IRQ CPU Affinity Setting

[PeterSt]

Ah, no, wait ...

You have two cores, right ? Well, I before had too. So, my actual message in the before post was : "Hey ! the driver goes to Core#3 !" (#2 in technical terms). An you know, I don't do anything for that (I wish I could at this moment).
Similarly, all other OS stuff seems to go to Core#4.

So ... It seems that -including the stuff I *do* apply- the OS thinks that #3 and #4 are completely free, and next thinks that driver stuff better goes on its own core while it's available anyway. All in other words :

I don't see what can - or should be improved on this (but keep in mind, Scheme-3), and the only thing is it needs 4 cores. Or more (but I can test that by switching on HyperThreading).

But also : I don't see the actual interrupt requests, but I assume (and this is the other way around as how I presented it in the last post) that the process takes place on the core which receives the request.
I guess this can be checked too, but then I must apply some IRQ appointment. Hey, wasn't I about to implement that some two hours back ? hehe

Peter

[PeterSt]

Hmm ... Is this more complicated than it looks, or doesn't it work, or what ?

I possibly did the other way around of what you all did, and I only appointed my Audio Device. To the first Core in this case. With IntFiltr.
The Audio Device couldn't be restarted, so I rebooted.
After that the third Core (where I found the driver to run in), was at near 100%, while no process could be dedicated to that (hence was not te be found). Thus, "something" was doing it, and I bet it was the driver, because there wasn't sound either.
After this I appointed the driver to the 2nd Core, (rebooted) but no difference.
Then I removed the filter, and luckily after a reboot all was right again.

Next I tried IntPolicy;
Specified irqPolicySpecifiedProcessors, ticked the first "CPU", and rebooted.
All ok this time, but all showed the same as before during playback (driver runs its task in the 3rd Core).
So, maybe the interrupts go to the first Core now, but what I'm interested in is where the driver takes its CPU cycles; As said earlier, that's on the 3rd Core and in consistency with the other stuff exactly what I would want. But for a two-Core machine, I'm sure (by now) that the driver runs in the 2nd Core, which is the same where the playback is going on. And this is *not* what I'd want. On the other hand, if that would be moved to the first Core (if possible at all), the loading may interfere with SQ (because it interferes with the driver).

2c for now.
Peter

[manisandher]

Silly question - did you read the 'READ ME' file? There are a couple of things you need to do manually to get IntFiltr working properly.

Mani.

[PeterSt]

You better ask whether I read your earlier post about that. Yes I did.
If not I would have tripled over that one.

[Marcin_gps]

I managed to play with 4 cores on my thin Vista build, but it sounds very bad compared to dual core cfg. I don't know whether it is driver related and my card likes two cores better than four or is it because of some optimisations, but I don't recall anything like that (besides win32separation...)

But I discovered sth interesting regarding SFS - completely reverse situation - smaller values like mani's 50MB works much better than very large like my favourite 450MB. Anyway I'm back to 2 cores again and it souns so freaking awesome.

I'll check this on my new machine that I'm building next month. This time it will be intel, so maybe that will shed some light on the sfs and multicores case.

have a nice night
Marcin

[Nick]

Hi Marcin,

Interesting results, glad the 2 core build is running so well though.

What Intel based machine do you have in mind ?

Nick.

[Josef]

Ok, I braved to try this affinity trick but it does not work
The tool displays a weird error message - see screenshot. I rebooted, looked in registry and see that values are indeed there (screen2) - But if I start tool again I get same error: WTF?

[PeterSt]

With a bit of mangling, I think I copied this, although I didn't awaiten the real error (hence made my mangling undone before more worse things happen).

I too now have a same situation like you, with N/A for the current assignment, while clicking Advanced comes up with 4 (specifiedprocessors).
I did this by asking for this 4 with another device, and next delete the mask for this other device. Now somehow this 4 acts as a default, and I think it's really in the Registry for this next device now. But, current assignment shows N/A. Remedy ? I think an explicit Delete Mask. And then start over for the device in question.

But it all looks a bit tricky. Similarly, IntFiltr always shows N/A right from the start, while IntPolicy clearly shows something is there. So, before you know it, with IntFiltr you removed something which really was there (an explicit "all processors"), without notice.

Be careful.
Peter

[Marcin_gps]

Hi Marcin,

Interesting results, glad the 2 core build is running so well though.

What Intel based machine do you have in mind ?

Nick.

[PeterSt]

But I discovered sth interesting regarding SFS - completely reverse situation - smaller values like mani's 50MB works much better than very large like my favourite 450MB. Anyway I'm back to 2 cores again and it souns so freaking awesome.

Marcin, thanks.

Mani, are you still running on 2 cores ? (you did before, I know).
Just asking, in an(other) attempt to get my finger behind this.

Peter

[manisandher]

Peter, I'm on 4 cores, with no HT.

I'm interested in what you think might be going on...

Mani.

[PeterSt]

You tell me ! haha

The only hope I have is that 0.9z-3 solves it. Well, the variation in SQ. Next is : did I choose the right setup.
But I think that from 0.9z-3 better conclusions can be drawn. We'll see.
If I ever upload it of course.

Peter

[Nick]

Guys,

Just thinking out loud here, I read the ms doc again and it mentions that from vista sp1 onwards there is explicit support for setting interrupt affinity. I am on vista sp0 without this support and using intfilter has not results in errors or problems.

Mani your install was also straight forward what 2008 sp level are you running ? It would be good to understand what is causing the inconsistent installation behavior.

I have had a couple of days off but am planning to take a look as well at processes too. I looks like we are all getting some unexplained logic on where process end up.

Peter out of interest did you get the sound improvements that Mani and I experienced ?
Nick.

[PeterSt]

Nick - Vista SP1 here. Sound improvements ? I am not sure (honestly). All I know is that I'm completely satisfied, and applied more "tweaks" at the same time than I usually like (for good judgement). I also recognize that albums sounding great before but didn't lately, do that again now. But it's a bit apples and oranges because I must be comparing Engine#3 from before to Engine#4 from today - and even do that with Special Mode (which goes the direction of Engine#3 but still is very different).

Notice though I couldn't proceed on IRQ Affinity, but also "see" it's not necessary for a 4 core system, as explained.
What I do know more and more is that W7 is total sh*t; In there actually nothing wants to work, and it's all tradeoffs. Not so here (Vista). It really feels like good old days, never mind it wasn't all that long ago. Man, you don't want to know how important it is (for me) to improve on things, rather than trying to get rid of annoyances. W7 just comprised of the latter. Not good, I know now. I hope we all do. a

Stay away from power-outs now Nick.
Best,
Peter

[manisandher]

Mani your install was also straight forward what 2008 sp level are you running ?

Hi Nick, I'm running W2008 SP1 (Build 6001).

As for improvements in SQ - well, I'm pretty certain that the IRQ tweaks did help towards an even 'cleaner' sound (even if Peter doesn't think they can/should make any difference with 4 cores). Certainly, the 'bloating' or excessive bass that many people (me included) have noticed on switching to Vista/W2008 has been eliminated. KS-Adaptive sounds great - I don't have to switch to KS-Special or Engine#3 to 'fix' anything, because there is nothing to fix.

As I've mentioned before, I'm running a trial version of W2008 and will be installing a licensed copy at some point. I'll try to document the affect (if any) of each tweak after it's been applied and figure out which ones really make a difference.

Mani.