Aussie Needs Your help ... A happy mod is a good mod (LC)

[OziBattler]

Morning!

1. ive tried PT with long and short times...but as Boz said...even without PT or PAHUD running things are sucky. PT and PAHUD just push it over the edge of the CPU 100% cliff
2. I used to use pahud cache but that is a pain in the ass if you forget to update it so i dont use it anymore...my new DB for ipoker is really small at the moment anyway
4. yes, I move HH to my pokertracker dir
5. task manager in itself uses a chunk of CPU. doh.
6. i have an ADSL2+ connection...i Get in excess of 5G up and 700M down. I cant see this being an issue i know ive 'disconnect protected' at least once but that was when the laptop totally locked up right (as I raised AA UTG preflop which held up to take down some of the pot)

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I know, I can setup a bind cache on my computer that'll solve the problem, I'm just too lazy to do it ATM.

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umm, what exactly is a bind cache. should I try it? should (and how) should I check my dns stuff? this is all making me feel like such a noob [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

keep it coming guys, Ill cross post if I have to but I wanted to give u guys a chance to show your awesomeness and this sort of stuff first

[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

oz

[KingOtter]

How's your network been lately? When you download files does it take longer than usual?

Maybe turn ZoneAlarm off and see if that helps?

I just opened up a table on PokerStars and I notice that the process jumps to the top whenever an action occurs, but when it is sitting waiting for an action it is at 0 CPU.

Since it happens across poker clients I'm thinking this may be a network issue.

[bozlax]

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5. task manager in itself uses a chunk of CPU. doh.
6. i have an ADSL2+ connection...i Get in excess of 5G up and 700M down. I cant see this being an issue i know ive 'disconnect protected' at least once but that was when the laptop totally locked up right (as I raised AA UTG preflop which held up to take down some of the pot)

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Point 5: one of the worst wastes of CPU is moving your mouse. Put up the graph of CPU usage and wiggle it. See what I mean?

Point 6: I hope you got these two backwards, but that's a niiiiiice connection. How much you pay for that?


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I know, I can setup a bind cache on my computer that'll solve the problem, I'm just too lazy to do it ATM.

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umm, what exactly is a bind cache. should I try it? should (and how) should I check my dns stuff? this is all making me feel like such a noob [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

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TL;DR version: if you're running XP or Vista, don't worry about it.

This is uber-geekery. bind (pronounced "bin-dee") is the daemon in *nix that provides DNS services. You probably get DNS from your ISP (so do I). Every time you put "http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/...", or any other address, in your browser, your computer asks the DNS server for the IP address that maps to the host "forumserver.twoplustwo.com" or whatever. The problem is, your computer is like a child: every time it gets the answer, it immediately forgets it, so the next time it has to ask again. EVERY TIME. Typical DNS lookup times are in the 30-60ms range, so you don't really notice it compared to the time that it takes the server, once you find it, to transmit the data you're requesting. However, now make that DNS lookup take 5 seconds and oh, Mary, mother of GOD it's slow!

If you're running *nix, it's a fairly trivial matter to set up bind running on your system in "caching" mode, which means that every time you make a DNS request the computer remembers what it already found out. (It's even more trivial now than it used to be, using a little thing called dnsmasq.) However, iirc WinXP and Vista both have a DNS cache built in, so it's probably not an issue for you.

[OziBattler]

Boz, thx. yep, down and up were back to front. Im paying $55/month for 20G of downloads. 10G is $45/month The speed is line dependent with theoretical max being 24G down.

anyway, Im dont want to turn zonealarm (may as well throw the front door to my house wide open every time i go to work) but ive got norton doing its auto realtime detect for viruses so maybe Ill try turning that off....hmmmm

[bozlax]

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Boz, thx. yep, down and up were back to front. Im paying $55/month for 20G of downloads. 10G is $45/month The speed is line dependent with theoretical max being 24G down.

anyway, Im dont want to turn zonealarm (may as well throw the front door to my house wide open every time i go to work) but ive got norton doing its auto realtime detect for viruses so maybe Ill try turning that off....hmmmm

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So, your SPEED is 5Gb/sec downstream, but you can only use up to 20G (b or B?)/month? What happens if you exceed that usage?

The problem isn't ZoneAlarm or Norton or anything else. The usage in TaskMan is attributed to the process doing the using, it's the poker client. Try turning off animations and such and see what happens.

[OziBattler]

once i hit the 20GB limit my line gets 'shaped' down to 64kbps. ill see what settings I can turn off when I run up the sites later today.

[OziBattler]

heres a different screenshot of taskmanager with just an ipoker skin running and 2 tables open. Nothing else was open, not even Outlook or IE and Ive disabled Norton realtime scan.

a few more observations are that when i closed the 2 tables the site software runs fine and hardly uses any CPU. Also it seems like sometimes the software runs okay but then 'freaks out' (eg when i start a new app the resource usages rockets up) and doesnt recover til i close tables.

also does anyone see anything strange or wrong in any of the numbers?

thx

oz

[neurotiq]

I was reading through this thread with some curiosity because my computer, too, very often slows down when I run poker software. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to resolve it, either. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

This may be way too obvious a suggestion, but did you consider posting this thread on the "Computer Technical Help" board of the 2+2 forums? I assume there would be a lot more technical expertise there than on the micros board (but I could be wrong) [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[KingOtter]

[ QUOTE ]
anyway, Im dont want to turn zonealarm (may as well throw the front door to my house wide open every time i go to work) but ive got norton doing its auto realtime detect for viruses so maybe Ill try turning that off....hmmmm

[/ QUOTE ]

Then turn on Windows firewall temporarily.

What IP do you get assigned by your DSL modem? If it's a 192.168.x.x number then ZoneAlarm is kind of redundant because they'd have to make it through the modem to get to your computer. Unless you have some whacky DSL modem that does an automatic address translation.

I still say I think it's a network issue, and it doesn't have to do with bandwidth. Dropped packets can cause this and they don't have to be caused by excessive bandwidth.

A firewall like ZoneAlarm has to process every packet inbound and outbound. It doesn't have to be using CPU to do this, but the time the client spends waiting for the packet could be the CPU delay you're seeing.

I've got a worse computer than you... but I don't run any iPoker stuff. Pokerstars tables don't even register on the CPU gauge. I don't run firewalls on my systems because I have a router in between me and my DSL modem.

Firewalls, Zonealarm, etc are very necessary for systems directly connected to the internet that have an IP routable Ip address. If your system has a 192.168.x.x number then nobody outside can directly address your system without going through a network address translation.

If you go to http://whatismyipaddress.com/ and see the IP address on your computer then your directly connected to the internet and you need a firewall. If you're using dial-up, then you need a firewall. To get the IP address on your system go to a Command prompt (start... run.. cmd.exe), then typing 'ipconfig /all' ... you may have to scroll around to find it. It'll look something like this:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Control
ler
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0E-A6-67-65-BC
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
<font color="red">IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.5</font>
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Friday, November 16, 2007 8:40:55 PM

Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, January 18, 2038 10:14:07 PM

Addendum: Reading through the thread again I see that you said there are performance differences when it is on the laptop screen, etc. It could be the software is waiting for screen update calls. No matter what I think this is some resource contention issue, and not the software itself eating the CPU. Finding out what the resource is that is being contended for, whether it is network, display writes, or memory is going to result in the answer.

Maybe some of your memory is going flakey.

[OziBattler]

thx KO. ive got an NB5 modem. I have a non 192.168 address on myip and I see

Windows IP Configuration
Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : magnus
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No



Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek TL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet NIC
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-90-F5-44-1D-6F
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.100
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Sunday, November 18, 2007 8:07:52 AM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Sunday, November 18, 2007 9:07:52 AM

Im not really sure how to check for contention issues though. I think Ill crosspost to CTH shortly. thx again bro.