CPU Resource hog.

[Kermamorjens]

I'm having a bit of a performance problem with Defcon. I have a fast enough computer and I get more than enough frames per second, so turning down game detail is not an issue here. My problem is that Defcon seems to take unnecessary amount of CPU even when minimized - it's at a constant 100% cpu usage no matter what I do. It makes the all other programs run sluggishly, making multi-tasking with Defcon a pain in the ass. So, is there a way to for example limit maximum framerate, or some other way (eg. some software) to limit the CPU usage allocated for Defcon?

[Montyphy]

Open up Task Manager, select Defcon.exe from the list, right click (secondary click). A drop down menu should have appeared, from the menu look for options regarding priority. Change it from normal to something less. It may have adverse effects but that should be unlikely in this case.

[xander]

Defcon is always running, unless you pause it. Even minimized, it is running. Furthermore, it will take as many CPU cycles as it can get, because that allows it to keep up with the AI, framerates, &c. If you don't want it to use that much CPU power (though I don't know why you would object -- is your CPU overheating? In that case, you should probably get a better fan/heatsink/&c.), you can renice it, I suppose. In Windows, I believe you can do that from the task manager.

xander

[Kermamorjens]

Change thread priority

Doesn't seem to help much.

Defcon is always running, unless you pause it. Even minimized, it is running. Furthermore, it will take as many CPU cycles as it can get, because that allows it to keep up with the AI, framerates, &c.

Yeah, but while minimized, the game shouldn't need to deal with graphics, or have a high framerate. I don't know much about coding, but I do know that most other games don't put my computer to its knees when I alt-tab.

If you don't want it to use that much CPU power (though I don't know why you would object -- is your CPU overheating? In that case, you should probably get a better fan/heatsink/&c.)

Like I tried to explain, a process taking all the cpu cycles it can get makes multi-tasking a pain, because the computer then acts sluggishly with any other application.

And I don't want it to use that much CPU power because it's completely unnecessary for me. Defcon isn't such a graphic-intensive game, so for example 30 FPS would do just nicely. I have an AMD 64 3200+ processor, which runs the game almost playably at 800mhz (the bottleneck is most likely my crappy video card anyway), so there's really no need to have it constantly at the maximum 2000mhz and taking 100% of that.

It doesn't overheat, makes the fans noisy, though. But that's not the main problem.

you can renice it, I suppose. In Windows, I believe you can do that from the task manager

Do what now? If you meant setting the thread priority lower, like montyphy suggested, it doesn't help much. It still takes almsot all it can get out of my processor.

[Montyphy]

you can renice it, I suppose. In Windows, I believe you can do that from the task manager

Do what now? If you meant setting the thread priority lower, like Montyphy suggested, it doesn't help much. It still takes almsot all it can get out of my processor.

It should still try to use 100% on the lowest priority, however, when another program tries to do a task Defcon should relequish the cycles faster thus you should gain better response while multitasking.

[Kermamorjens]

you can renice it, I suppose. In Windows, I believe you can do that from the task manager

It should still try to use 100% on the lowest priority, however, when another program tries to do a task Defcon should relequish the cycles faster thus you should gain better response while multitasking.

So I should, but it doesn't actually help much. I don't know what else it could be. I thought it was both a cpu and a memory issue, but Defcon only uses 140 megs or so.

[NeoThermic]

you can renice it, I suppose. In Windows, I believe you can do that from the task manager

It should still try to use 100% on the lowest priority, however, when another program tries to do a task Defcon should relequish the cycles faster thus you should gain better response while multitasking.

So I should, but it doesn't actually help much. I don't know what else it could be. I thought it was both a cpu and a memory issue, but Defcon only uses 140 megs or so.

Ahh, but what else are you running? How much RAM do you have? If your computer is having problems multi-tasking with Defcon running, then I might infer that your computer is swapping. As of typing this, I've got 51 processes open, using a total of 834MB committed charge. (in physical, 674MB is free). I can multi-task with Defcon running without problem (currently I'm running Defcon from within my debugger, and everything is going fine).

NeoThermic

[Nameless_]

Change thread priority

Doesn't seem to help much.

Defcon is always running, unless you pause it. Even minimized, it is running. Furthermore, it will take as many CPU cycles as it can get, because that allows it to keep up with the AI, framerates, &c.

Yeah, but while minimized, the game shouldn't need to deal with graphics, or have a high framerate. I don't know much about coding, but I do know that most other games don't put my computer to its knees when I alt-tab.

If you don't want it to use that much CPU power (though I don't know why you would object -- is your CPU overheating? In that case, you should probably get a better fan/heatsink/&c.)

Like I tried to explain, a process taking all the cpu cycles it can get makes multi-tasking a pain, because the computer then acts sluggishly with any other application.

And I don't want it to use that much CPU power because it's completely unnecessary for me. Defcon isn't such a graphic-intensive game, so for example 30 FPS would do just nicely. I have an AMD 64 3200+ processor, which runs the game almost playably at 800mhz (the bottleneck is most likely my crappy video card anyway), so there's really no need to have it constantly at the maximum 2000mhz and taking 100% of that.

It doesn't overheat, makes the fans noisy, though. But that's not the main problem.

you can renice it, I suppose. In Windows, I believe you can do that from the task manager

Do what now? If you meant setting the thread priority lower, like montyphy suggested, it doesn't help much. It still takes almsot all it can get out of my processor.

This is probably threadromancy but I couldn't help pointing out (because the misconception that graphics are the be all and end all of everything performance-wise annoys me) when a program like Defcon is eating CPU power it's not because it's processing graphics, it's processing algorythms for the AI, trajectories, unit behaviour, etc. I don't know the details of the Defcon engine but for the computer it's a very mathematical task. The game can't just "forget" what was going on to free up resources, if it did that information - and thus the game - would be irretrievable.

The fact that you have a crappy graphics card, though, will mean some burden will inadvertently end up on your CPU due to what the GPU can't handle.

It's also worth mentioning a game that terminates the the processing of graphics in its entirety and then redrawing and re-evaluating every time you alt-tab would be a pretty unpleasant experience, admittedly Defcon doesn't have much in the way of loading times but it's a lot more efficient for the game to just keep things the way they are, the likelihood is people like you will be much more angry if the game is sluggish than if AIM is, because it can mean losing.

[runner1212]

Well I have noticed alot of CPU usage too.Does anyone know if this game can be loaded into RAM?
If so how? If not why?

[xander]

1) This thread is long dead. Why did you bring it back from the grave?
2) How would "loading the game into RAM" alter how much CPU time it needs? What do you even mean by "loading the game into RAM?"

xander

[NeoThermic]

The point of loading something in RAM is for quick read access. Since Defcon does no major file reads after start up, then it'd be pointless.

NeoThermic