Fledgling Fyora RT4ME Posted November 21, 2009 Share Posted November 21, 2009 I'm noticing a fairly high CPU usage when playing Avernum 6, or at least higher than I would have expected. I have a 2GHz core2 duo iMac and CPU usage consistently hovers around 50%, even when I'm not playing and the game is just sitting there. Anyone else noticing this? I will say that I'm really enjoying the new chapter. My family isn't too thrilled through since I spend so much time in the office now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted November 21, 2009 Share Posted November 21, 2009 Yeah, all of SW's recent games hog your CPU. They will give up CPU time if another application needs it, most of the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garrulous Glaahk Skippy the bush kangaroo Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 The usage is 'normal'. 50% means that it is maxing out one core. It will take whatever processing it can get and give you the highest framerate it can manage - at least for the main thread. If Jeff starts taking advantage of Grand Central Station in 10.6 it might just get multithread aware and breakout from that one core limit! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curious Artila Warchief Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 Yes, I've noticed the same thing as well. At first I thought that A6 might be doing a busy wait in the runloop but I also came to the conclusion that it is probably just trying to draw the highest framerate possible. I really wish there were a framerate cap or something. Since A6 is completely turn based rendering at a higher framerate basically just makes the mouse more responsive, and animations run faster. I very briefly profiled A6 using shark and noticed that the main thread was using ~1.5% of its time calling unix time functions. That seems a bit odd to me but anyways... I use an external 1920x1200 24" monitor with my Macbook Pro when I'm at home. I usually run in lid-closed mode, only driving the external monitor while gaming. On my 2.4GHz C2D Macbook Pro I get 15fps or less in complex areas like the castle (at my monitor's native resolution). I always ran Geneforge 5 at 1920x1200 and it was quite playable, while A6 is not. Even though Grand Central Dispatch is quite cool, its not really suited for realtime applications since it doesn't make any guarantee that things will be completed on your schedule. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garrulous Glaahk Skippy the bush kangaroo Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 During testing I upgraded from 10.4 to 10.6 on my C2D 2.4GHZ Macbook Pro - that made an appreciable difference to framerates. Went from ~15fps to ~20+ in complex area. What OS are you running on your MBP? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curious Artila Warchief Posted November 27, 2009 Share Posted November 27, 2009 I'm on 10.5.8 myself. I've got a copy of Snow Leopard sitting on my desk, I just haven't had the time to make the jump yet (plenty of software to re-install, update or check for compatibility). I do have the final SL developer build on an external drive partition, but I haven't tested on that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.