Rediscovering HPET

[porina]

For those not familiar, HPET is one of the timers available on a system. If you've ever been in the competitive overclocking/benchmarking world, it is often a requirement to turn it on to prevent timing cheats that can affect other clocks.

 

Why mention it now? I just went to my streaming setup, and as I was getting ready, performance felt really bad. I was benchmarking in previous days and then it hit me, I had HPET turned on as part of that. Could it be?... yes, turning it off made everything responsive again. It is a known problem that HEPT can cause performance problems in some scenarios. I'm now wondering, if any of my other systems are similarly affected to some degree. So maybe add that one to the list of weird performance problems. Symptoms include high CPU kernel usage (enable it on the chart in Task Manager to see), and in this case, GPU usage was also higher than normal for what should be basic tasks.

 

For reference, run following as admin:

To enable: bcdedit /set useplatformclock true

To disable: bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

Reboot to take effect.

[Guest]

Man... I remember when TR first came out and I had just installed Windows and then AI Suite 3, which enable HPET.

The 3 mins it took to do any one thing was.... whew. Luckily it was an experience shared by many and quickly discovered.

[Vishera]

31 minutes ago, porina said:

to prevent timing cheats that can affect other clocks.

That's called clock drift.

31 minutes ago, porina said:

I had HPET turned on as part of that. Could it be?... yes, turning it off made everything responsive again. It is a known problem

Indeed.

31 minutes ago, porina said:

For reference, run following as admin:

To enable: bcdedit /set useplatformclock true

To disable: bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

Reboot to take effect.

The easiest and best solution overall is to use Benchmate,it enables HPET exclusively for the programs it comes with,

So you don't need to enable or disable HPET.

Benchmate is approved by HWBOT.

Benchmate's goal is fair competition and includes protection against tempering,it validates your result and submits it to HWBOT if you want.

[porina]

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

The easiest and best solution overall is to use Benchmate,it enables HPET exclusively for the programs it comes with,

So you don't need to enable or disable HPET.

Benchmate is approved by HWBOT.

Benchmate's goal is fair competition and includes protection against tempering,it validates your result and submits it to HWBOT if you want.

I'm not really active on hwbot any more, stopping around the time benchmate started to go into beta test. I did throw in some results to help out in the Country Cup, and none of the benches I took part in were part of BenchMate. It is one solution, but not a universal one yet.

[Mark Kaine]

@porina

 

So I'm trying to check my hpet status... 

 

 

I have no idea what any of this means lol, nor if it even was the correct command... 

 

 

Is it on or off now...? 

 

 

 

[porina]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

Is it on or off now...? 

Just did a check on my system, if it is enabled the value is listed in the 2nd section. I don't see it in yours, so it is off.

 

If you haven't turned it on manually yourself in the past, chances are it isn't enabled. I think the only software that people might encounter that required it, at least at one point in time, was Ryzen Master. When it came out it required HPET enabled. I don't know if they have since removed that requirement.

[Mark Kaine]

24 minutes ago, porina said:

Just did a check on my system, if it is enabled the value is listed in the 2nd section. I don't see it in yours, so it is off.

 

If you haven't turned it on manually yourself in the past, chances are it isn't enabled. I think the only software that people might encounter that required it, at least at one point in time, was Ryzen Master. When it came out it required HPET enabled. I don't know if they have since removed that requirement.

Oh I see, ok thanks... I don't remember if I ever turned it on tbh, but probably not, I just wanted to check for a possible mismatch before checking in BIOS... 

 

And OHHH... that possibly explains some things.. RYZEN MASTER never worked for me... 

 

It did *once* the first time I used it but upon booting my pc just stayed on with no display / or any response really, and that happened since then every time I used RM, even just opening the program would trigger the crash... 

 

So it's entirely possible my mobo either doesn't support the function or its simply not enabled (I looked around it seems its probably supported but depends on the firmware, aka BIOS) 

 

thanks for the info!

[porina]

23 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

And OHHH... that possibly explains some things.. RYZEN MASTER never worked for me... 

I had problems with installing/running it in the past too, don't think it is related directly to HPET.

 

Anyway, below link gives more detail on the Ryzen side of HPET guidance:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12678/a-timely-discovery-examining-amd-2nd-gen-ryzen-results/3

 

Apparently in newer platforms it is ways enabled at bios level, so it is up to the OS to use it or not (e.g. via the setting in 1st post). For 1st gen apparently having it turned off was recommended as having it on gave a performance penalty.

 

On Intel systems, the one I had a problem with was Skylake-X so maybe it is something to do with that particular system. I can't say I noticed any difference on my other home systems with the setting on. I'm also reminded of one system at work which had odd slow behaviour (Dell i7-8700). I never found the cause while I was there other than an OS restore fixed it. I'm now thinking it could be HEPT in that case too, as I had tried benchmarking it previously.

[Mark Kaine]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

I had problems with installing/running it in the past too, don't think it is related directly to HPET.

Hmm and did you find any fix? 

 

I do believe it's really the mobo tho, while mine should support RM, it just doesn't (unless it's really hpet related) And the MSI b450m I tried out once with otherwise the exact same components had no issues using RM whatsoever (it was just the motherboard was really bad... bad performance, random restarts... which is why I'm still using my b350m, it at least works and performance is what you'd expect from my components, generally above average too) 

[porina]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

Hmm and did you find any fix? 

Reinstall OS. It's a lousy fix but either Windows and/or AMD software was messed up for whatever reason and I didn't find a way around it.