weird CPU usage

Pocus · #1 February 28th, 2004, 10:10 PM

I noticed that there is an area in the game where the CPU usage is - strangely - climbing at 100%, even if there is no animations or anything that should be demanding : the tactical positioning main window (where are listed leaders etc.). Strangely even the main map is far less demanding (something like 30% for me), and the battle in grid-mode (30% too, even when particles are displayed).

So it smells like some loop is running at an infernal speed somewhere in the code, and I'm unsure why something like that should run like mad, for a window without anims.

In case you wonder, I do care about cpu cycles, as I play on a laptop, and it triggers all three of my PC fans, thus a big noise which annoy me like hell

Pocus · #2 February 29th, 2004, 11:26 AM

further update, dunno if the devs really care but:

the cpu usage is related to the presence or absence of attached units. If you have 20 leaders listed w/o units, everything is fine, if you have units, CPU climb to 100% as soon as you have 3+ formations.

So I wonder if the problem is not related to units highlighting (wounded, experimented), and if there is not a real time redrawing of each and every units, either highlighted, or not, thus eating cpu power fast (without a limited frame rate for the redraw).

Torvak · #3 February 29th, 2004, 12:36 PM

What bugs me more is the high cpu usage in the title screen. I wish we could get a static title screen. I'm editing a map right now and sometimes i just want to close the editor and open a text file. That's almost impossible with dominions running and this is on a p4 2.5 with 1 gig ram.

Arryn · #4 February 29th, 2004, 01:03 PM

I really don't understand why some of you are having this sort of problem. Perhaps it's sound-related, as I've turned off the background music. On my 2.1Ghz AMD-based system, with a "mere" 512k RAM and using WinXP Pro, I have no trouble whatsoever running Dom, Mozilla (6+ tabs), Excel, Photoshop, MS-Paint, NoteTab (text editor), CuteFTP, and Total Commander all at the same time and I never notice a slowdown, not even while Dom is processing a turn (which, unlike some reports in other threads, never takes more than a minute or two to do, even in the background, no matter how far into the game I am). And XP isn't exactly an efficient OS. The next question that begs to be asked is what OS are you folks using that are having performance issues? (If you're using a DOS-based OS such as Win98SE, that would explain most everything.)

Arryn · #5 February 29th, 2004, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pocus:
I dont have perf issues. I have CPU usage issues. Thats different.

Many laptops are notorious for having (cheap) graphics chipsets that leave most of the work for the CPU to do rather than the GPU.

As PDF just said, turning off the background anims should ease your woes.

BTW, by my way of thinking, CPU usage is a performance issue. Performance isn't strictly just about frames/sec, or how long something takes. If you cannot multitask because some app has hogged all the CPU cycles, that's still a performance issue, since you cannot properly use your machine to perform the tasks you wish to do.

Pocus · #6 February 29th, 2004, 06:13 PM

I dont have much perf issue with dom on my laptop, I have a good 50/60 fps in battle. What bother my is the cpu hitting 100% in the unit positionning, which triggers all the fans of my pc. And I enjoy the silence

Johan K · #7 February 29th, 2004, 07:53 PM

It is possible to lower the maximum number of frames per second and thus lowering your cpu usage. The switch --fps 25 will cut your cpu usage (and fps) in half most of the time.

Pocus · #8 March 1st, 2004, 02:14 AM

I dont have perf issues. I have CPU usage issues. Thats different.

PDF · #9 March 1st, 2004, 02:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Torvak:
What bugs me more is the high cpu usage in the title screen. I wish we could get a static title screen. I'm editing a map right now and sometimes i just want to close the editor and open a text file. That's almost impossible with dominions running and this is on a p4 2.5 with 1 gig ram.

Yep, the opening screen animation gobbles at least 80% of a 2MHz CPU. But this is easily avoided either by minimizing the game or disabling this background anim in Preferences menu.

Pocus · #10 March 1st, 2004, 12:37 PM

its only a workaround, but its better then nothing..

it does not strike you that its abnormal that the CPU climb to 100% as soon as some attached units are displayed?