CPU Usage maxing out

[Pale Horse]

I just noticed, after the 1.7 update, my 7700K CPU is red lining at 100% nonstop. I don't think it was like that before. I noticed because the fans were suddenly kicking in and making more noise than before.

[Pale Horse]

Well spotted. Aside from that stunning insight, the game ran fine until the 1.7 update, when I noticed that the fans were strongly kicking in and that both the GPU (2070S) and CPU were maxed out. I decreased the video settings to fix the GPU issue, but the CPU behavior seems to have changed.

[Just.a.Dog]

same in 10750H

[Pale Horse]

In the last 10 days or so, I've been experiencing stuttering and pauses in game play, which must be related to the CPU being forced to go 100% full throttle throughout the entire match. GPU settings run @ 85%, have extremely solid Internet, Finals is only program running.

[Myztkl©-Kev]

your CPU is pretty old, and this game is pretty CPU heavy. Turning up graphics settings may take some of the load off the CPU.

[redk]

Originally posted by Pale Horse:

In the last 10 days or so, I've been experiencing stuttering and pauses in game play, which must be related to the CPU being forced to go 100% full throttle throughout the entire match. GPU settings run @ 85%, have extremely solid Internet, Finals is only program running.

Turn up the graphical settings. It will shift load from the CPU to the GPU. You won't get better performance, but it might get rid of the stutters.

[Pale Horse]

I don't see how turning up GPU settings will affect the load. The functions are separated and routed to specific processing in either the GPU or the CPU. They don't crossover.

[Myztkl©-Kev]

Originally posted by Pale Horse:

I don't see how turning up GPU settings will affect the load. The functions are separated and routed to specific processing in either the GPU or the CPU. They don't crossover.

the higher the graphics settings the lower the frame rate, so less for the CPU to do.

[MoonSpirit]

Go to the control panel and reduce the maximum CPU usage from 100% to 99% in the power settings. Just as everything in this game is broken, the CPU usage is also broken. This setting solves most hardware failures caused by this game, such as overheating, high usage, fans spinning like crazy.

If you are not careful, it may damage or even completely destroy your hardware.

[PHANTØM]

Originally posted by Pale Horse:

I just noticed, after the 1.7 update, my 7700K CPU is red lining at 100% nonstop. I don't think it was like that before. I noticed because the fans were suddenly kicking in and making more noise than before.

yeah, it's been like this since the release. I got a 9500 and the CPU hit 100% really frequently. not to mention I have every graphic setting set low, frame rate caped to 60fps and still can't play smoothly.

[PHANTØM]

Originally posted by MoonSpirit:

Go to the control panel and reduce the maximum CPU usage from 100% to 99% in the power settings. Just as everything in this game is broken, the CPU usage is also broken. This setting solves most hardware failures caused by this game, such as overheating, high usage, fans spinning like crazy.

If you are not careful, it may damage or even completely destroy your hardware.

I don't think hitting 100% usage in any hardware will cause any damage to them, unless they start to overheat.

[ZaddyIssues]

Originally posted by Myztkl©-Kev:

Originally posted by Pale Horse:

I don't see how turning up GPU settings will affect the load. The functions are separated and routed to specific processing in either the GPU or the CPU. They don't crossover.

the higher the graphics settings the lower the frame rate, so less for the CPU to do.

This worked so well for me. I was dancing aroudn 75-80 and now I'm smooth at 70 thanks

[redk]

Originally posted by Pale Horse:

I don't see how turning up GPU settings will affect the load. The functions are separated and routed to specific processing in either the GPU or the CPU. They don't crossover.

If your GPU is busy longer, the CPU has to prepare less frames for it, thus lowering CPU usage, freeing up the CPU to calculate things like building destruction.

It's why running games in 4K requires less CPU than running them at 1080p.

Originally posted by MoonSpirit:

Go to the control panel and reduce the maximum CPU usage from 100% to 99% in the power settings. Just as everything in this game is broken, the CPU usage is also broken. This setting solves most hardware failures caused by this game, such as overheating, high usage, fans spinning like crazy.

If you are not careful, it may damage or even completely destroy your hardware.

100% CPU usage can't destroy your hardware unless your hardware was poorly built to begin with.

Modern CPUs will thermal throttle and thermal shutdown before any damage occurs.

[Pale Horse]

Well, I guess there's something in it after all. I was running at a frame rate around 140 because I thought I could. There are only, like, three graphics settings that say "affects the CPU in a minor way". I tried lowering those and they didn't help. Apparently, the frame rate was where the issue was coming from. After I dropped the frame rate to 120, the CPU was running 92~97% a bit more often during the game. I think it's also becoming an issue as they add more code to the game. When I first started playing this game (January? February?), it always ran smoothly. After recent updates, it has become less stable in performance, but there are new terrain concepts like lamp posts and other things being added for screen action, which I believe may be bogging the works down. Anyways, thanks for the idea.

[morsecode]

Originally posted by Pale Horse:

Well, I guess ...

There are more and they help a lot. I have a ryzen 5900X with some tuned PC DDR4 memory and settings those to "low" helps noticeably.
The old Skylake 7700k with only 4 cores/8 threads is simply to outdated; the stated 100 % cpu utilization tells it.
The Ryzen 5900X here, for the first 6 cores has a cpu-utilization around 20 - 60 % and the other 6 cores around 10 - 20 %.

Here are the graphic settings found in "video" which increase the cpu-utilization the most (in order):
1) Ray traced global illiumination (the ray tracing option). The it to "static"
2) Effects. Has a big impact for some reason; set it to "low".
3) Nvidia Reflex Low Latency is bugged (same as DLSS). Set it to "On"; do not set it to "On + Boost" as it decreases cpu-performance (bugged).
4) Shadows. Set it to "low".
5) View distance. Set it to "low". No worry, that has no impact on the view distance of teammates or opponents, only for ingame objects.

Some people will tell you to set the "Resolution Scaling Method" to "TAAU".
However, note, DLSS image reconstruction offers the best visual image quality and the performance hit is very neglectable (there should be no performance hit, but as said, it's a buggy implementation/not optimized).
TAAU looks noticeably worse, especially in motion, same as FSR 2 image reconstruction.


Besides that, not much you can do as the cpu-side of thingsis bad - mediocre optimized and Unreal Engine 5 is a cpu-hog (UE 5.4 will bring a betterment but the developers will 99 % not switch to that).
Wait for the next Ryzen Zen 5 3D cache (SRAM) or Intel Arrow Processors in early 2024 if you want something as 240 fps (even 1 % minimum) all the time.

[Pale Horse]

There is an issue with saying the Skylake is outdated, though. According to Steam, the game requires a minimum of an i5 6600k processor and an i5 9600k as "recommended". I'm above the minimum with my 7700k, close to the middle actually, so there's something unusual going on.

Maybe Embark needs to update their system requirements.

Will check out your further suggestions.