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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Gary Grigsby's War in the East Series >> Tech Support >> CPU horde even in idle state

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CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 5:43:37 AM

Indy68

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Even if there are no animation or sounds or user action, the game runs in some busy loop consuming all CPU power. This is probably related to sluggishness in higher resolutions: Even accessing the menus (no repainting of the main screen is needed) is slow in high resolutions.

Post #: 1

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 8:27:52 AM

Apollo11

Posts: 24082
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From: Zagreb, Croatia
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Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: Indy68

Even if there are no animation or sounds or user action, the game runs in some busy loop consuming all CPU power. This is probably related to sluggishness in higher resolutions: Even accessing the menus (no repainting of the main screen is needed) is slow in high resolutions.

What is your desktop resolution?

What are the specs of your PC?

Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 2

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 9:57:56 AM

Indy68

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Win7 x64 with 8 GB RAM. I have two displays, both 1920x1200, but I removed my second display and restarted WITE and it didn't help. CPU: Core 2 Duo T7700 2.4 Ghz. Sounds are disabled in WITE. Video card: NVIDIA Quadro FX 1600M with latest drivers (260.99) (I used to have older driver dated July 2010 , but installed the latest driver to see if that helps - no help).

One of the CPU cores is fully loaded even if I run the game in small window, but then it's not so sluggish.

(in reply to Apollo11)

Post #: 3

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 10:06:52 AM

Apollo11

Posts: 24082
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From: Zagreb, Croatia
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Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: Indy68

Win7 x64 with 8 GB RAM. I have two displays, both 1920x1200, but I removed my second display and restarted WITE and it didn't help. CPU: Core 2 Duo T7700 2.4 Ghz. Sounds are disabled in WITE. Video card: NVIDIA Quadro FX 1600M with latest drivers (260.99) (I used to have older driver dated July 2010 , but installed the latest driver to see if that helps - no help).

One of the CPU cores is fully loaded even if I run the game in small window, but then it's not so sluggish.

Hmmm...

I test WitE on i7 920 (4+4 cores = 8 cores) and 12 GB RAM on my workstation at work and I have never seen high CPU usage.

At home I have Core2Duo and 2 GB RAM - same thing - no high CPU usage.

On my laptop I have mobile i7 (4+4 cores = 8 cores) and 4 GB of RAM and it is the same - no problems.

Can you please use the windows "Task Manager" and see exactly which process is sucking the CPU cycles?

Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 4

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 10:27:15 AM

Indy68

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Apollo11
Can you please use the windows "Task Manager" and see exactly which process is sucking the CPU cycles?

WarInTheEast.exe*32

There might be a reason why you see low CPU usage: When you click Task Manager window it becomes active, and then WITE CPU usage drops to 0%. So, WITE is CPU horde only when it's the active window (getting user input).

(in reply to Apollo11)

Post #: 5

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 10:43:01 AM

Helpless

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quote:

There might be a reason why you see low CPU usage: When you click Task Manager window it becomes active, and then WITE CPU usage drops to 0%. So, WITE is CPU horde only when it's the active window (getting user input).

Resource monitor is refreshing when WITE window is active. I never seen CPU goes to 100% without a reason when WITE is running.

Don't have so big screen to try it.

Attachment (1)

_____________________________

Pavel Zagzin
WITE/WITW/WITE-2 Development

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 6

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 11:05:52 AM

Indy68

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Helpless

quote:

There might be a reason why you see low CPU usage: When you click Task Manager window it becomes active, and then WITE CPU usage drops to 0%. So, WITE is CPU horde only when it's the active window (getting user input).

Resource monitor is refreshing when WITE window is active. I never seen CPU goes to 100% without a reason when WITE is running.

Don't have so big screen to try it.

I suggest you do a test: Check the CPU usage when WITE is active but idle (you are not doing anything with mouse or keyboard and AI is not executing). Then activate some other window. Check if CPU load drops significantly. My CPU Usage drops dramatically in that kind of test.

(in reply to Helpless)

Post #: 7

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 11:36:20 AM

Apollo11

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From: Zagreb, Croatia
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Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: Indy68

I suggest you do a test: Check the CPU usage when WITE is active but idle (you are not doing anything with mouse or keyboard and AI is not executing). Then activate some other window. Check if CPU load drops significantly. My CPU Usage drops dramatically in that kind of test.

I see nothing here (i7 920 with 4+4 cores = 8 cores, 12 GB RAM, nVidia gfx card)...

BTW, do you have some sort of power saving (i.e. CPU power saving) enabled?

Can you use the CPU-z (freeware CPU info program) to check this (the frequency of CPU is what I am interested in)?

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 8

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 11:51:52 AM

Indy68

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No power saving modes active. CPU-Z reports about 2400 MHz (screen shot attached).

Attachment (1)

(in reply to Apollo11)

Post #: 9

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 12:41:33 PM

Apollo11

Posts: 24082
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From: Zagreb, Croatia
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Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: Indy68

No power saving modes active. CPU-Z reports about 2400 MHz (screen shot attached).

Thanks for info. No apparent problem seen there as well.

So... you are running WitE on laptop... and it is interesting what you are seeing...

Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 10

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 12:46:35 PM

Apollo11

Posts: 24082
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From: Zagreb, Croatia
Status: offline

Hi all,

BTW, have you tried running WitE as "Administrator"?

Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 11

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 1:27:42 PM

Indy68

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Actually, I can't even run WitE without administrator rights. The Game Menu is run in the administrator mode, and if I try to execute the WarInTheEast.exe (quick start icon or in the install folder) without administrator rights I get error (Fatal Error Code#801 regarding serial number).

I can't believe this is a problem in my pc because every other thing works fine and I have most recent drivers. I wish someone else could confirm this problem. I have attached a screenshot of Task Manager. You can see that before WitE starts, CPU is almost idle. Naturally during the application startup and scenario startup CPU is active, and during scenario selection CPU is not very active. However, most of the time between the Scen Selection mark and other window activation mark is just idle game screen: Scenario is loaded showing units on the map and I have even moved the mouse out of the whole application window and I'm not touching anything. Window size is default (1024x768, I think), I tried not to touch anything unnecessary at all. I kept it like that about 15 seconds to show you the CPU load being high. Interestingly the usage trend is lightly upwards and memory usage of WitE is changing all the time. When I finally click the mouse to active another window the CPU usage drops.

Attachment (1)

(in reply to Apollo11)

Post #: 12

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 1:33:36 PM

Helpless

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quote:

Actually, I can't even run WitE without administrator rights. The Game Menu is run in the administrator mode, and if I try to execute the WarInTheEast.exe (quick start icon or in the install folder) without administrator rights I get error (Fatal Error Code#801 regarding serial number).

This problem caused by UAC (or some other security setting) which blocks copy protection util to start.

High CPU load when map is active is expected since the drawing routine is really massive. It is possible to optimize it, but it is not so easy task. The good news that since we managed to solve the mouse click problem, it is possible to reduce polling cycles without any visible degradation for the game performance. So far on my PC I'm getting 20-40% CPU load reduction when game runs idle. It should have positive effect on some low end configurations as well. Keep testing.

_____________________________

Pavel Zagzin
WITE/WITW/WITE-2 Development

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 13

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 1:52:36 PM

Indy68

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Helpless

High CPU load when map is active is expected since the drawing routine is really massive.

But why does the drawing routine has to execute when there is no need to redraw anything? (No animation, no user interaction, no popups)

Also, I think the drawing routine is not very efficient. I was working on a similar game like this in my spare time, but haven't had much time to proceed. Anyway, I was using the old War in Russia hex map as source and I implemented the map scrolling/zooming in Microsoft WPF technology. So, almost everything was vector based graphics (excluding some textures) and zooming/scrolling was very fast. I didn't see any delay. But now with WitE and the same pc the game board is very slow. With this personal background and watching what must be drawn on the board, it seems that the drawing routine is not very good. Still, the game itself looks nice, so I appreciate your efforts. I'm also impressed that the beta version with mouse click fix came so quickly

(in reply to Helpless)

Post #: 14

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 1:53:08 PM

Apollo11

Posts: 24082
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From: Zagreb, Croatia
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Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: Indy68

Actually, I can't even run WitE without administrator rights. The Game Menu is run in the administrator mode, and if I try to execute the WarInTheEast.exe (quick start icon or in the install folder) without administrator rights I get error (Fatal Error Code#801 regarding serial number).

I can't believe this is a problem in my pc because every other thing works fine and I have most recent drivers. I wish someone else could confirm this problem. I have attached a screenshot of Task Manager. You can see that before WitE starts, CPU is almost idle. Naturally during the application startup and scenario startup CPU is active, and during scenario selection CPU is not very active. However, most of the time between the Scen Selection mark and other window activation mark is just idle game screen: Scenario is loaded showing units on the map and I have even moved the mouse out of the whole application window and I'm not touching anything. Window size is default (1024x768, I think), I tried not to touch anything unnecessary at all. I kept it like that about 15 seconds to show you the CPU load being high. Interestingly the usage trend is lightly upwards and memory usage of WitE is changing all the time. When I finally click the mouse to active another window the CPU usage drops.

This is good info (and Pavel above found some god things as well)!

BTW, did you restart the laptop after you installed the WitE or you just put it to sleep?

In one of our tests prior to release I had the exact same problem as you (and that's why I asked about "Run as Administartor") and it was solved after PC restart (that PC is never shut down 24/7/365)...

Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 15

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 2:13:53 PM

Indy68

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Actually, I didn't reboot my laptop after installing WitE. I just restarted and retried, but it didn't help.

Also, the GUI response time is pretty good in the default size window, but it's quite awful in 1920x1200 (Menus are also slow). I need to learn patience, I guess, because I hate to play in small window.

(in reply to Apollo11)

Post #: 16

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 2:17:03 PM

Apollo11

Posts: 24082
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From: Zagreb, Croatia
Status: offline

Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: Indy68

Actually, I didn't reboot my laptop after installing WitE. I just restarted and retried, but it didn't help.

Also, the GUI response time is pretty good in the default size window, but it's quite awful in 1920x1200 (Menus are also slow). I need to learn patience, I guess, because I hate to play in small window.

The reboot should have worked but there might be caveat...

What EXE are you using now?

The original one or HotFix that some of you guys with problem got via e-mail?

Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 17

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 2:33:43 PM

Indy68

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I'm testing now, after reboot, with both exes. Both have about the same CPU load figures in idle game screen state:

default window size: CPU load 39%
1920x1200: CPU load 46%

These figures are 10 second averages, tested with both exes.

(in reply to Apollo11)

Post #: 18

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 3:05:07 PM

Broadcast

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Try using a Windows Basic theme instead of Windows Aero.

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 19

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 3:30:36 PM

Indy68

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Switching to Windows Basic theme actually improved response time in higher resolutions, thanks

. Oddly CPU usage was not reduced, but perhaps even increased (WitE CPU usage figures were somewhat higher than what I reported earlier, but that might be just co-incidence).

(in reply to Broadcast)

Post #: 20

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 3:48:00 PM

Apollo11

Posts: 24082
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From: Zagreb, Croatia
Status: offline

Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: Indy68

I'm testing now, after reboot, with both exes. Both have about the same CPU load figures in idle game screen state:

default window size: CPU load 39%
1920x1200: CPU load 46%

These figures are 10 second averages, tested with both exes.

The original (i.e. WitE release) EXE you can run (now after reboot) as normal user - the new "HotFix" only as "Run as Administrator"...

Please try!

Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 21

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 4:24:03 PM

Indy68

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Correct. The original exe runs without admin rights, but UAC confirmation dialog must be accepted. The hot fix exe gives the fatal error - admin rights are required. This time the CPU usage figures were about the same as before switching from Aero to basic, and not much difference in 1024x768 and 1920x1200, about 40% in idle, 50% in scrolling.

(in reply to Apollo11)

Post #: 22

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 4:57:00 PM

Apollo11

Posts: 24082
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From: Zagreb, Croatia
Status: offline

Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: Indy68

Correct. The original exe runs without admin rights, but UAC confirmation dialog must be accepted. The hot fix exe gives the fatal error - admin rights are required. This time the CPU usage figures were about the same as before switching from Aero to basic, and not much difference in 1024x768 and 1920x1200, about 40% in idle, 50% in scrolling.

OK!

So to recap - the CPU usage is still 40-50% for one core in any case (and with any EXE) just by idling and scrolling...

Is this correct assumption?

Leo "Apolo11"

_____________________________

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 23

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 6:08:24 PM

Indy68

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Joined: 1/29/2010
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Apollo11
So to recap - the CPU usage is still 40-50% for one core in any case (and with any EXE) just by idling and scrolling...

Is this correct assumption?

Yes, 40% idle, 50% scrolling. But I think these mean actually 80%-100% core usage, 40%-50% of total CPU capacity (I'm, not sure though). Whenever a single thread is running hot (in other applications) in my pc, I see 50% usage for that application.

(in reply to Apollo11)

Post #: 24

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/10/2010 6:23:29 PM

Helpless

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Joined: 8/27/2004
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quote:

But why does the drawing routine has to execute when there is no need to redraw anything?

There could be several names for this anomaly, shortest - "bug"

.

It is now between 0-2% on my PC when it is idle.

Attachment (1)

_____________________________

Pavel Zagzin
WITE/WITW/WITE-2 Development

(in reply to Indy68)

Post #: 25

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/11/2010 5:24:08 PM

FM WarB

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quote:

The good news that since we managed to solve the mouse click problem, it is possible to reduce polling cycles without any visible degradation for the game performance. So far on my PC I'm getting 20-40% CPU load reduction when game runs idle. It should have positive effect on some low end configurations as well. Keep testing.

If/when implemented this would be good news for me with a low end system and push me "off the fence." Please inform when such is available, say in an update.

(in reply to Helpless)

Post #: 26

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/11/2010 5:55:17 PM

joey

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From: Johnstown, PA
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Interesting, when at idle on my system, WITE consumes 51 to 55% of my CPU capacity. It constantly seems to have a loop running in the background. I would love to see it at a mear 2 to 3%!

(in reply to FM WarB)

Post #: 27

RE: CPU horde even in idle state - 12/11/2010 7:27:44 PM

Joel Billings