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

[sss4r]

Originally Posted by 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

Hi, Dave,

I've played DoP on a MacBook Pro, a dual G5 Power Mac, and an Intel-based iMac. I had a similar experience on the notebook -- fans that normally run at 2K RPM were reaching 6K RPM! & I was literally sweating just sitting in front of it. However, according to iStat Pro, the GPU diode was approaching 160*F. It wasn't the CPU but the GPU that was causing the heating issue. Unfortunately it seems to be a pretty common phenomenon with gaming on laptops. I lowered the samples and filtering in Graphics prefs and that helped some.

Best,
Shannon

[Shadow]

The next version of the game (Win & Mac) will have a maxFps console command that might actually help this.

[Crisses]

Thanks -- by the way I have a console msg saying (in red):
Couldn't find Effects/lightWhite.eff