[MO2 Plugin] Anomaly CPU Affinity addon

FEATURES

This plugin is nothing more than automated version of manually setting your CPU affinity thorough task manager. It have some simple logic to optimally determine affinity for different CPUs.

This is NOT ultimate solution for stutters! Not every system will benefit from affinity optimization, but it cost nothing to try.

There are 2 versions of the script: Automatic and Manual

• Automatic will set affinity automatically depending on your CPU. Recommended for most users.
• Manual version is for advanced users who want to set custom affinity. See CUSTOMIZE section.

DESCRIPTION

Anomaly is bad at multithreading and always sets it's main thread to core 0, which also is usually used by system processes or other applications. This potentially may lead to fighting for resources and cause stutters. This can be avoided by disabling CPU 0 affinity for Anomaly.exe, so game main thread will use other, less overloaded core.

The game can't recognize the virtual and physical cores when your CPU have Hyperthreading, so it will assign threads randomly, which may lead to overloading one core while others are idle. This plugin will make sure to assign only physical cores to the game.

Anomaly also can't differentiate P-cores and E-cores in newer Intel architectures, so it can assign game threads to less powerful E-cores. This plugin make sure that only P-cores are used by the game.

Currently we can do this by manually changing CPU affinity for Anomaly process, but it can be annoying because this operation requires many actions every time after the game is launched.

Alternatively we can use external program like Process Lasso, which can do it automatically but need to be running in the background all the time and will constantly monitor all of your system processes.

RQUIREMENTS

Mod Organizer 2 obviously.

INSTALLATION

The installation process is very simple:

1. Open downloaded zip file and choose version you want. Automatic is recommended.
2. Extract SetAnomalyCPUAffinity.py from zip file you downloaded to "ModOrganizer/plugins" folder.

If you don't know where is your ModOrganizer folder, click RMB on shortcut that launches ModOrganizer > "Open file location." There should be plugin folder.

After next Mod Organizer 2 launch, inside the puzzle dropdown menu, you should see "Anomaly CPU Affinity" field.

USAGE

This is simple 3 clicks process:

1. Launch the game through Mod Organizer 2
2. Select puzzle icon on the MO2 toolbar
3. Click "Anomaly CPU Affinity"

This process need to be repeated every time you launch Anomaly!

To check if affinity is set correctly you have to open Task Manager, select "Details" tab, Right-click on Anomaly.exe and select "Set affinity". You can see there which cores are used by the application.

CUSTOMIZE

• If you want to set specific core affinity for anomaly, during installation choose Manual version.
• After extracting the plugin to the folder open SetAnomalyCPUAffinity.py with text editor.
• Modify the line 57 "available_cores = list(range(n, j+1, p))" according to the comment above this line.
• If you get the error: "NameError: name 'n' is not defined" You have set the values incorrectly or not set them at all.

I provide no support for the Manual version. Use it only if you know what are you doing.

TROUBLESHOOTING

• This plugin seems to be incompatible with Process lasso and potentially with other programs that affect CPU affinity.
• You need to launch Anomaly before you run the plugin. Anomaly.exe process must be running for the script to work.
• If you getting "Access denied" errors, you may need to run Mod Organizer 2 with admin privileges.
• If you getting "ModuleNotFoundError: No module named psutil" You've installed Mod Organizer 2 incorrectly or installation is incomplete.
• If you getting the error: "NameError: name 'n' is not defined" You've installed Manual version and have not configured it properly.
• Sometimes plugin may throw an error "Anomaly is not running!" during the game launching. This is due to Anomaly like to freeze during loading and script can't set it's affinity in this state. Just run the script again when game is responding.
• Modifying affinity on new Intel CPUs (12th and 13th gen) may cause stutters or freezes