Skylake / Kaby Lake Hyper-threading bug

You need Speed Shift, SpeedStep, C1E to observe notable difference. Did you notice there is small increase in BCLK after uCode update which translates to more MHz for lesser voltage.
84W for 4.7GHz?
EDIT:First picture is after or before ucode update?

 

I always run my CPU at maximum MHz. I don't like any types of power saver functionality as Windows balanced power plan, Home made crippled power saver, ODM's own crippled power profiles in software or Speed Shift. Picture 1 is before th ucode update. People use mostly power saving functionality due inadequate or crippled cooling.

 

Seeing as you have a desktop CPU very similar to mine, I recommend using Windows High Performance Power Plan combined with C-states activated in the BIOS (no Intel Speedstep & no Speed Shift) - this combination dramatically reduced idle usage of Watts, but performance remained the same. I tested different combinations of Windows Balanced Profile, Speed Shift, etc, and the previous recommendation was the highest performer while reducing idle wattage. (Tested in PCMark 8, 3DMark, and games).

 

Going to try this. Sc2 is crashing and rebooting the machine. OS cannot even generate a dump. Every other game including benches like Heaven work fine. The game stutters and then reboots, I think it is the CPU. Tried with zero undervolting too. The reboot causes settings losses some applications too. Very weird. Hopefully this fixes it.


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Any Dell apps/bloatware's running in background?

 

Clean install MSI.

 

Did to update to latest MSI Dragon Center or something? @Midas Touch was telling it was the culprit.

 

I do not use Dragon Center. Using ThrottleStop. Maybe it is something different. Will try some other things first but the game crashes right away when a match starts lol driving me nuts.

 

It's helpful to do a simple google search on what is happening, that usually turns up some links to a solution. Sometimes you have to try a few solutions, sometimes it's as simple as this:

starcraft 2 crashing windows 10
https://www.google.com/search?clien...0.0..0.0....0...1..64.serp..0.0.0.N-aa4KbYzh8

" To do this follow these instructions:

1. Go to Starcraft 2 installation directory, find Starcraft 2 .exe file and right click it.
2. Go to Compatibility tab.
3. Check Run this program as administrator.
4. Click Apply and OK to save changes and try to run the game again."

If that doesn't work check out some of the links that came up on this search, or try modifying the search a bit.
http://windowsreport.com/starcraft-2-issues-windows-10/

For game problems, it's best to do a directed search using the help or forum site domain name for the game developer or publisher.

starcraft 2 support site
https://www.google.com/search?clien...support+site&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

So the support and forum site domain name is us.battle.net, use that in a site directed search:

site:us.battle.net starcraft 2 crashing
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=site:us.battle.net+starcraft+2+crashing&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

If that first solution doesn't work, try others from the support site for Starcraft 2, or start there in the first place.

We can help you on NBR with system and laptop issues, as well as others, but game support sites have their game specific knowledge in higher concentration than we will here.

If it's a game you spend a lot of time using, get an account on their support site and become active there - ask your game specific questions there and you'll get fresh answers to current problems, rather than sifting through older posts that might come up first in searches.

Good luck

Edit: It looks like SC2 crashing has been happening to a lot of people off and on for many years. If you get it working with a fix, there may be other problems to look up as well. If crashes come back out of the blue, a common complaint, there may be a new patch that is causing the problem. Use Steam tools to run a previous version.

Here's another search, I used Google Tools tab to set limit for search going back 1 year, and sorted by most recent posts, and there are a lot of them... Again, Good luck

site:us.battle.net starcraft 2 crashing
https://www.google.com/search?q=sit...i4wJrVAhXCiVQKHVLuCNkQpwUIHg&biw=1219&bih=637

 

In my case IRST was the culprit for constant game freeze and stuttering: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ogy-should-i-install-it.807126/#post-10568022 so I disabled it.

DGC built-in OC tool produced inconsistent benchmark results and high temp: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...n-owners-lounge.769092/page-907#post-10567987 so I uninstalled it.

But a random reboot during gameplay I never experience that before with the said programs.

Try using Intel XTU and then run SC2 but make sure to reset to stock before installing XTU.

 

I know nothing about SC2, but recently I had Mass Effect Andromeda producing strange crashes (only bought this game last week) - turned out it was running out of memory, needed to reactivate my page file (I had no page file before). Just saying this in case it's page file related!

(I had initially thought that there was a memory leak with Mass Effect Andromeda, but there's not, it just seems to need a page file to run, praps there are very short spikes of very high memory usage, but over long periods of time there's not sustained high memory usage.)

 

Didn't Windows popup a "running out of memory" warning?

How much memory do you have installed?

Sometimes you can get away with a short pagefile, to keep from double loading shared files. Try using 800MB to 1GB for a pagefile size - that's to maintain a kernel crash dump save space - a random size will work too.

See if that will work instead of a huge waste of space on your C drive, or whatever drive you created the pagefile - usually 1x the size of RAM, what size did you make?

 

Looks like it is an issue with the freaking xbox app in windows 10. Sc2 does not like it. I have to run it on window full screen mode instead of full screen mode.


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System Managed pagefile only using 2.3GB of disk space, so that's pretty cool. I've got 16GB of RAM, so that's why I've always been running without a pagefile on my desktop (16GB), and laptop (16GB) for the past 5 years, and this is the first time I've had to use a page file.

It didn't pop up a memory warning when playing the game, just made the warning sound and then crashed to black screen. I found out it was a memory issue by looking in Event Viewer.

 

Anyways, is it worth installing this microcode update?


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Aha, I read that as well in the long list of things to try, Windowed Mode.

So you bought it on the Microsoft Game store?

I haven't run SC2 for a long time, couldn't you load it through the battle.net Windows app? IDK if it's sold on Steam

 

Good reports from people with new and old laptops, Windows 10 and other OS's, it couldn't hurt

 

Windows 10 comes preinstalled with the xbox app. I am going over my nvidia settings and it looks like gsync is only enabled for Full screen games hmmm.

 

Wow, I was thinking maybe you got an 8GB build, but you ran out with 16GB, sheesh

It's best to run with a fixed pagefile, that way you don't build gaps in the contiguous pagefile - blocks spread out all over.

I guess this is getting way OT, but find a nice defrag tool, delete the pagefile and optimize the disk, make a fixed pagefile - there are some defrag tools that will optimize a pagefile as well, then you won't get a fragmented pagefile.

System managed pagefile may randomly grow and shrink the file, and over time - not a long time either - spread the pagefile all over.

Of course an SSD will reduce the effects, but surprisingly I've found huge performance improvements even on SSD 550MB/sec vs 480MB/sec throughput after / before defrag - overriding full defrag on SSD's.

Time to buy more RAM

 

Likely as not someone has a nicely organized "How to run SC2 on Windows 10" post somewhere on us.battle.net

 

No, they don't have it on steam.

 

@plee82

Launcher Update: Get the Desktop App for Battle.net® Now
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/10...-the-desktop-app-for-battlenet®-now-8-14-2013

That's from 2013, so I assume you can run SC2 from the battle.net app, and maybe avoid the MS Store / Xbox App issues.

Download Clients - Starcraft 2 is there...
https://us.battle.net/account/download/

 

My old laptop could run sc2 full screen lol. Maybe it is something with the gtx 1070.


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Yes, I run it from the battle net app. The xbox app is built into the Creators Update and detects the OS is running a game. It has bad interaction with sc2 with full screen.


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There was a lot of fuss made that the MS Game Store UWP game installs wouldn't run games in full screen. IDK if that was fixed or not, maybe it's still a limitation. That's why I posted the info for the direct from the developer Launcher for Starcraft 2

Fix: Windows 10 Fullscreen Problems With Games
http://windowsreport.com/indows-10-fullscreen-games/

 

Ha, yeah, 16GB RAM ought to be more than enough! Thing is though, if I look at memory usage of the game after I've exited the game it's using nowhere near the maximum amount of RAM - I think with Andromeda there are just very short spikes of very high RAM usage (the crashes only happened on the Hyperion with page file disabled), so it's not like it's paging loads to the page file & reducing performance, so 16GB is good still. I'm on SSD for both my drives, so I don't really have to worry about fragmentation, page file always static at 2.3GB though from what I've seen. I think you're thinking about Samsung 840 Evo read speed degredation of old data when you're referring to defragging SSD's for increased performance - the defrag re-wrote the data & thereby ceased to make it 'old data' therefore read speeds increased, it was a problem with the TLC cells, but a later firmware release solved the issue (I've got one of those drives in my laptop).

 

Found it! Have to disable this crap.

 

No it's not a 840 Evo issue, I've been doing SSD defragging since my first Crucial C300 SSD...

I don't have time right now to write up a play by play, with proof, so it'll have to wait till much later, just know it's a real thing.

You don't need to worry about wearing out SSD's, my C300 is still performing like it did the day I plugged it in in 2010.

Update: I found an old thread where I described the tool and process, before / after, there are other posts in that thread besides this one, check them out:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...SD-performance&p=396275&viewfull=1#post396275

 

800GB pagefile is probably very overkill People could think you wrote wrong for 1GB But think 1TB

 

Ok, no matter, it's off topic for this thread anyway. For the record though, I'm not an advocate of SSD defragging.

 

Noize! But it would be nicer if you have Windoze X Crapfree Edition.

 

Here's an old thread with before / after numbers:

DEGRADING RAID0 SSD PERFORMANCE?
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...SD-performance&p=396275&viewfull=1#post396275

Read through the thread, others responses and results too

I walked someone through repartitioning for more space on his RAID0 and how to defrag, and within a few posts progress his performance was now like mine:

DEGRADING RAID0 SSD PERFORMANCE?
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...SD-performance&p=396693&viewfull=1#post396693

 

I'm with hmscott on this issue; defragging is mandatory for optimum performance of any current storage system I have used.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...placement-defragging-with-perfectdisk.699187/


Yeah; that is from almost 5 years ago. Everything still holds true today.

 

So the idea behind defragging SSD's is to quote you in your link.... "the overhead saved by the O/S having to call on only one file/location per file". I'm surprised this is the case with Windows 10, were they not able to get around this 'issue' given it's an OS designed at a time when SSD's are commonplace? If my desktop starts loosing it's snap then I might consider trying a defrag, but certainly doesn't need to be done now.

EDIT: yeah, so the OS still sees sectors, etc, same as with HDD, so your idea behind defragging SSD's wouldn't be any different between say Windows 8 and Windows 10. I answered my own question above!

EDIT 2: Haha, I'm fickle, decided I may as well try to see if defragging my SSD's increased performance, so defragged them just now using Auslogics Disk Defrag. I decided not to use the SSD optimised version & instead just the regular HDD style defrag - the thinking being I wanted to remove all 'virtual fragmentation' created by the OS. My boot drive was 43% fragmented before defrag. I've run trim on the drives now they've completed their defrag (through the optimise drive tool in Windows 10). I'll see if I can notice any differences now over the next few days.

EDIT 3: I downloaded and ran PerfectDisk defragger as per the recommendations in posts below. It consolidated all the free space, defragged the free space. I can't be sure that the system is any snappier than before to be honest, I think it was fast enough before! If you have VSS enabled on your Windows drive then Windows will defrag your SSD once a month anyway, so it's not inherently an issue to defrag an SSD once in a while. I might do it once every few months, it won't hurt.

 

On W10 default defrag SW from MSFT for SSD does only trim.
You could use Contig from Sysinternals suite.
My max response time for write was 1.2-1.4 sec. For reads it was 0sec. I used ATTO.

 

Thanks.

 

I've tried many different defrag programs over the years - none compare to PerfectDisk. Why? Because defragging files is not enough - defragging the free space is just as important too (yeah; the O/S still struggles with writing to fragmented 'free space' just as much as it does with reading them).

All of the SSD 'defraggers' I've tried (including PD's) have yielded zero net effect.

Defragging files and free space (in as little as a single run with PD...) is what gives me the 'snap' I'm looking for from my systems.

This is over and above a minimum of 4C, 16GB RAM and an SSD that is OP'd by 33% or more...

If you didn't notice a difference today/now - I'd download the trial of PD and run an offline and an online (Smartplacement) defrag at least twice. Then; let the system on/idle for the next hour or so (this lets the SSD's internal logic clean up any dirty nand as needed - and should in turn give you the full attention of the storage subsystem when you call on it to perform...).

After doing the above? The system feels like a fresh clean install on new hardware to me (and to many of my clients that I do this for).

Note too that this doesn't increase an SSD's performance (just like OP'ing doesn't either...).

The performance will be where it is (depending on the specific SSD in question).

What will occur is that the maximum performance that the SSD can give will be possible - and when combined with OP'ing of 33% or more; it will be sustained, over time - (almost) no matter what you do with your storage subsystem.

Good luck.

 

Thanks, I've actually got my SSD OP'd by 30% already - influenced by your suggestions in another thread I believe! If I don't notice a difference I'll download that program you recommend & then I'll update my edited post above with my findings - I'm just conscious that this is off topic so I don't really want to add additional off topic posts to this thread, but I'll update my previous post for anyone that's curious.

 

Out of topic

By chance I read this post. Today use the PerfectDisk in my 960 Pro ssd. With CrystalMark, the performance had dropped a bit. After running the optimization on PerfectDisk, I returned to the values of the first day.

 

Yup, it was a pleasant surprise the first time I ventured to experiment with optimizing SSD's, it's a bit of an effort the first time with a new tool to get the right combination of settings before, during, and after optimizing for long term optimization.

But, once you have it set up you really only need to do that full optimization the first time, and PD keeps it organized with Write's captured and optimized - reducing the data movement later.

Thanks for sharing your experience

 

Which optimization did you select? SMARTPlacement, SSD Optimize, Consolidate Free Space, etc

I'm going to buy the license PD and share it ...

 

Please don't do that, that's a crappy thing to do for any software, but these guys are cool and take their job seriously - first to fix problems on new OS releases - that's why I stuck with them.

If anyone deserves getting paid for their software it's these guys, and small shops aren't getting rich, they are just keeping their employee's and bills paid.

This software has been reliably there for many years, let's keep them funded so they can continue doing so

Force the SSD to HDD, SmartPlacement, then either switch to SSD and set for automatic SSD Optimize - enabling Write Optimization, or keep it on SMARTPlacement w/HDD - also enabling Write Optimization - you can try both and see which one you like.

If you need Hibernation and / or VM, turn both off and run Consolidate Free Space before the other optimizations - and then turn on VM with fixed pagefile for 1x memory size and enable Hibernation - reboot and after the static huge files pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys are made do the other optimizations.

It's a bit time consuming the first time, but after automatic optimization and write optimization are on you can go months between the major re-optimization.

I never see the performance drop, so I only do the full monty whenever I add a new storage device or rebuild a new OS.

 

Yes I agree. The reason for sharing the license is because it is limited for 3 PC. I only have 1 laptop (my girlfriend lets me have only one pc/laptop in home)

I did something similar. First SmartPlacement Performance agressive, then Optimized SSD and last Consolidate free space. worked for me. But I'll try your own way ...

 

Whenever I've seen someone make a statement like that, the next thing they do is post that new license for others to use. That would be a violation of the TOS here, and like I said, a crappy thing to do.

Sometimes the license security makes that impossible - like you say with a 3 PC license, it won't install on a 4th or beyond.

IDK what PD's license agreement say's, but I assume it's 3 PC licenses for PC's under your control.

Thanks for clearing that up

 

It's up to how you use it.

I don't use Windows Virtual Memory or Hibernation so the only time I use Consolidate space is when I need to split a partition and need to move all the used blocks into the first part of the volume.

And, for Virtual Machine's, to consolidate space to make room for a large VM file.

There's a lot of cool features in PerfectDisk, and over time I've spent a lot of time trying all the features out, haven't done that for a while though, once I worked out how to use it for my use it's the same set up every time.

Have fun

 

I will continue to experiment. (I do not use virtual memory or virtual machines on this SSD). I'm happy because I thought the SSD had some problem or something. Also suspected that under performance because it had recovered (more than once) the entire disk from an Acronis image.

 

Yes, it's nice to find PD will optimize out any problems and restore the performance, it's helped a lot of people over the years that have found it, and / or our posts about it.

Maybe we should start a Perfect Disk thread here on NBR, rather then OT in odd threads.

Do you want to do that?

 

Yes, why not?

 

Cool, please post a link here to it when you are ready

 

@hmscott Which name do I use?

Did you solve the scaling problem of PD software at 4k?