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Single CPU core at 100% = slowness and gliding effect

Posted: May 27th, 2010, 11:35 am
by Zgembo
Here @ Ubuntu 10.04 x86_64, quad core intel, i get 100% activity at single CPU core when in game world (not happening in the main menu and intro) rendering game unplayable, causing similar effect as described in viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3580. Guess that BliztMax is not optimized for multicore CPUs, but yet i can run much more CPU-intensive games, and the count for single CPU core would not even go beyond 50%.

What the hell - anybody experienced this?

Re: Single CPU core at 100% = slowness and gliding effect

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 3:05 am
by bitsweep
Running with Intel Core-2 duo CPU here, no problems. The game is a little heavy on one core (appears that it isn't multi-threading), but it's certainly not pegging at 100%. I'm also actually running the game perfectly smoothly with the CPU force-clocked down to minimum speed of 800Mhz...

Are you using the OpenGL acceleration or software render?
What Sound option do you have selected?
What sound-server(s) do you have installed/running?
(What you're describing with halting issues sounds like something is I/O bound.)

Re: Single CPU core at 100% = slowness and gliding effect

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 12:34 pm
by Tyranthraxus
So far, I`m noticing that Book 2 really seems to be very demanding on either the graphics card, or more likely, the drivers.
Changing from the `free` Nvidia driver to the closed-source one made a hell of a difference, I couldn`t play with the former at all.
Be interested to see what happens when I take character deep into the woods, it certainly hits performance on the Windoze version.
Seems a real shame, really, as Book 1 installed and played like a dream, with the Linux version clearly smoother than `doze, which I put down to lower overheads on the system.
Has the game engine changed that much from Book 1?

Re: Single CPU core at 100% = slowness and gliding effect

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 12:47 pm
by Elwro
Just wanted to say that the Linux version, once I got it to run, plays very nicely on my quite old rig. This is a single-core CPU, Athlon 3500, from 4 years back. And I only have an Nvidia 6600GT card. The game runs like a charm and I get no slowdowns at all. I'm using the proprietary 185.18.36 Nvidia drivers. I noticed no speed differences in running between Book 2 and Book 1.

Re: Single CPU core at 100% = slowness and gliding effect

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 1:24 pm
by Tyranthraxus
Elwro wrote:Just wanted to say that the Linux version, once I got it to run, plays very nicely on my quite old rig. This is a single-core CPU, Athlon 3500, from 4 years back. And I only have an Nvidia 6600GT card. The game runs like a charm and I get no slowdowns at all. I'm using the proprietary 185.18.36 Nvidia drivers. I noticed no speed differences in running between Book 2 and Book 1.
Curiouser and curiouser!
In comparison, my old Athlon 2400+ (FX5600 card) versus Dual-core Intel laptop (Nvidia 6000 series - own memory), I see the following.
Windoze, definite improvement on lappy compared to the single core desktop, (although not as great as other games), but Linux seems to go the other way. Slower on dual-core than single.
Starting to wonder if the sound might be coming into play here, single-core has a nice NForce set (actually the reference set for the Xpox) , whereas the lappy has some grotty generic Intel chipset.
Time for more investigation, then try to rank them against the quad core, might provide some insight as to what gets hit hardest, processor or graphics or sound.