Viewer 2 won't use all 8 CPUs

[Dorian Horten]

Specs:

 

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 

Intel Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz 8 CPUs ~2.7GHz

3072MB RAM

487 GB 7200 RPM HD

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1536MB

Some of that was detected by a program; I'm not the best with hardware.  So, intensively watching task manager for quite a while, CPU usage is very sporadic, and unpredictable.  4-6 CPUs at best are in use, while the others are barely, or not at all.  At least 1 always reaches 100 percent - it's not always CPU 1.  I've tried many various graphics settings.  I found an old post stating turn off threaded optimization in the Nvidia CP, but that didn't make a difference.  Most of those settings don't even pertain to OpenGL, as far as I know.

[Cerise Sorbet]

Yes, the SL viewer started out as a single thread program, that is why it pegs one CPU. Over time some of the function have got threads or helper processes, and over time more certainly will, but most of it is still one big loop.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

For a program to utiilize more than a single core the program must be coded to do so............the SL viewer(s) are not coded that way.  If you will notice, very few programs utililize more than one core.  Someday that all will change........but not yet.

[Vladi Hazelnut]

You can turn multi threading on, at least you can in most third party viewers, not sure about the official viewer. I think its in the debug menu somewhere though. Mine will use multiple cores but it doesn't use them all evenly. I think windows manages it or something.

That is kind of the thing with multi core CPUs, they keep getting more and more cores, but there still are not that programs that utilize it. Unless you are a hardcore gamer or work with 3-d software.

But what multiple cores will do is help you run more programs at once. I often have sl and various other programs like blender and what not open at the same time. And more cores seemed to help with multi tasking. As for sl performance, I noticed a difference when I went from 1 core to 2 cores, when I jumped to a 4 core I didn't notice any difference at all SL wise. My opinion you would be better off with a faster dual core than a slower quad core or more. For instance, you are running an 8 core cpu but its at 2.7 gigs. A quad core running at 3.2 or 3.4 might actually get you better performance over all.

But honestly, the only place most people would notice the difference is with benchmarking software. In normal use you would probably never notice it.

[leliel Mirihi]

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Vladi Hazelnut wrote:

You can turn multi threading on, at least you can in most third party viewers, not sure about the official viewer. I think its in the debug menu somewhere though.

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It's always enabled with no way to turn it off in 2.2 and up.

[Danny Nolan]

Something I would LOVE to see this viewer do, is start taking advantage of modern hardware. I'd love to see SL use more than 15% of my 12 core processor, and for it to let me run SLI and actually get a performance gain. Start using more shaders, and possibly some more post-processing.

 

Sadly .. I don't think this'll ever happen.

[Ormand Lionheart]

Isn't a 920 a quad core? It has 8 threads.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I have an i7 myself (3770K) , it has 4 cores, all with two threads.

Second Life 3.3.4 (0) Jun 23 2012 19:35:46 (RestrainedLove viewer v2.08.03.03 (3.3.3.23744)) uses all cores, but just one thread of each of them. Not sure about the official viewer, but I think it does the same.