Affinity-setting context menu improvements

Started by Coldblackice, January 28, 2024, 11:31:09 PM

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Coldblackice

Regarding context-menu setting of affinity:

Given processes' "Affinity" context menu by default has all CPU cores pre-selected, and given a mouse click in context menus immediately closes the menu, if one desires quickly setting affinity this way, it requires opening the same menu again and again. Not very tenable, and easier to just jump into the expanded Affinity panel popup.

affinity1.png

Two potentials are 1) Implementing an ability to keep this menu open even after a clicking inside it, akin to "holding CTRL/SHIFT" function, closing the menu by either Escaping or clicking outside it.

Or 2), Inverting the scope, so instead of all cores selected as the default/no-action, instead no-cores selected being the default/no-action, and only when the user clicks a core in this menu does affinity-setting occur.

affinity2.png

My (uneducated) hunch is users might more directly "single-core" a process affinity (on average) or "No-hyperthreading"*, both of which needing only a single click. Or at least get to their end-goal affinity faster by enabling cores rather than an inverted bitmask.

The ideal would be keeping the Affinity sub-menu open after clicking in it (or switching to the full panel). That said, perhaps this wouldn't be easy to do, contextually, for just this one menu, meaning all other context menus would need to be escaped/clicked out of to make them go away.

Alas, probably something 99% of the userbase never comes across, and thus cares about  :) Just some thoughts.

*I've temporarily disabled hyperthreading to test the effect on multiplayer games
**Sidenote, I just discovered in posting this that the random pauses and "hiccups" of audio I've been getting lately, despite LatencyMon not showing any issues with DPCs, has been due to my manual pinning of audiodg.exe to a single core! My own fault, initially set to keep it on a physical core with hyperthreading enabled, which I usually run.

Jeremy Collake

The core selection in the affinity context menu is indeed untenable, and already hidden on systems with 32 or more logical processors. There are plans to improve this, and I think you'll see that come to fruition in the near future!
Software Engineer. Bitsum LLC.

Jeremy Collake

Process Lasso v14.0 adds Named CPU Affinities, a feature that will help with navigating the CPU affinity submenus.

Release announcement: https://bitsum.com/product-update/process-lasso-14-0-named-cpu-affinities/

Software Engineer. Bitsum LLC.

mikasa

QuoteProcess Lasso v14.0 adds Named CPU Affinities, a feature that will help with navigating the CPU affinity submenus.

Release announcement: https://bitsum.com/product-update/process-lasso-14-0-named-cpu-affinities/ fnf

I just read this news. Even though I'm not super familiar with CPU affinity settings, this sounds like a user-friendly improvement. Will this make it easier to optimize performance for different applications?

rafterdeadbeat

Quote from: mikasa on March 13, 2024, 12:29:57 AMI just read this news. Even though I'm not super familiar with CPU affinity settings, this sounds like a user-friendly improvement. Will this make it easier to optimize performance for different applications?
I have the same question. Have you found the answer yet?

samantha

I never realized how annoying the Affinity context menu could be until I read this. The multiple clicks for single-core or no-hyperthreading is a pain point. I like the idea of keeping the menu open on click, but maybe a compromise would be a clear visual indicator that another click is needed to confirm the selection.

sarausa

#6
An improved context menu can provide an easier-to-use interface, helping users interact with options conveniently and quickly. 

similarbeans

Ideally leave it open. Having said that, it definitely wouldn't be simple to do this contextually for just this one menu, which would need escaping or clicking out of all other context menus in order to remove them. I concur with this. For updates, the support program works incredibly well.