Improve FPS in late game by increasing CPU usage?

[kraysellz]

My CPU usage is at 50%. I don't know why it can't use more than that. Seems like a waste. I think it's a windows thing though. I have Win 10. My FPS is at 7|15 now. I have 15TW and gaining 1TW per day running 24/7 my laptop.

Is there any way to juice up an app. Seems like windows maxes out any app at 50% so that the other 50% can run other apps smoothly but no options to increase it to 80% or so. Kinda stupid.

Needless to say I already tried restarting my computer, running only DSP and still 7|15. It becomes useless to even build more since the calculations per second gets reduced anyways leaving the same amount of production per real time second.

[kris44dad]

Originally posted by Solorvox:

You should note that 50% number is an indication across all cores. Thus if the game is using 100% of one or two cores, but you have 4, then windows will report 50% usage as only half of the system is busy.

Also building in different systems and shipping finished products to your science/launcher sites helps. Disable/hide shell and swarm layers you don't need in editor and in-game.

Finally, you can do a few things to help with unity games that might give a few fps.
Browse the game files in steam, goto the DSPGAME_data directory and edit boot.config.

Change/add the following:
--- cut ---
gfx-enable-gfx-jobs=1
gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs=1
wait-for-native-debugger=0
scripting-runtime-version=latest
vr-enabled=0
hdr-display-enabled=0
gc-max-time-slice=3
-- cut --

You should also make a backup just in case. Otherwise verify your files to have it replace. Updates WILL overwrite this file btw. What it does is enable graphic jobs to use a threaded model and reduce garbage collection.

I haven't tested but you might also try holding down right shift when starting the game. Maybe you can lower the graphics quality there. (Unity thing)

Isn't there also some "enhancement' settings with Nvidia, that you should turn off? I seem to remember some vaguely.

[Solorvox]

Originally posted by kris44dad:

Isn't there also some "enhancement' settings with Nvidia, that you should turn off? I seem to remember some vaguely.

Nvidida-settings has a number of things you can "enhance" such as anti-aliasing, triple buffering/etc. that override the game's settings.

So yes, if you have those enabled that may help. But to be fair, the OP has a laptop. They don't do well under heavy load due to heat and mobile versions of the chips. Chips thermal throttle and reduce their speed when overheating to prevent damage.

[kraysellz]

Anyways I found out the problem. This program is only single threaded so that's why it can never go above 50% so it's DSP's devs that didn't design it to use all CPU cores.

[⎛⎝Duckers McQuack⎠⎞]

Originally posted by kris44dad:

Originally posted by SailaNamai:

Yes, but that would require manual input in which case OP would've known how to reverse and what the problem is. OP is just making wild assumptions about how anything works.

I'm of the general opinion that a game that uses too much CPU as a poorly optimized game. Considering the calculations this game does under the hood, it's a remarkable job.

I personally want games to use more cpu if stuff in late game will chug on cpu performance. In my saves, i get 27 fps due to 100% usage on my 3090 no matter on resolution or graphical settings. As for us who has 6+ cores, more cpu usage is just good if the game benefits from it.

[margalus]

It's not Windows limiting the game. It's the game. Not knocking the game, but the game engine can only do so much at one time. It's a small team working on the game.

[kris44dad]

Originally posted by margalus:

It's not Windows limiting the game. It's the game. Not knocking the game, but the game engine can only do so much at one time. It's a small team working on the game.

The OP was making the claim their CPU was locked at 50% or less in game. I was at 66% just standing there. In that case, it was not the game. If they are limiting the game, and I'm not saying they are or not, it's to keep the minimum system requirement reasonable as to sell the game to the largest possible audience. It's not worth making, if you can't sell it.

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by kraysellz:

My FPS is at 7|15 now. I have 15TW and gaining 1TW per day running 24/7 my laptop.

You are trying to "squeeze" performance... from ... a ... laptop.

I don't have anything against playing games on a laptop - I do it when I'm on the road. But I also accept that there will be performance tradeoffs when I am on my laptop vs on my desktop.

There was LITERALLY a post a week ago with someone who couldn't for the the life of them figure out why the game would slow down for no apparent reason and CPU would throttle itself to exactly 50%...

*Fun Fact: Computer processors can be easily damaged and have a drastically reduced lifetime when exposed to excessive heat.

*Also Fun Fact: Laptops are extremely compact computers - and even a moderate computational load will generate large amounts of heat in a small space.

*The More You Know: Laptop manufacturers program the internal systems of laptops to intentionally throttle themselves down to prevent excessive heat damage - because people are stupid enough to try and push a system harder than it was designed for, then complain when it either DIES or doesn't perform to expectation.

I am not an elitist when it comes to Laptop vs Desktop - both are viable, so long as you know your limits and are willing to accept those limits. (PC vs Console is another matter entirely :-p )

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by kraysellz:

Anyways I found out the problem. This program is only single threaded so that's why it can never go above 50% so it's DSP's devs that didn't design it to use all CPU cores.

That has nothing to do with it... you're running a *Laptop* under heavy load for extended periods of time. It is throttling itself internally to prevent damaging itself. Nothing to do with Windows or DSP code.

[kraysellz]

Originally posted by Kyrros:

Originally posted by kraysellz:

Anyways I found out the problem. This program is only single threaded so that's why it can never go above 50% so it's DSP's devs that didn't design it to use all CPU cores.

That has nothing to do with it... you're running a *Laptop* under heavy load for extended periods of time. It is throttling itself internally to prevent damaging itself. Nothing to do with Windows or DSP code.

:sphere:

It is. The devs even said it themselves that they will try to use more than linear threads in the future (this is not to be confused by the "logical frame count" setting which is more virtual and on the user's side, not code based). I got a friend who's a dev so he knows these things. That's why the 50% limit on CPU. It's like the old days of windows XP where they only have single thread operations per app. Each app would max out at 50%. I am a long time user and I check task manager often for decades so it became familiar with me very fast when I saw this app was also running at 50%.

The others are right though, it's a DSP issue and not a windows issue. 50% is locked because of DSP not Windows as I'm able to go above 50% when doing tests while I crank out the thread count used.

My laptop has a pretty powerful CPU and an OK GPU so limiting factor should not be CPU. Here's the model/specs:
ASUS TUF VR Ready Gaming Laptop, 15.6" IPS FHD, AMD Ryzen 7-4800H Octa-Core up to 4.20 GHz, NVIDIA RTX 2060, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD

As for the comments about throttling due to heat, I doubt it. I can run tests online that would use all cores and it goes to 100% CPU and there's nothing Windows can do about that. Only thing is to auto shut off when heat becomes too high, which it does rarely from time to time if I don't have my laptop in a position to air out the heat from fan properly. But the 50% for sure is not cuz of throttle. My laptop's CPU is more powerful than most desktops so whatever the disadvantages to having a compact design are, the sheer power of it would make for those losses. It's a year old and I looked at specs when I bought it and it was in the top tier of CPUs back then for sub $1000 price. Not sure what a year difference makes though. Anyways, bottomline it's the game. At least we're all playing in a level playing field if for the leaderboard.

[Xilo The Odd]

so, skipping most of the convo and skipping straight to the explaination. the game doesnt need to use CPU as much because all logistics tracking is GPU bound, because the setup of a GPU hardwarewise is better at the job than CPU (why you think most crypto is mined with GPU?) so the low CPU usage is fairly normal for i7-i9 intels or AMD equivalent CPU. its jsut how the game currently works. right now their focus is reducing overall impact on GPU without sacrificing visuals or performance.

[margalus]

Originally posted by kris44dad:

Originally posted by margalus:

It's not Windows limiting the game. It's the game. Not knocking the game, but the game engine can only do so much at one time. It's a small team working on the game.

The OP was making the claim their CPU was locked at 50% or less in game. I was at 66% just standing there. In that case, it was not the game. If they are limiting the game, and I'm not saying they are or not, it's to keep the minimum system requirement reasonable as to sell the game to the largest possible audience. It's not worth making, if you can't sell it.

No, they aren't limiting it either. It is 100% the game that determines how much cpu is used. Different cpu's have different amount of cores. The more cores you have, the smaller the percentage that the game will use. (this is an arbitrary example) If the game uses 100% of a single core on a dual core cpu it will report 50%, put the same game on a quad core it will report 25%, etc..

edit: the game is only using 15% of my 24 core cpu