Runtime sample rate

[Rozsko]

Recently when I was doing some logging, I realized that the screen refreshes quite slowly and the crosshair in the tables move significantly slower compared to no logging.

Initially I thought it is the usb connection, so I changed the connection settings from auto to USB, but that did not really help.

Then I started to play a bit and realized that without logging started, the Runtime sample rate is about 40Hz and when I start logging it pretty much drops to half of it to be around 20-25Hz. Now if I am on a page with time plot, then the sample rate drops to about 5-10Hz.

Now on the face of it, I wouldn't really care as logging is not to be watched realtime, but it seems this effects the "playback" of the logs as well. Meaning, if I open a logfile, and start walking though it, the graphs and parameter values are refreshed only a few times a second resulting in quite big jumps of the crosshair in the tables, despite the graphs being quite nice and smooth.

So, the first question is, can you explain how these things really relate to or depend on each other?

Question two is why is the Runtime sample rate dropping so drastically when none of the laptop components are overloaded (CPU~15%, mem~30%, GPU~10%)?

Final question, is there anything that can be done to improve this situation?

Thanks

Béla

[Adamw]

Update rate will vary with many factors, how much stuff you have in your layout, connection speed, laptop graphics power, ecu processor load.  

The most common slow down is due to the graphics chip going into low power mode, make sure all power saving features for the graphics are disabled and it is set for maximum performance.  Try AC power to see if it behaves any different.  Check connection speed is set to fast in the configuration menu too.  

[Rozsko]

1 hour ago, Adamw said:

Update rate will vary with many factors, how much stuff you have in your layout, connection speed, laptop graphics power, ecu processor load.  

The most common slow down is due to the graphics chip going into low power mode, make sure all power saving features for the graphics are disabled and it is set for maximum performance.  Try AC power to see if it behaves any different.  Check connection speed is set to fast in the configuration menu too.  

Thanks Adam.

Connection settings are on USB, so connection sped can't be adjusted this way.

In the power management I set the Intel display chip to maximum performance, and also tried to set the nVidia card (that is also set to max performance power setting) to be used by PCLink, but didn't really help. PCLink still does not utilize any GPU cores meaning 0% load on GPU, while COU and memory continues to be negligible (15% and 80MB).

Any other ideas? Also what is exactly effected by this sample rate? Tried to see in help, but did not find anything really.

Thanks

[Adamw]

Yeah I have seen poor performance from other laptops with dual graphics cards in the past, it was usually solved with a bit of messing around with graphics drivers trying to make the right card work etc. 

Connection speed setting is in the configuration menu where you find firing order etc. 

[Rozsko]

2 minutes ago, Adamw said:

Connection speed setting is in the configuration menu where you find firing order etc. 

Ah, ok. That is set to Fast.

Just so I am not chasing my tail here, what would be an expected sample rate when logging is on and you have a timeplot running on the page with quite a few parameters displayed?

[Adamw]

On my normal tuning laptop which is quite an old i5 EliteBook 8470p, 1600 x 900 res, integrated intel graphics, about 40-50Hz on most pages.  On my desktop which is also quite an old i5, integrated graphics, twin 1920 x 1200 monitors, using our supplied "1920 x 1080" layout, with PC logging running, I get 50-60Hz on all pages except the last "general log" page which is a big almost full screen time plot, I only get about 30Hz on that page.  

[Rozsko]

2 minutes ago, Adamw said:

On my normal tuning laptop which is quite an old i5 EliteBook 8470p, 1600 x 900 res, integrated intel graphics, about 40-50Hz on most pages.  On my desktop which is also quite an old i5, integrated graphics, twin 1920 x 1200 monitors, using our supplied "1920 x 1080" layout, with PC logging running, I get 50-60Hz on all pages except the last "general log" page which is a big almost full screen time plot, I only get about 30Hz on that page.  

Well, then I am not chasing my tail.

As with the timeplot, it drops down to less then 10Hz in about 1-2 minutes of logging. Will continue to experiment then.

Thanks.

[Rozsko]

Updated both the NVidia and the Intel driver to the latest, I disabled Windwows virtual memory (I guess 32GB physical mem should be more then enough) and I am starting PCLink forcing it to start using the Quadro card.

Tried to disable the Intel card as well, but since the Optimus architecture, disabling the Intel card pretty much reverted back to Microsoft base driver with 1Hz refresh rate (LOL), so that is not a way to go.

here is a screenshot of the page struggling: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ale4oyMCOgLThOZRUxP4dEc54gg5gQ

One more thing that struck me, is that PCLink is still 32bit? Any plans to introduce a 64bit version? I guess that should help quite a bit with overall perfomance of the GUI.

Anyhow, any other suggestions is appreciated.

Thanks a lot

[Rozsko]

new record from my side: 1.8Hz

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ale4oyMCOgLThOZm9NouFVi9VnGT0w

Since my last post, I fully disabled the Intel graphics card and only the nVidia is enabled.

Nothing seems to really help and it's quite annoying that you (me) have a powerplant really, yet the software is not utilizing its capabilities.

[Adamw]

I would try disabling the nVidia card, all my PC's are nothing flash, 10 year old machines with just integrated intel and they work fine.   

[Rozsko]

15 hours ago, Adamw said:

I would try disabling the nVidia card, all my PC's are nothing flash, 10 year old machines with just integrated intel and they work fine.   

ok, will try that way and report back.

[Rozsko]

I just realized I promised to get back on this, and I never got to (so far).

Since then I got a new laptop (Asus TUF AMD ryzen 5 CPU), and this is still a problem.

No matter if I disable the nVidia or the AMD video card, the refresh rate is going down to below 10Hz whenever I have a timeplot running for about a minute or two.

I just can't understand why PCLink is not utilizing the hardware resources available. The CPU utilization never goes above 20%. No matter what I do in it. GPU utilization is 0%.

Is there way to improve this somehow? Are you guys planning to introduce 64bit processing?

[Electredge]

what resolution are you using? and how much ram do your laptops have? have you tried a new page with just the time plot running? if so does it do the same thing? 

[Rozsko]

3 minutes ago, Electredge said:

what resolution are you using? and how much ram do your laptops have? have you tried a new page with just the time plot running? if so does it do the same thing? 

resolution is FHD, ram is 16GB, and no, I did not try the timeplot on an otherwise empty page, but I can do that.

[Adamw]

Im not sure what else to offer, I havent personally seen an issue like this - although I have definitely heard of others having issues with dual card machines. 

PC Link uses openGL for the graphics and searching around it seems lots of gamers complain about AMD's driver giving poor performance with openGL but generally it seems Nvidia works well with it.  It might be worth trying some older drivers if you can find anything - both from the laptop manufacturer and the native AMD/Nvidia ones if available.  

[Rozsko]

Hey Guys,

Sorry, but I can't really give up on this problem.

I played with the drivers but nothing really helps. To recap, here is my current config: Asus TUF laptop with Ryzen 5 6400H with builtin AMD Radeon (TM) graphics + an nVidia GeForce GTX1650Ti.

• I downgraded the driver for the nVidia to the oldest (2020 march I think) --- did not help
• upgraded to the latest nVidia driver --- did not help
  • AMD released a new driver late last year and the claim they improved the OpenGL performance roughly with 50%, so I updated to the latest driver --- guess what, did not help.
• I disabled the Radeon,then the nVidia - did not help
• left both enabled and selected one then the other in the Windows Graphics settings (System - Display - Graphics; and btw I use Win11 now). I checked in PCLink's about that it was using one or the other respectively, depending on which one was selected in the Control panel. --- unfortunately did not help.
• I installed nVidia's Nsight Systems that is a tool you can use to benchmark the GPU performance of any application, but I wasn't able to see any bottlenecks.
• Finally, I installed PCLink on my work laptop that is a Surface laptop 4 and that one was running with the same performance that you described Adam. Right away the display rate was around 50Hz after the connection was established and when I started PC logging, it never went below 25Hz, rather it was more around 30. Even the operation/responsiveness of PCLink was sensibly better, meaning for example when you filter a list of parameters to a specific one, it does that much quicker then on my ASUS.

Is this something we could debug with a developer? I am pretty sure many of us would appreciate if this could be improved.

Or anyone, any other suggestion to try?

Thanks a lot,

Béla

[koracing]

I see this pretty commonly on busy screens with the Link and my own i5 HP Probook 650 G1 laptop (12G ram, 1TB SSD, Intel onboard HD Graphics 4600) -- also still has a 9 pin serial port on the back.  I think this is also a comms bandwidth issue.  I get my best connection speeds by using a Belkin active USB cable (5 meters long is the shortest active one you can buy) -- even if no extension is needed, it seems to boost the signals.  If I need to see data with a fast sample rate - I just use the internal logger on the link.  The link PC logging max sample rate is 40Hz versus 1000Hz on the internal logger.

[Rozsko]

45 minutes ago, koracing said:

I see this pretty commonly on busy screens with the Link and my own i5 HP Probook 650 G1 laptop (12G ram, 1TB SSD, Intel onboard HD Graphics 4600) -- also still has a 9 pin serial port on the back.  I think this is also a comms bandwidth issue.  I get my best connection speeds by using a Belkin active USB cable (5 meters long is the shortest active one you can buy) -- even if no extension is needed, it seems to boost the signals.  If I need to see data with a fast sample rate - I just use the internal logger on the link.  The link PC logging max sample rate is 40Hz versus 1000Hz on the internal logger.

Thanks Kris,

I think I understand what you are sayin, but I tend not to believe the same. Today I tested it with two more HP Elitebooks, one has a Ryzen CPU the other one has a gen 8 i5 Intel (both are single GPU). Both (with the out of the box fullhd layout) performed the same crappy way as my Asus and the Surface laptop using the same full hd default layout does that 40Hz thing and does not drop below 25 when watching the logging screen. I can definitely say and agree with you on that, the more gauges you have on the screen or the more data you display on a time plot, the worse it gets. And you are absolutely right that the internal logging is capable of 1000Hz, though you can't see and observe the logged values realtime and the other thing to be honest I don't really mind a 4-10Hz display rate in the application, but I tend to believe that this is not on the display rate, but the data acquisition rate too and results in quite some squary (if that is a word) waveforms.

[koracing]

I agree that I tend to see the logged rate as no faster than the connection rate when it's slow.  I'm not sure what you need to observe at 40Hz in a time plot logging window as it's being logged versus watching the gauges on your preferred display, but if there are parameters you are concerned with while tuning - you can always set up warnings.  Personally I always set the check engine light to trigger if I go lean on boost while dyno tuning for example.

[atlex]

one of my tricks for pc logging at the full 40hz is to have another view that's empty bar a few key stats like knock count and iat/ect.

if I set it to pc log, I then switch to that view to get the maximum possible logging rate during a session, then switch to the more complex views to do analysis.

 i7-4650U CPU @ 1.70GHz   2.30 GHz + 8gb ram. nothing to scream about.

[koracing]

I actually just tried this this weekend and the connection speed stayed over 30Hz while logging - 32-45Hz most of the time.  Of course if I'm not viewing the screen I don't see the benefit to doing this versus the internal logger either...  Other than the benefit of not having to download first to see it.