A Memory Usage Test

[snoopy55]

universum - I tried 0 as to VM, but the system insisted on at least 2Mb. I don't see the 'swap file' entry. a pic of my VM settings is in the RTF below.
I've gotten the point that Dual-Core and SMR don't go together, and I wouldn't get a new system just for any game. It comes to getting ready to upgrade, and while I don't need certain things right now, looking ahead is wise. I may never use dual PCI-X16s, but I'd rather get the MoBo with them now and not use both than regret it later.

On Dual-Cores, isn't there software that allows you to set 1 core running the system while the other runs say SMR?

atani - Linux uses Dual-Cores efficeintly, right? Can it seperate operations to specific Cores?

I think Basin & Range Demo by Big Papa and Choobacca ties in several of the things I mention above is the right direction in map making tying in several advanced features like new double headed trains and goods and doing different things with these goods.

That is what brought about Side to Side. I want containers loaded at 1 point, shippied across the isthmus, unloaded, and distributed. I just can't get more than 1 container type at a time. You need 1 container type for each Good. Anyone with ant solutions ?[/quote]

[atani]

On Dual-Cores, isn't there software that allows you to set 1 core running the system while the other runs say SMR?

In Process Manager right click on the process you are interested in and set the Processor Affinity. By default all procs will use both cores.

atani - Linux uses Dual-Cores efficeintly, right? Can it seperate operations to specific Cores?

Generally yes... It treats each core as a seperate physical CPU.

Mike

[snoopy55]

So what you are saying is that I can leave 1 core doing the housekeeping and set the other totally running SMR. An AM2 5600+ would kick tail

Can Linux run SMR at this time? I know it has the ability to act like Windows, but I had heard it wasn't efficient at it. I have SuSE 8.1(purchased) along with Mandrake 9.1(downloaded) and RED HAT 6(purchased). I've wanted to get into it as a second OS, but trying to work 2 OSs is a head trauma for me.

[atani]

So what you are saying is that I can leave 1 core doing the housekeeping and set the other totally running SMR. An AM2 5600+ would kick tail

Maybe

Can Linux run SMR at this time? I know it has the ability to act like Windows, but I had heard it wasn't efficient at it. I have SuSE 8.1(purchased) along with Mandrake 9.1(downloaded) and RED HAT 6(purchased). I've wanted to get into it as a second OS, but trying to work 2 OSs is a head trauma for me.

I would suggest go with Mandrake if you have not used linux much since it is fairly user friendly. SuSE is a good alternative to MDK. RH is something I typically try to avoid.

As for running SMR under linux, havent tried to do that yet. I will give it a shot once I reinstall WINE again.

Mike

[K-class]

A neat tool I found to tell me what was going on was Process Explorer for Windows v10.21

Its free and is a souped up task manager

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysint ... lorer.mspx

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.

It helped tell me why and what some services where doing and how much memory certain parts where doing. Also shut down services and process hogging cpu and memory

It also details railroad exe in detail under highlight RailRoad.exe and lok under strings and threads. Shows you what exe is doing.

Also check the performance tab and performance Graph

[snoopy55]

RH was a garage sale purchase($3). As to the other 2, I downloaded both, 1 I couldn't get to work on networking, and the other wouldn't do my printer. I went with SuSE as I needed network capability. That was all several systems ans seizures ago.

[universum]

Hi snoopy,

I have attached the screenshot from my system; I have Windows XP Professional but I believe it should be either the same or similar.

Option you want is "No paging file", not trying to set paging file size to 0. As you can see 2M is minimum size when you do want to use it, but you don't.

And now to put some thins right: Windows is using all the processors it has at its disposal and assigns threads to them to keep all in use as much as possible. This is the same as Linux or any other operating system.

When I said the game was not taking advantage of both processors, it means that game is "single-threaded", it runs only one thread and there is nothing operating system can do about it. If it was written for system with multiple processors, it would be able to do some processing in paralel and do up to twice as much work because when you are running the game, system (what you call housekeeping) is pretty much doing nothing and only using about 3-5% of the second processor so some 45% of the system's computing power is there sitting idle while you are waiting long seconds for game to resolve newly laid tracks, bummer.

Ability to Set Affinity, i.e. assign specific process to specific processor is actually only intended in special cases where the software has multiple threads but was optimized for single processor system and does not run well when threads are really executed simultaneously. You can tell system to only run threads from single process (think application) on one processor which, from the point of the process, will look as if it was running on single processor system.

There are already games which can take advantage of multiprocessor system and in the future, their number will only increase. You can see what games will benefit now, check following link:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/games/Du ... 94969.html

K-class - thanks for the link, it will come handy (for my work )

[snoopy55]

So since the heaviest game I get into is UT2K4, an AM2 single core would do me, with the MoBo capible of an AM2 Dual Core upgrade later.....


And I'd set 'No Paging File' for all 14 of my drives.

Thanks for the info.....

[K-class]

Thanks universum for the detailed info, I have disabled the "paging file" to see what happens and currently a little slow down running 28 fps see chart below.

To back up what you are saying this link gives more detail on how to make the changes and some other XP tweaks.

see tweak Number 5 shows some tests having a page file and no page file.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm

Thanks Snoopy55 for Side to Side map for testing and yes your map is what I was meaning

I want containers loaded at 1 point, shipped across the isthmus, unloaded, and distributed.

makes the game more interesting and challenging to deliver one set of goods and take back another set of goods.

Plus you map looks great with the Santa Fee and double headed GP7. I love the sound for the Santa Fee train.

So I'm sticking with my current PC I have (not rich) and as ram is cheap may add another gig but I wont be buying a dual core for this single thread game.

The solution is Fraxis on there next patch is to add support for Hyper-Threading technology of Intel(r) processors and dual core processors.

A quote on the Quake 4 patch.

id Software and Raven have worked with Intel to dramatically improve QUAKE 4 performance on systems with HT Technology, multiple processors, or dual core processors. Players who have a system with one of these configurations will notice performance gains in QUAKE 4 of anywhere from 25% - 87% depending on processor type.