Civ4 a CPU hog?

[civ4dan]

my specs
1 Gig memory
2.5gig Virtual memory (max and min)
Amd athalon 3200
Gforce 6200 Graphics card (128 MB)
Windows XP with all pertinant updates.

The CPU was running anywhere between 85-95% at a large level world with 47 turns left (Basically using lots of graphics)

The sound was spotty and the game moved slowly.. though I did see some improvement when i upgraded from 512 MB Ram.

[TomVeil]

I have not had heavy CPU loads on my 1.2 GHz Intel. The game has, however, used all of my 256MB RAM and moved on to use almost a gig of virtual ram.

[Cambo67]

It's DirectX that's the CPU hog. OpenGL seems to use less CPU than DirectX - something I found out by running SETI@home while playing Quake II and Unreal many moons ago ;-)

I wonder if the renderer is modular enough to be replaced with an OpenGL renderer - it would certainly make a Linux port of Civ4 easier....



Cambo

[alva]

Re: Civ4 a CPU hog?

Originally posted by civ4dan
my specs
1 Gig memory
2.5gig Virtual memory (max and min)
Amd athalon 3200
Gforce 6200 Graphics card (128 MB)
Windows XP with all pertinant updates.

The CPU was running anywhere between 85-95% at a large level world with 47 turns left (Basically using lots of graphics)

The sound was spotty and the game moved slowly.. though I did see some improvement when i upgraded from 512 MB Ram.

Of course it slow, windows is putting eveything into your virtual memory and is hardly using your fysical memory. Virtual memory is a great concept but very, very slow compared to fysical memory.
To put it into perspectice, if it would take five minutes to get some data from your fysical memory, then it would take several months to get the info from your virtual memory.

Turn it down to a single gig max...

[civ4dan]

I turned the VM to a single meg max (and min). It seemed to help the stuttering sound a little bit. However, the CPU was still running at 100% and there was still stuttering. The large dip was when i minimized civ to look at the settings, I then put civ as the active screen behind the task manager to give this view.

[Fidel]

man, that is scary. i have amd 3000 (and the rest of the config exactly the same) and i dread the coming carnage. something is certainly wrong, large map or no large map...this is just too taxing.

[civ4dan]

I havnt seen the stuttering problem with smaller games. I did play a couple turns in a smaller game AFTER the big game and the memory usage did go down. However, the CPU still was up around 100%.

Perhaps it is just a matter of finding the "just right" ratio of RAM to Virtual Memory.... who knows.

[Cedronian]

Umm, what exactly is the problem here? Civ IV, like all games, is designed to take advantage of all the resources that is available to it. The fact that it is using 100% of the CPU is a good thing since that obviously makes the game run quicker.

I repeat, ALL games use 100% of the CPUs power, if it's available to it. Why shouldn't they? Do you have a better thing for the CPU to do while you are playing games? It's not like it will hurt the CPU or anything, this is what it was designed to do.

Memory is another matter, just because there is a certain amount available doesn't mean that the game will use all of it right of the bat. The memory usage will increase as you play the game (lots of memory needed to hold info about the map, AIs, units and so on in the later stages of the game).

In fact, just let Windows handle the virtual memory settings, that often gives the best result in my experience.

[Darg]

Actually a program using 100% of the CPU all the time is a very bad sign. What is it doing in the background to use these resources??
Programs should only access the CPU while performing operations. In a well designed program you would see minimal CPU usage while you're not actually doing anything like in the screenshot above. The only thing it should be doing there is rendering the screen. That should use the VPU and very little of the CPU.
It would be different for a RTS if it was still running in the background. Obviously then it would still be calculating AI moves constantly but for a TBS it should be sitting there just waiting for your input.

It appears to be pretty poorly designed if it needs to constantly use 100% of the CPU even when just waiting for an input.

[Cedronian]

Originally posted by Darg
It appears to be pretty poorly designed if it needs to constantly use 100% of the CPU even when just waiting for an input.

Agreed. And if the point of the OP was that the game took 100% CPU even when the game was idle then I agree that something is afoot.

My point was in reference to when the game was actively "thinking" or doing something.

[Cambo67]

When DirectX is handling 3D stuff, it _always_ uses 100% of the CPU. Seems to be the way Micro$oft designed it.

I have noticed over the years that DirectX does not offload as much work as it could to the VPU on graphics cards. Not as much as OpenGL, anyway....



Cambo

[netWilk]

Considering that about 50% of that CPU usage is virtual memory swapping, it explains a bit. Turn on Show Kernel Times from View menu, and you'll see what I mean.