Discovered fixable speed limitation

[TallgeeseIII]

I was playinga round with chankast, trying to make a game run faster, when i rememebered that the priority you can assign to processes in the windows task manager in windows xp goes higher than chankast's "above normal" priority. so i decided to try setting it to high or realtime in the task manager. i tried it and thought it didn't work, then i went and looked back at the process, and chankast has changed it back to above normal. So the very feature used to increase speed is now limiting it! is there anyway i can get around this? and you may want to look at this for your next release.

 

[Heinster]

I was playinga round with chankast, trying to make a game run faster, when i rememebered that the priority you can assign to processes in the windows task manager in windows xp goes higher than chankast's "above normal" priority. so i decided to try setting it to high or realtime in the task manager. i tried it and thought it didn't work, then i went and looked back at the process, and chankast has changed it back to above normal. So the very feature used to increase speed is now limiting it! is there anyway i can get around this? and you may want to look at this for your next release.

You tried realtime :smurf: ????? Are you saying your pc goodbye :bye3: ?

 

[ScorpionZero]

You tried realtime :smurf: ????? Are you saying your pc goodbye :bye3: ?

Hahahaha!! :happy:
I think he means the actual setting in windows. To answer your question TallGeeseII, as far as I know, I've noticed it myself with even the newest version of chankast. Your still in luck since the new chankast utilities has the feature built in. May want to try it out. That's as far as I know.

 

[Heinster]

Hahahaha!! :happy:
I think he means the actual setting in windows. To answer your question TallGeeseII, as far as I know, I've noticed it myself with even the newest version of chankast. Your still in luck since the new chankast utilities has the feature built in. May want to try it out. That's as far as I know.

Well if you assign realtime to a program in taskmanager you are really endangering your pc aperbag: (no kidding)

 

[ScorpionZero]

Well if you assign realtime to a program in taskmanager you are really endangering your pc aperbag: (no kidding)

Very true, there is a warning in Windows when you try to do it and also in chankast utilities. I never want to use the real time, just the high priority.

 

[TallgeeseIII]

hmm, what do you mean the new chankast utilities? and i'm not sure what it would do, but i think my pc could handle it. plus it's got like 5 or 6 fans in there, plus the side opened and a fan blowing in there (don't ask why... it's not cool...)

EDIT: on second thought, i won't try that. didn't know there were warnings about it, haha

 

[ScorpionZero]

hmm, what do you mean the new chankast utilities? and i'm not sure what it would do, but i think my pc could handle it. plus it's got like 5 or 6 fans in there, plus the side opened and a fan blowing in there (don't ask why... it's not cool...)

http://emutalk.net/showthread.php?t=21310&highlight=chankast+utilities+v0.2a

That's the link to it.

EDIT: For your edit.. The only warning is really with Real Time, if you change it to High Priority, it will actually speed it up a couple FPS.

 

[mezkal]

Just for information....Changing the priority of tasks is not recommended overall. In terms of modern Hyper Threading (read : threading aware) CPU's changing even the simplest processor task setting can skew performance wildly. For example, if I change the Task Manager's Update Speed in the view menu from Normal to High my whole machine slows down. Why? Well Hyper Threading is really a technology that uses the extra clock cycles that were previously used for HLT (Halt and cool) instructions as another virtual CPU (well that's a very simplistic explanation) thereby making sure that modern P4's and Ath XP's are utilised to the fullest of thier potential. Ok so now for why is slows down.....Simply put the amount of CPU time given to Task Manager increases as it is now recieving more data, more often and is therefore communicating with the Kernal more often too. This in turn, makes the system change its balance of given clock cycles to various resources and apps to compensate. In effect, I'm throwing a spanner in the works as it runs more smoothly with my Update Speed set to normal. I've benched and seen these changes reflected in lower HDD scores and longer rendertimes.

So back to the question at hand. Will you see more FPS in Chankast by changing the Task Priority? Yes. Will those changes be reflected in the emulators overall performance? Probably not - Remember the XP Kernal and your CPU compensate. Especially not in a Hyper Threaded machine.

Cheers,

Mezkal