High performance setup

High-performance setup

This is exact opposite of low-memory setup and typically you want to follow those tips if you want to further increase ASF performance (in terms of CPU speed), for potential cost of increased memory usage.

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ASF already tries to prefer performance when it comes to general balanced tuning, therefore there is not a lot you can do to further increase its performance, although you're not completely out of options either. However, keep in mind that those options are not enabled by default, which means that they're not good enough to consider them balanced for majority of usages, therefore you should decide yourself if memory increase brought by them is acceptable for you.

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Runtime tuning (advanced)

Below tricks involve serious memory increase and should be used with caution.

ArchiSteamFarm.runtimeconfig.json allows you to tune ASF runtime, especially allowing you to switch between server GC and workstation GC.

The garbage collector is self-tuning and can work in a wide variety of scenarios. You can use a configuration file setting to set the type of garbage collection based on the characteristics of the workload. The CLR provides the following types of garbage collection:

• Workstation garbage collection, which is for all client workstations and stand-alone PCs. This is the default setting for the <gcServer> element in the runtime configuration schema.
• Server garbage collection, which is intended for server applications that need high throughput and scalability. Server garbage collection can be non-concurrent or background.

More can be read at fundamentals of garbage collection.

ASF is using workstation garbage collection by default. This is mainly because of a good balance between memory usage and performance, which is more than enough for just a few bots, as usually a single concurrent background GC thread is fast enough to handle entire memory allocated by ASF.

However, today we have a lot of CPU cores that ASF can greatly benefit from, by having a dedicated GC thread per each CPU vCore that is available. This can greatly improve the performance during heavy ASF tasks such as parsing badge pages or the inventory, since every CPU vCore can help, as opposed to just 2 (main and GC). Server GC is recommended for machines with 3 CPU vCores and more, workstation GC is automatically forced if your machine has just 1 CPU vCore, and if you have exactly 2 then you can consider trying both (results may vary).

You can enable server GC by switching System.GC.Server property of ArchiSteamFarm.runtimeconfig.json from false to true. Keep in mind that you may need to do it more than once, as ASF will still use false by default after auto-update.

Server GC itself does not result in a very huge memory increase by just being active, but it has much bigger generation sizes, and therefore is far more lazy when it comes to giving memory back to OS. You may find yourself in a sweet spot where server GC increases performance significantly and you'd like to keep using it, but at the same time you can't afford that huge memory increase that comes out of using it. Luckily for you, there is a "best of both worlds" setting, by using server GC with GCLatencyLevel configuration knob set to 0, which will still enable server GC, but limit generation sizes and focus more on memory. Alternatively, you might also experiment with another knob, GCHeapHardLimitPercent, or even both of them at the same time.

However, if memory is not a problem for you (as GC still takes into account your available memory and tweaks itself), it's a much better idea to not change those knobs at all, achieving superior performance in result.

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Recommended optimization

• Ensure that you're using default value of OptimizationMode which is MaxPerformance. This is by far the most important setting, as using MinMemoryUsage value has dramatic effects on performance.
• Enable server GC by switching System.GC.Server property of ArchiSteamFarm.runtimeconfig.json from false to true. This will enable server GC which can be immediately seen as being active by memory increase compared to workstation GC.
• If you can't afford that much memory increase, considering tweaking GCLatencyLevel and/or GCHeapHardLimitPercent to achieve "the best of both worlds". However, if your memory can afford it, then it's better to keep it at default - server GC already tweaks itself during runtime and is smart enough to use less memory when your OS will truly need it.

If you've enabled server GC and kept configuration knobs at their default values, then you have superior ASF performance that should be blazing fast even with hundreds or thousands of enabled bots. CPU should not be a bottleneck anymore, as ASF is able to use your entire CPU power when needed, cutting required time to bare minimum. The next step would be CPU and RAM upgrades.