100% CPU usage all the time.

[rlpowell]

This is on a Win2K machine.

No matter what it's doing, *even if it's paused and minimized*, Uplink uses all available spare CPU cycles.  This is both unnecessary and annoying.

I humbly suggest that you search your code for busy loops and replace them with clock-timed or event-driven wait cycles.

-Robin


(Edited by rlpowell at 1:45 am on Mar. 29, 2003)

[Stewsburntmonkey]

Most games will use all avalible cycles so as to give the best possible performance.  :)

[rlpowell]

Wow.  Umm, that is so amazingly wrong.

I just went and tested this, and found that a fair number of games have the behaviour you describe.  The one that didn't, Freelancer, is also the one that gives me the least trouble multitasking.

This violates every thing I've ever learned about software development (and I have a CS degree).  :-P

You are right that it's not just Uplink, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

-Robin

[Stewsburntmonkey]

Well I didn't say it was a good thing, I just said its not neccessarily faulty coding, just suboptimal.  Freelance is wonderfully coded and runs incredably well as it should after so much developement by so many highly skilled programmers.  :)

[Grimm Spector]

Games use the cycles but not the CPU resources, when you're in win2k it's not just indicated how many cycles are in use, but the entire CPU's resources, including process threading, parallel processsing, co-processing and the processing on the math co-processor that exists in every system. A program should never take 100% of you're CPU usage in this screen, and lag you're computer to hell, especially while minimized and paused, halflife doesn't to me, nor do hordes of new games, it's a programming error, and most likely a memory leak, or some type of overflow going on somewhere, either that or somethings stuck in a continuous loop that it can't break out of, which depending on what it's doing could start chugging away on the processors cycles on nothing repeatedly.

Freelancer doesn't take half the CPU usage on my machine, so I don't know what you're worried about, most of the crashes in it are graphics related, or server related, losing sync and what not. Then again, MS has more money than they know wha to do with, they can afford to hire stupid people that make games lazily, Freelancer should have been a lot better, it wasn't, oh well.

Back to Uplink...

[Grimm Spector]

Quote: from rlpowell on 11:13 pm on Mar. 28, 2003[br]Wow.  Umm, that is so amazingly wrong.

I just went and tested this, and found that a fair number of games have the behaviour you describe.  The one that didn't, Freelancer, is also the one that gives me the least trouble multitasking.

This violates every thing I've ever learned about software development (and I have a CS degree).  :-P

You are right that it's not just Uplink, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

-Robin

I don't know what's up with you're system but I can only  think of a few games that spike my CPU usage up to 100%, programs, windows, and processors, are made to thread and only allocate what is necessary for that thread to run optimally at any given time to it, or if there isn't enough to make everything go optimally, they timeshare as evenly as possible, some programs (system ones) getting priority over others. Optimally doesn't mean 100%, optimally means being below a certain threshold for memory access, swap file access, and disk seeking.

[Uhura34234]

Hello!

Try to delete or rename the opengl32.dll.

Then it doesn´t take so much resources so often. But still too much for a game of that graphics&sound&engine.

But I then have the problem of some irregular graphics sometimes.

(Edited by Uhura34234 at 12:34 pm on June 5, 2003)

[ReflectingGod]

Uhura34234: what you suggest there is not the solution to what rlpowell is saying, it is the solution to another problem that can be experienced in the game....

Nice try though