High CPU Usage in Mac Version

[Nitrox]

Greetings, I just purchased the Mac version and notice that the game is utilizing 100% CPU a good portion of time. So much so, that the laptop case above the keyboard gets almost too hot to touch.

This is on a Macbook Pro 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.

I love the game but I'm concerned with long term play and the health of my hardware.

-Dave

[Paladin Sponge]

Weird. I'm playing it on a regular macbook and I haven't had that problem. The heat, I mean. I infer that means the game isn't working my machine too hard.

If you can tell me how to find out the CPU usage while playing, I'll gladly lend my observations to your thread.

[(name here)]

well, Windows has the task manager's proccesses mode. i have never used a recent mac, so i have no idea what to do on them.

[Shadow]

I'm also curious how to find out how to see the CPU usage on the Mac.

Do games not usually use near 100% of the CPU on your machine? In my experience, games tend to use everything they can get to maximize the frame rate.

[(name here)]

In my experiance, a functional game burns somthing like 60% of CPU. a game which malfunctions will steal all the CPU to try to continue working.

[Nitrox]

CPU usage and other stats can be viewed with the Activity Monitor utility which is found in the Applications->Utilities folder.

Typically I would expect a game to only hit %100 when numerous, intensive, graphical events are occurring simultaneously. For example, if you're familiar with Everquest, %100 CPU usage (and subsequently video lag) would occur during raids when multiple casters would trigger spells that had large visual effects associated with them.

I've included a screen shot of Activity Monitor while the game is running but minimized. The capture was taken only about minute after launching the game and my party is just standing around in the covenant house. You'll see the game is already consuming %100.4 CPU (more than an entire core of my dual core system).

-Dave

[(name here)]

that is pretty extreme. i have no idea where that would come from.

[Paladin Sponge]

Strange. I just started up a game with everybody just standing around the covenant house. Minimized it and looked at the activity monitor. CPU usage was around 10% or so, 90% idle.

[Shadow]

Thanks for pointing out the Activity Monitor.

I would guess that Everquest gobbles up as much cpu as it can also, but it probably can run as fast as the monitor will let it. Which means the cpu will be idle waiting for the monitor's refresh time.

DoP is much more CPU intensive than Everquest. Anything I add would just slow down the frame rate. Although if you are getting enough frame rate for your tastes, that might not be a bad thing. I might add in a max frame rate variable that is optional.

Oh, also the game running at full speed when minimized is not intended. I'll have to fix that. I do have it when you play in a window and the DoP window doesn't have focus it uses less cpu. On my Mac it goes from around 100% to around 66% when I do this.

[Nitrox]

Originally Posted by Paladin Sponge

Strange. I just started up a game with everybody just standing around the covenant house. Minimized it and looked at the activity monitor. CPU usage was around 10% or so, 90% idle.

Interesting! Now I just need to determine what's different between our two systems.

Are you using the Window->Minimize menu so that a small icon of the running game appears on the far right of your dock?

Are you running Leopard with all the latest updates?

-Dave