not play nicely together.  Early indications seem to be, “no, they do not.”

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Posted: 01 April 2013 08:58 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]  
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Boss battle screen causes overall CPU usage to jump to 60% again, but still flowing smoothly.

The main level up screen (spending talent point) causes CPU usage to jump to 80%.  RAM still holding steady, and game flow still smooth.

Collecting an adventure reward sent the CPUs back to 70%, but still no degradation in gameplay.

Some slow down when training a SS.  The window for spending level up points was a little slow to load, but still came up within 2 seconds.

Boss battle attacks immediately followed by collecting adventure reward in the Keep:  another jump up to 70% CPU usage.  Memory usage still “flatlined” at 2187 MB, still lower by 400 MB - 600 MB.  Seems indicative that hyper-threading was processing two “versions” of the game at same time.

Some slow down, all graphical in nature.  Game is still crisply responsive though.  Slow down seems mainly to affect the loading of different screens.  Mind you, my computer has no dedicated processor for graphics (Intel HD integrated graphics).  So a video board would likely fix this problem.

Sending out second batch of adventures.  Noticing a slow down on the adventure screens. CPU usage around 50%, but RAM usage has climbed to 2600 MB for the first time.

Still working on that second batch, lag increasing.  CPUs averaging about 70% now.  RAM up to 2700 MB.

Game just crashed.  Looks like Flash Player at fault.  Sure enough….Adobe Flash Player is no longer an active process.  Flash Player crashed, and game went blank.

Back in game, but game is acting weird.  I cannot view result for a completed adventure.  It kicks out before I can.  Yet, it still shows the “view results” button when I try again.

Game all messed up, but straightening itself out.  Cached or backed up content is old.  Current content bounces back after a refresh.  Figures….I’m on Valyria….the server others have had problems on with losing stuff.  The good news:  the lag is gone again.

Third batch of adventures.  Again memory usage jumps to 2600 MB.  Each instance of sending a SS on an adventure seems to use about 80 MB.  This only happens after clicking the “Adventure” button, and peaks when the combat screen (where you choose your tactic) comes up.  The system appears to have troubled freeing up that memory once the SS has been sent on his way.  Only about 100 MB appears to free up.  The rest slowly trickles down at a rate of 2 MB per second with some fluctuations with a 3 MB - 4 MB rise every so often.

While waiting on production, adventure, and quest timers, I totaled up all the active threads Chrome had in place.  Combined, they are using 1230 MB out of the 2346 MB still in use.  For a browser, that’s fairly high.  I’m used to it being half that.  So when the game is running normal before setting up adventures, the browser is still using 800 MB - 900 MB.

Memory stopped freeing up around 2340 MB.  Despite early indicators, the game still seems unwilling to free up the last 300 MB, even when the game is idle on the main screen.

On the other hand, CPU usage has not maxed out since game was loaded.  It has not gone higher than 70% over the last 2 1/2 hours.

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Posted: 01 April 2013 09:17 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]  
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Thanks for the tip, now if I knew how to disable my HT

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Posted: 01 April 2013 09:23 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]  
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I’ll mention how to do it once I finish logging the session.  Still too early to be sure it is a problem.  I need a couple more hours to really test it properly.

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Posted: 01 April 2013 09:50 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]  
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To be honest folks, that’s the first time I have ever had Flash Player crash during the game.  I’ve had it crash just after leaving game, but never actually during the game.

So, given the lag plus Flash Player crashing plus reloading the game without any lag…..we may have Flash Player to thank for some of our ills.

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Posted: 01 April 2013 11:05 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]  
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If anyone wants to test the effect of hyper-threading on a Intel Core computer, you need to enter the BIOS before your OS begins booting.  There’s usually instructions on the screen, but you have to be quick.  Usually you have to press something like ESC, F1, or F10.  It will tell you exactly.

Once you are in the BIOS, you need to look for either “Hyper-threading” or “SMT”.  Once you find it, you will have the option to enable it or disable it.

Before you exit BIOS, be sure to save the changes.  Once you do, the computer will shut down temporarily then reboot.

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Posted: 02 April 2013 12:23 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 6 ]  
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Okay, the results of my test:  inconclusive.

While turning off hyper-threading appears to reduce lag, it doesn’t eliminate it entirely.  Even so, the lag never got as bad as I’ve seen previously.  I would conclude the hyper-threading does augment lag while enabled.

Memory usage still goes up to the same levels though, and hangs there.  It might take a little longer, but hyper-threading does not appear to be a reason for increased RAM usage.

The game requires hefty resources, both in RAM and processing power. 

If it’s happening here, it’s likely happening on the other end too.  The forums have been slow during my test, so I take that as an indication that fewer players may also be logged into the servers.  Hence, I may never have experienced the same amount of lag as I might have if more users were logged on.

So, if hyper-threading does indeed have an impact, it is only one small piece of the puzzle, probably only a relatively minor piece at that.

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Posted: 02 April 2013 02:15 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 7 ]  
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Good to continue researching it, but I’ve experienced similar lag tome running the game on my newish computer and on my galaxy s3. Sometimes it runs better on my wifi, other times better on 4g so it seems to me it has more to do with Internet speed & how many people are on than anything. My phone can start to run hot if I play too long so it definitely takes its toll on the processor either way.

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Posted: 02 April 2013 02:43 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 8 ]  
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I know my connection isn’t a problem.  My service has only been interrupted once over the past year, and regular tests show my speeds to be around 24 Mbps consistently….even during a blizzard and a hurricane this past year.  Even so, I still get lag, but it’s not from the net.  I’ve checked a number of times concerning that.

I’ve also been able to consistently produce lag while doing Boss Quests (solo) and while sending SS on adventures.  And I’ve recorded several times how they affect resource usage.  I’m fairly certain the lag is coming from a programming issue.

Just out of curiosity, how are you able to run it on your Galaxy S3?  As far as I know, they don’t have support for that yet.  In fact, Disruptor Beam has a job posting for an engineer in that field right now.

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Posted: 02 April 2013 03:39 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 9 ]  
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That’s interesting findings, Marchon. I hope the Gold Cloaks sticky all of your useful lag-related threads in a visible place.

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Posted: 02 April 2013 03:52 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 10 ]  
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Off-topic…but I just sent Shan a bunch of info to help rid ourselves of the friendly neighborhood spammer-man, not limited to but including a source IP address and a list of associated IPs and email addresses.  The rest I won’t mention and keep secret.  wink

I’m such a stinkah.

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Posted: 02 April 2013 07:47 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 11 ]  
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Ok…

sorry can’t give you numbers regarding hyperthreading.  Why?  well last night I was tired, feeling a little rough and obviously being dim.  AMD cpu’s don’t have hyperthreading do they lol…*doh*

Anyway:

Without the game running I can confirm:

RAM usage of around 28%
Core usage of 8-9% across the board.

When the game is running (and bear in mind I have 3 browsers open, 2 browsers with 10+ tabs open) and 3 instances of the game running they go to:

RAM - 53%
Core 1: 22-27
Core 2: 24-39
Core 3: 16-36
Core 4: 24-37

Firefox also hovers anywhere between 200 and 350mb under (my) normal use…it does slowly rise over the course of a few hours to 700+ where I usually restart it.

If it helps you in any way, this is ona 50mb cable line, Win 7 Extreme 64bit (stripped of non essential Microsoft crap), AMD Phenom II x4 965 CPU, 8gb of HPZ high performance DDR2 Ram, 2xHD6950 gpu’s.

Browsers used (mostly) are Chrome and Firefox (with Opera and Safari sporadically) and I sweep weekly for BHO’s and Malware.  I also have Windows auto-updates disabled (see my pm regarding my own data collation, I’m sure this is becoming key to some users issues).

Maybe some of all this is why I very rarely suffer lag to the point of it becoming an issue to me?

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Posted: 02 April 2013 08:09 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 12 ]  
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Good point about Windows auto-update.  I hadn’t thought about that.  Fortunately, I got all the updates out of the way when I disabled the hyper-threading (installed updates upon reboot).  Of course, that was the first Windows update in about a month or so.  For awhile, it seemed like new updates were a weekly occurrence.

Your overall CPU usage is slightly higher than mine, but only by a couple percent.  I had just 1 browser open with 2 tabs (game and forums).  Your RAM usage is also higher by about 1.2 GB.

I have a fair amount of background processes working, but they barely utilize the CPU, and I can calculate how much RAM they use.  The game itself, depending on player activity, can use anywhere from 400 MB - 1 GB.

Damn, your computer is making me miss my laptop.  I had to sell it a while back.  It was on par with your computer.  I spent a lot on money on it, and got one with the fingerprint scanner so young nieces and nephews couldn’t get into it and cause problems.  I hated having to sell it.  I used it a lot….but I also usually have spare computers kicking around, including laptops.

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Posted: 02 April 2013 10:55 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 13 ]  
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I’m just playing through chrome on my s3, not an app or anything. I did root my phone & I am running a custom rom so that might be part of it. Of course, I would love a full on app but this works for now, at least for keeping up when I’m away from a computer.

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