SSDR Process Priority in Win 7 Task Manager

Paul Christensen, W9AC

I just switched from an old Dell XP PC to a Dell OptiPlex i7 running under Win 7 Pro.  Unlike PSDR, is there any benefit in prioritizing any of the SSDR applications (incl. DAX, CAT) in the Win 7 process task manager? 

Migrating dozens of programs from old to new was pretty painful but the i7 performance improvement is like a night/day difference and worth the 4+ days of work.  With SSDR, DAX, DXLab, SpectraPLus, Bob Meter, and several other applications running in the background, CPU utilization is about 18% and 6% with SSDR running alone. 

The real test was spinning the knob on FlexControl.  It now tracks as fast as it's spun and CPU utilization is never above 25% when it's spinning.  With the old Core2Duo, it would often hesitate a few seconds before stabilizing and CPU utilization would jump to 100%.

Paul, W9AC

   

Neal_K3NC

Hi Paul,

I have been running SSDR on all ranges of systems and haven't felt any need to go into the task manager. I think if anyone feels this need, they should check whether SSDR is reporting the maximum level of acceleration being provided by the graphics card. If not, the CPU is tasked with doing all of the math required for the beautiful display and you will quickly see CPU utilization go through the roof.

73
Neal

KY6LA_Howard

How does one check graphics acceleration?

Neal_K3NC

IN the radio setup part of the Radio Chooser, look at the General tab. Look at the GPU Capability setting.

Reg

We can measure graphics adapter performance by both observation and measurement.  At www.cpubenchmarks.com you can select Video Card Benchmarks and observe the averages of a large number of measurements made by other users.  The "Passmark - G3D Mark" is a relative performance score for all video cards.  You can also measure the performance of the components of your system and optionally submit them to cpubenchmarks for inclusion in their database.  From the main menu at cpubenchmarks.com click on Software and then download and execute Performance Test 8.0.  It is interesting to watch the tests run.  When the test software gets to the G3D measurement phase you will observe complex graphics being rendered and measured.  If you run the benchmark on a high-end machine with a high-performance graphics adapter the jets fly by at blinding speeds.  The benchmarks and the measurements of your system will give you a good feel for the relative performance of your system.

The benchmark tests do not provide tools for overclocking your video adapter and thereby increasing acceleration.  I am using EVGA GeForce GTX 760 SuperClocked 2 GB DDR5 video adapters.  The video adapters I chose are overclocked by EVGA, not me, and the overclocking puts them in the top 5 performing video adapters for only $249.99 each.  When I built my systems I was looking to the future when we will be running CWSkimmer against multiple bands, etc.

I hope this helps a little.

Reg

Neal, K3NC:

Page 62, paragraph 20.5, of the SmartSDR Users Manual v1.1 says, in part, "Located in the "General" tab is basic information about the selected radio. The tab contains the Client Software version, the Radio Hardware version and the GPU Capability."  In the SmartSDR Users Manual I don't find any further explanation of "GPU Capability."  When SmartSDR v1.1 is connected to my FLEX-6700, it displays, "Maximum Graphics Acceleration," the same as in the example in the SmartSDR Users Manual.  Is "Maximum" referring to a setting in the FLEX-6700 or information read from the video adapter in the computer running SmartSDR v1.1?  What are the other possible values and their meanings?

Neal, can your provide further insight?  If not, can Tim or someone from FRS reply when you have an opportunity.

Thanks.

Reg, KD5RB

Paul Christensen, W9AC

Hmmm...I don't see the "Software" link on the website's main menu.

Neal_K3NC

This setting indicates whether DirectX 10 (or Directx 11) is able to offload processing of the vector math used in the drawing of the SmartSDR windows to the Graphics Processing Unit on your graphics card. The GPU is much more powerful than the Intel CPU, especially when it comes to math. If this doesn't reflect maximum, it means that all the heavy lifting is done by the general purpose Intel (or AMD) processor.

The capability of DirectX to offload the number crunching to the GPU is one way that Windows 7 (8 and 8.1) can seem so much faster than older machines, even though its doing a lot more work.

I do not know if there are more enumerations other than None and Maximum Capability but if it isn't the latter, you will normally be looking for a new graphics card.

Tim - W4TME

There are three levels; maximum, partial and none.  The application interrogates the GPU and depending on the DirectX level it supports and the number of shaders in the GPU, it will off load all (maximum), some (partial) or none the application's graphics rendering to the GPU.  What can not be offloaded to the GPU will be processed by the CPU.

Reg

Neal and Tim:

Thanks for the clarification.

Reg

Richard G7EIX

I know this is 2 week old thread, but I just wanted to list the correct URL.   The one above is an expired domain.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

And you can download a copy of the software for a 30 day trial here:

http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm