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[Derakon]

3DSMax is a professional modeling program, hence the pricetag. If you were ever to be interested in 3D modeling, I recommend checking out Blender first, since it's free, but still quite capable.

Running a modeling program and DF at the same time sounds like a good way to eat up all your resources.

[salttotart]

Lesson learned:
Don't run anything with DF unless you have an entire server to lend to it.  Sorry internets, but it looks like we have to put you down...

[PheonixIV]

Running a modeling program and DF at the same time sounds like a good way to eat up all your resources.

Oh yes, DF is remarkably good at using all 4 of my hyperthreaded cores; when i have a 200 man fortress on a 6 x 6 block with hundreds of animals it's maxing out 4 - 5 of my 'cores' (each one shows up as 2 thanks to hyperthreading) and using up 20 - 40% of the remaining ones.

When Max starts up it maxes out 7 cores for a few seconds as it loads everything, and then uses between 1 and 7 cores while doing stuff.


So two programs that are very efficient at using CPU running at the same time? Fun.

[Raz]

I smell bullshit.

[kotekzot]

I smell bullshit.

you are not alone.

[Carcer]

What about, exactly?

The elves actually bieng worth a damn or that he claims DF is running on multiple cores when it can only run on one?

[PheonixIV]

What about, exactly?

The elves actually bieng worth a damn or that he claims DF is running on multiple cores when it can only run on one?

What really? I did think it was strange at first.

Ok, that's odd... What's eating my CPU while it's running then.


Diagnostic definitely reckons dwarffort.exe is being assigned cores 1, 2 and 3 atm.

[PheonixIV]

My system is currently assigning 3 cores to dwarffort.exe.

According to the little diagnostics thingy dwarffort.exe is using ~10% of those three cores (it's a small fort.)

If i open up a bigger one, dwarffort.exe gets up to around 5 - 6 cores assigned to it, which it apparantly uses to about 70 - 80% each.

If i exit dwarf fortress, the load on the cores immediately drops away.


I have been informed that this is imposible.




So, to sum up my question; Wut.

No seriously, Wut? What the hell is going on here? Seriously, this is freaking me out now.

Changed first post.

If somone can work this one out for me i will be most appreciative. I'm actually kind of worried now, and really really confused.

[kotekzot]

well, i don't a lot about how virtual cores work, but i'm pretty sure a single physical core can process a single thread. so that's 3 cores working. with a large fort, a single core should be busy all the time if the process is only allowed to run on it and not the others. if your fps is below the cap and more than one core is used, but not to 100% each, then the process is being switched from one core to another. try limiting it to a single physical core and two physical cores (go to task manager and set its affinity to cores 6 and 7, then 4 through 7) and see how it changes your fps with a large fort. it can actually be beneficial to limit affinity of some single-threaded applications like that so the cpu doesn't have to waste time switching it between cores and communicating states between them.

[PheonixIV]

I've never actually had my FPS drop low enough to be noticable.


Hm, my father reckons it's the diagnostic tool playing up, after noticing that Task Manager thinks DF is 'not responding' i am inclined to agree.

It would also explain why Max crashed and took everything with it; it tried to use cores it knew were free, but the computer thought were not.


I'm open to any other suggestions or ideas though, for now i'll limit DF to using just my third physical core and see what happens.

[Martian]

I've never actually had my FPS drop low enough to be noticable.

You must have an insanely powerful machine or always build small forts. Try an experiment, download one of the massive long running succession games and see if you still have high FPS.

[kotekzot]

or just raise the fps cap.

let me get this straight, you have df running and task manager lists it as not responding? put both windows next to each other and see if df is active and still marked as not responding.

[pushy]

What really? I did think it was strange at first.

Ok, that's odd... What's eating my CPU while it's running then.


Diagnostic definitely reckons dwarffort.exe is being assigned cores 1, 2 and 3 atm.

Dwarfiness is definitely just for a single core. I run Football Manager 2009 alongside it (both games have substantial periods where you're just waiting around ) and DF consistently takes up about 25% usage of one, while FM09 uses varying amounts from all four.

[Zeg]

or just raise the fps cap.

let me get this straight, you have df running and task manager lists it as not responding? put both windows next to each other and see if df is active and still marked as not responding.

I have noticed this happening too, I think its just an artifact of the way dwarf fort was made, possibly combined with hyperthreading.

As for the cores issue, I only have 2 cores due to my hyperthreading. Basicly nothing actually has support for using multiple hyperthreaded cores though, it was a transitional technology that didn't exist very long before actual physical multicore came along and obseleted it. So most of the time, any given process on my system will only use 50% of my CPU, using one of the fake cores. Good for recovering from programs locking up, which is really the only reason I have it on.

However, if you go look at the performance tab in taskmanager, the CPU usage appears to be spread identically over the two cores when a programs affinity is set to both (as is the default for any new running process). If you switch the affinity on the process to one or other of the cores, the graph for that core then maxes out as you would expect. I think its just a case that not even windows actually knows what to do with the hyperthreading, so things that are single threaded but with affinity set to both cores, just show as using both cores half as much.

[Hishan]

How the hell are you running df on more than one core? I thought it didnt support multi threading?