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Help Setting up XPPro for Dual AMD

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woodenman80

Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2001
Location
UK
(firstly this may be in the wrong place, sorry if it is)

I have a friend who is currently running a Dual AMD socket A system but is trying to set windows up to run certain applications on differant processors, He has no problem actually doing this but asked me the other day if there is a way to make windows do this at evey boot automatically, rather than him having to manually do it?

Im stuck as i concentrate on single proccesor gaming rigs and im not a winxp buff either?

Any help or directions would be appreciated or if its just not possible.

thanx
 
They could create a start up batch file that has what apps need to do what and have them put that in the startup folder...

I created a special start up batch file that kills certain apps when I benchmark...so I am sure they could write up one that starts what programs then need for which CPU at start up also...
 
I am no Windows XP guru either but I am not aware of any way to have a specific process start all the time with affinity to a specific CPU.

Is there any particular reason he wants to do this?
 
Thanx for the idea glock but a batch file seems a bit out of mine or his league! we know what they are but how to write one who knows :eek:

His machine is used for 3d work and multiple applications Adobe, lightwave and quark etc mostly open all at the same time! at present he manually sets adobe to use his second proccessor so he has to wait hardly anytime at all jumping between the programs. He always uses it in this setup and wondered if there was a bit of software which would automatically do this for him (lazy if you ask me not doing it manually).
 
yes i totally agree, this is a good idea..i would be interested as i do the same exact work. Both CPUs are only utilized once the final render happens.

sorry i cant contribute to help, but atleast ill know if you find the answer.
 
Well if we do sort something out i will post it at the moment he is still setting it manually!

I feel software companys should spend more time and money writing more programs to use 2 heads (as such), as it will be eventually more important with dual cores etc.
 
After some searching, I found a program someone had written to do just this.

The zip file: RunProc_win32

(Taken from link about half-way down page here: Team Egg Roll )


So, I just unzipped these 3 files to a directory, and for instance, if they are in the same directory as cpuz, then create a new shortcut that looks like this in the Target field:

C:\runProc_win32.exe -a4 cpuz.exe

where the "-a4" switch designates running the program with affinity to cpu 3.

so this program labels cpu's differently than win xp does, windows goes from zero to whatever (3, in the case of a dual hyperthreaded xeon), but this program use switches -a1, -a2, -a3, and -a4 to correspond to cpu's 0,1,2, and 3 respectively.

Hope this helps.
 
Albigger said:
After some searching, I found a program someone had written to do just this.

The zip file: RunProc_win32

(Taken from link about half-way down page here: Team Egg Roll )


So, I just unzipped these 3 files to a directory, and for instance, if they are in the same directory as cpuz, then create a new shortcut that looks like this in the Target field:

C:\runProc_win32.exe -a4 cpuz.exe

where the "-a4" switch designates running the program with affinity to cpu 3.

so this program labels cpu's differently than win xp does, windows goes from zero to whatever (3, in the case of a dual hyperthreaded xeon), but this program use switches -a1, -a2, -a3, and -a4 to correspond to cpu's 0,1,2, and 3 respectively.

Hope this helps.


Nice find! I'm gonna give it a try
 
Ok - wondering if anyone still has the program RunProc_win32 that I linked to in post #7? I had to reformat shortly after posting that link, and now the link seems to be dead and I would like to have the program again.

I could not find it by googling either, so I was thinking maybe someone that still had it could email it to me?

Thanks for looking, post here or PM me please if you do have this file.
 
run fold at home on CPu 1 to max it out so windows uses the second procs. Just joking looks like some people found a good app I may need to download this once I get my new gear.
 
tenchi86 said:
run fold at home on CPu 1 to max it out so windows uses the second procs. Just joking looks like some people found a good app I may need to download this once I get my new gear.

The reason I want to do this is to start matlab with affinity to cpu 0 (its not multi-threaded anyway) and I have a batch file to shut down my F@H client on cpu 0, so matlab responds much better this way.


Yeah I hope someone still has this. Might be nice to find a place to host it so people can still download it (as I said the link I posted is broken now).

I might try out tom's thing, but for it to work their utility has to be running as well, which I don't particularly care for.
 
Also in search of such an application. This one sounds like it was a good one, and I would like to try it since i'm getting sick of manualing setting affinity.
 
prioaff is another program that does the same thing. Original site seems to be dead but I've got it here (and the source code as well) if anyone wants it.
 
**Thread Resurrection**
This is mostly a repost of post #15 in this thread in the single cpu section but I figured I would repeat the info here since it really applies to us SMP guys.



1st Option
Tom's hardware has a program to set priority/affinity I guess but I haven't tried it because I think you need to leave their utility running for it to work, which doesn't really appeal to me. Link Anyway


2nd Option
For setting different priorities (but not affinity) this can be done with a switch in the command line or shortcut, as Rick points out (blatantly copied here because this is good advice)
Well, you could make a shortcut. This is a little idea of mine actually, rather the usual batch file that has been widely spread on the net.

Just make a shortcut, and instead of making it "C:\notepad.exe", make it "C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c START /low C:\windows\notepad.exe" The key here is the cmd.exe, START and the path to the program.

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe" = Opens the command prompt
"/c START /low" prepares to run the program in low priority
"C:\notepad.exe" = opens notepad.

If you do not want to see the command prompt when you run the program, right click on the shortcut after you make it and adjust the properties. You can make it start off-screen by choosing the pixels down and right that is starts in the shortcut. I usually set mine to 2000x2000 so it is off screen.
Source: Post #2 at TechSpot


3rd Option
Finally you can download a program known as prioaff.zip (thanks emboss!) and it will allow you to set both the affinity and priority of a program upon startup. Check the last post of the link above for the guy that coded it up, and he was nice enough to provide the source code as well. One small problem is that the program was written a bit ago and only allows setting priority to the 'original' levels of Low,Normal,High,Realtime. But since the newer versions of windows contains the additional priority levels of 'belownormal' and 'abovenormal' maybe someone with more initiative and coding experience could modify the code to include these settings as well.

Anyway as for how prioaff works, here's a quick run-down. Download and unzip it to somewhere, you'll see prioaff.exe. Then if I want to start Matlab for example the shortcut on my desktop would have this target line:
Code:
[COLOR=Green]F:\Temp\prioaff\prioaff.exe[/COLOR] [COLOR=Yellow]1[/COLOR] [COLOR=Red]100[/COLOR] [COLOR=Orange]E:\MatLab\bin\win32\MATLAB.exe[/COLOR]
which would start matlab in normal priority, with affinity to CPU2, which is the first of two logical cpus (I'm running a dual xeon so I have two physical and two logical cpus). See explanation below:

There are 4 parts to this shortcut target line, each in a different color:
1) location of prioaff.exe
2) priority as follows:
Code:
0 - Low
1 - Normal
2 - High
3 - RealTime
3) Processor affinity in binary as follows:
Code:
1 - Task Manager CPU 0
10 - Task Manager CPU 1
100 - Task Manager CPU 2
1000 - Task Manager CPU 3
11 - Task Manager CPU's 0 and 1
101 - Task Manager CPU's 0 and 2
etc...
4) path to executable
 
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