Quad core, setting affinity - is there a way to save?

[Clovis]

I use a quad core CPU and currently each time I open wow, I have to go into the task manager (processess) and manually set each wow.exe to use all 4 CPUs - by default only the first 2 are checked.

Is there a way to configure this so it automatically utilizes all 4 and I don't have to manually set it up each time?

Thanks!

-Clov

[Liquidity]

I do it in keyclone.

btw we are neighbor!!

[Clovis]

I didn't see a setting in keyclone, what's it under?

Heh, small world, yeah monument is just up the interstate

[Hachoo]

When you create the WoW commands you run (under Keyclone setup, command editor, select one of your WoW commands), on the upper right side is a box that says "CPU AFFINITY". Its a drop down box... you can set it to whatever you want. I have my main set to CPU 0, alt1 to CPU1, alt2 to CPU2, alt 3 and 4 to CPU3.

[Kayley]

I have my main on CPU0 and CPU2, Alts are CPU1 and CPU3.
xD

[Chorizotarian]

You can also set it directly in your config.wtf like this:

SET processAffinityMask "3"

See this thread for an explanation of what the settings mean: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...cId=1778017311

[Owltoid]

For those who use Hotkeynet, the following post applies:

Eight processors are shown and the first two out of the eight were at full utilization while the other 6 looked low (under 25%).

That's a picture of what Memn described in words. By default, WoW restricts itself to the first two cores, so all five WoW instances are running to full capacity on just those two cores and bottlenecking. Meanwhile the other six cores have practically nothing to do. It's sort of like driving a Ferrari with the pedal to the floor, but with most of the spark plugs disconnected.

This default setting (which is programmed deliberately by Blizzard) is horrible. The only way you could invent a worse setting would be to restrict all your WoWs to one core. I agree with Memn that the best thing you can do right now is set every WoW to run on all eight cores. That will be pretty close to optimal because (like Memn says) it gives maximum latitude to the operating system's thread scheduler to optimize things. Later if you want you can experiment and fine tune it.

If you choose to set your affinity that way, the HotkeyNet command (for each window) is

<SetAffinity all>

It was extremely quick and easy. Just paste the command <SetAffinityAll> after your command to open an instance of WoW and you're all set.

[Techtroll]

I used to have Hyperthreading disabled on my i7, but recently re-enabled it to configure WoW instance 1 to CPU 1 and 2, instance 2 to CPU 3 and 4, instance 3 to CPU 5 and 6, and finally instance 4 to CPU 7 and 8.
Previously I used Keyclone to set affinity for CPU's (one instance per core), but I've now set each instance of WoW to use NONE on CPU affinity.
I then manually configured the config file with the SET processAffinityMask for each instance of WoW.
I configured each instance with 3, 12, 48 and 192 respectively. This means that each instance uses 2 CPUs, as described earlier.
Setting the keyclone CPU affinity to NONE, seems to leave the manually configured processAffinityMask in the config file unchanged.

One easy way to find the numbers used for processAffinityMask is to think binary.
00000001 = 1, CPU 1
00000010 = 2, CPU 2
00000011 = 3, CPU 1 and 2
00000100 = 4, CPU 3
.
11111111 = 255, All CPUs on a i7 with HT enabled.

Use a scientific calculator to convert the binary number to decimal if you have problems.

Doing this will allow you to decide exactly which processors (physical or virtual) you want each instance to run on.

I found this post as an invaluable resource for performace tips: Multiboxing Wiki - Multicpu, Multigpu, Multiharddrive, Multimonitor, etc and Bounded Issues. Revision 3. Work in Progress.

*Note that I've not used CPU 0 to start the CPU count, as this may be confusing from some.