VOGONS


real slow on dual core

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First post, by randomnewbie

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hello,
please excuse my newbiness if this's been covered before.

i'm a regular advanced dosbox user and i can't imagine vintage gaming without it.

however, recently i bought a new notebook, this model. it has exactly this AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core processor (2x 2100+ MHz, with that quick over-clocking performance button)

but i don't get as good speeds as on my another old ass notebook with some single core 3100+ sempron in it

i mean, 2d games run at decent speeds as usual, but when i try to run something more demanding (like Strife) it slows down real bad. even after pressing that "quick overclock processor button" (i guess they put it there in order to save some battery when you don't need as much cpu power?). while on my older notebook (and desktop as well) it woks just fine, with decent speeds

all the core settings were same, dynamic, with core set to max. i even tried to manually fiddle with cycles but no difference there

what i noticed though is that when i run taskmanager, i see 2 graphs of my cores. and they both run at 50% only and won't go higher (they work on 100% when running other demanding apps, like rendering 3d models for example). does this mean that dosbox doesn't support dual core? or is there something that i've missed?

running dosbox on windows xp sp2 (on all systems)

thanks for attention

Reply 1 of 17, by Qbix

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dosbox is single threaded and uses only one core.

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Reply 2 of 17, by randomnewbie

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this means that i will never be able to reach as good speeds as on my older pc with single core?

Reply 3 of 17, by DosFreak

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No, DOSBox will run faster on a newer faster processor than on an older processer. (Assuming that the new processor is faster of course) It's just that DOSBox will not use both cores of your CPU to improve it's speed. It will only use one core.

Your slower performance on your new laptop is likely due to some power management software downclocking your processor (or crappy thermal paste/heatsink) or a crapload of crapware installed on it.

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Reply 4 of 17, by randomnewbie

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no unnecessary software/services, neither power management software running

maybe it's the the thermal paste/heatsink then=/

anyways, it's still strange that i only see processors working at 50% when my cycles are set to max, while when i render 3d models in my revit architecture they both work at 100%

Reply 5 of 17, by DosFreak

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http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=56933

Don't know how true the above is. Haven't bought AMD processors since my Athlon XP 2800+ back in 2002. (Which lasted me till beginning of 2007 when I bought my C2D oh yeah).

DOSBox only uses 1 core you will always only show 50% when using DOSBox. Your rendering program is multi-threaded so it uses your other core.

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Reply 6 of 17, by randomnewbie

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DosFreak wrote:

DOSBox only uses 1 core you will always only show 50% when using DOSBox. Your rendering program is multi-threaded so it uses your other core.

but the performance stays same, you say, right?=S

btw thanks for the effort

Reply 7 of 17, by TurboFreak

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DOSBox will run faster on a newer faster processor than on an older processer. (Assuming that the new processor is faster of course) It's just that DOSBox will not use both cores of your CPU to improve it's speed. It will only use one core.

This is worrying me.
CPU cores are not becoming faster anymore, performance gain is acquired by adding more cores.

If DOSBox can only use one core there is no way to get more computing power to DOSBox if needed for more demanding applications.
Many newer CPU cores are even slower than old ones.

Is it at least somehow possible to make DOSBox use more cores if this gets more problematic in the future? By reprogramming for example.

Reply 9 of 17, by prozoam

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Actually, CPUs are still getting faster and faster on a per-core basis. The GHz numbers may have declined since the introduction of the Core architecture, but those numbers can't be objectively compared between architectures. One core of a Core 2 Duo 2 GHz will likely match, or even trounce, a 2.8 Ghz P4.
The new Core i7 processors outperform Core 2 processors by ~10% at the same clock rate.

Processors cores are still getting faster, even if it's not obvious from their specs. Dosbox should continue to improve in performance.

Reply 10 of 17, by Kippesoep

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My previous Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz was nearly twice as fast running DOSBox as the 2.8GHz P4 I had before that. I'd say that qualifies as "trounce".

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Reply 11 of 17, by randomnewbie

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i have tried this on 4 different notebooks with dual cores last week and it does run slower. and i agree with TurboFreak

is there at least a tiny chance that dosbox will once be supporting multiple cores? (running on multiple threads i guess)

if i knew this i wouldn't have bought dual core 🙁 the increasing performance isn't that amazing anyways

btw, @prozoam: they are now (an itty bit), but it doesn't change the fact that they are reaching their maximal physical limitation (speed of how can electric stream go through a conductor, without too short paths, so it wouldn't cause a short circuit)

Reply 12 of 17, by wd

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is there at least a tiny chance that dosbox will once be supporting multiple cores?

No.

If your system is correctly configured (no resource grabbing/downgrade
background apps) dosbox runs the very most of the games just fine.
Notebooks are rarely optimally configured by the manufacturer, a simple
upgrade of the gfx drivers does already wonders by times.

Reply 13 of 17, by prozoam

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@randomnewbie, try running it on a dual core desktop. Laptops have all kinds of power saving methods that will cause the processor to run at a lower speed than it's capable of. There are a variety of other things that could be slowing you down, and until those things are ruled out, it's premature to conclude that the CPU is slower as a result.

I work on site at Intel's development fabs in Oregon. Three years ago I was working on the labs that developed the manufacturing process for the Core i7 processors coming out now. Not only are the processors coming out now a lot more than an "itty bit" faster than those that came before, the stuff I'm seeing them develop now leads me to conclude we can continue to anticipate significant per-core speed increases in the next 5-10 years. After all, just last year Intel managed to demolish one of those "physical limits" with an entirely new feature design.

Plus, it's questionable just how feasible making Dosbox multithreaded is. I've never looked at the Dosbox code, but it isn't trivial or even possible in some cases to write a program to take advantage of more than one core.

Reply 14 of 17, by randomnewbie

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@wd thank you for suggestions but i always tweak my notebooks to the max, this is just my first dual core and i'm note very pleased with the experience. also, i keep everything up to date and like i said in previous post, there are no slow down apps.

@prozoam, i didn't know this about new technology that 'breaks' physical limits, interesting. also yeah, dual core desktop would have been nice but i'm not that rich to buy yet another pc=P

i guess i'm stuck to this machine that runs dosbox slow

Reply 15 of 17, by valnar

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TurboFreak wrote:

If DOSBox can only use one core there is no way to get more computing power to DOSBox if needed for more demanding applications.
Many newer CPU cores are even slower than old ones.

Is it at least somehow possible to make DOSBox use more cores if this gets more problematic in the future? By reprogramming for example.

This is a limitation with your laptop then, not DOSBox in general. Any modern Intel Core2Duo processor, especially those around 3.0Ghz (E8400) can run any DOS game made, or at least all I've tried.

Reply 16 of 17, by Xelasarg

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Seems we're beginning to go round in circles here, but I can only second valnar, prozoam, wd etc.

I've compared the performance of DOSBox on a Core2Duo E4500 (2.2 GHz) to that on an Athlon64 3200+ (also 2.2 GHz), and on the dual core processor it runs nearly twice as fast (measured by comparing the cycles max value shown in ykhwong's build). The performance boost even on such a comparatively weak dual core processor ist striking.

I reach the same conclusion - it must have something to do with your notebook, most likely the aforementioned power saving software or crappy drivers, or maybe it's your cpu (Turion doesn't match the Core2Duo performance, I think).

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Reply 17 of 17, by randomnewbie

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yes, must be those crappy turions