Weird PC bug with EU4

[TheAlmightySpode]

So I have encountered a weird bug. When I play EU4, my PC's Windows UI slows down. The computer itself is running fine and my CPU and GPU usage is extremely low, but context menus and things slow down. Temps don't get high at all (68C on CPU, GPU about 60C). I ran a memory diagnostic and it came back with no issues. The issue with it is that it continues after the game is closed.

Specs:
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
AMD RX VEGA 64
16GB 3600MHz RAM
Samsung Evo M.2 SSD
Windows 10

I only have this issue with this game.

[grotaclas]

Are you using fullscreen mode? Then try if switching to borderless fullscreen helps. In fullscreen eu4 tries to change the refresh rate to 60 Hz which could make windows feel slower

[TheAlmightySpode]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Are you using fullscreen mode? Then try if switching to borderless fullscreen helps. In fullscreen eu4 tries to change the refresh rate to 60 Hz which could make windows feel slower

I'm in Fullscreen(Window) or whatever it is, so I think I am in borderless unless the game has another setting.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by TheAlmightySpode:

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Are you using fullscreen mode? Then try if switching to borderless fullscreen helps. In fullscreen eu4 tries to change the refresh rate to 60 Hz which could make windows feel slower

I'm in Fullscreen(Window) or whatever it is, so I think I am in borderless unless the game has another setting.

Yes, that's borderless fullscreen. You could try if normal fullscreen works better.
How slow is windows? Maybe eu4 causes your GPU to disable hardware acceleration for windows and doesn't switch it back on after you close the game. You could check the settings of your graphics drivers to see if it can be configured

[TheAlmightySpode]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Originally posted by TheAlmightySpode:

I'm in Fullscreen(Window) or whatever it is, so I think I am in borderless unless the game has another setting.

Yes, that's borderless fullscreen. You could try if normal fullscreen works better.
How slow is windows? Maybe eu4 causes your GPU to disable hardware acceleration for windows and doesn't switch it back on after you close the game. You could check the settings of your graphics drivers to see if it can be configured

So apparently Hardware Acceleration is built in to Radeon cards or some stupid thing and I can't enable or disable it. I'm assuming that it is turning off somehow and not restarting until my PC is reset. Overall it isn't the end of the world because, again, everything still runs fine except UI elements look slow.

I have updated my drivers because apparently I missed an update and I'll check back with it in a bit.

[TheAlmightySpode]

Yeah, updating drivers didn't fix it.

[TheAlmightySpode]

Ok, so I found a workaround. If I play the game at 1080p instead of 1440p, I no longer get the issue. I truthfully have no idea why this happens. It doesn't change temps or load substantially at all and I even sped through a save at 5x speed to see if it would cause the issue, but it doesn't.

I would prefer to play at 1440p, so if there is a fix, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, it's not like the game is a looker anyways.

[grotaclas]

How did you play the game at 1080p? Did you change the resolution in your desktop or in eu4? And which display mode did you use for that?

[TheAlmightySpode]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

How did you play the game at 1080p? Did you change the resolution in your desktop or in eu4? And which display mode did you use for that?

I had to change it to Fullscreen from the launcher and change the resolution in the launcher to 1080p. My monitor is still a 1440p monitor and if Alt+Tab'd it would display everything else at 1440p, but the game itself was simply changed to 1080p.

[grotaclas]

Did you try if you get the problem again if you use eu4 in 1440p in fullscreen mode? Maybe fullscreen fixed the issue and not the resolution

[TheAlmightySpode]

Yeah. I tried that first. I noticed that it didn't present an issue then if I Alt+Tab'd out, but once I closed the game both through the game or by Alt+f4 it would start the issue again. I just tested other games again that use a lot more of my PC like Helldivers 2 and Elden Ring and the issue still didn't present itself. I'm wondering if it's something to do with EU4 only using 1 core or something? I don't know why the resolution change fixed it though.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by TheAlmightySpode:

Yeah. I tried that first. I noticed that it didn't present an issue then if I Alt+Tab'd out, but once I closed the game both through the game or by Alt+f4 it would start the issue again. I just tested other games again that use a lot more of my PC like Helldivers 2 and Elden Ring and the issue still didn't present itself. I'm wondering if it's something to do with EU4 only using 1 core or something? I don't know why the resolution change fixed it though.

It is a myth that eu4 only uses one core. It uses multiple cores for some calculations and it would be much slower if you would restrict it only only one core. But the usually the calculations on one core take longer than the calculations on the other cores so the single-core speed is the bottlneck.

I'm pretty sure that core usage doesn't have anything to do with this problem. More likely it happens because eu4 uses directx9 which is very old. The other more demanding games are probably using newer directx versions or vulkan

[TheAlmightySpode]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Originally posted by TheAlmightySpode:

Yeah. I tried that first. I noticed that it didn't present an issue then if I Alt+Tab'd out, but once I closed the game both through the game or by Alt+f4 it would start the issue again. I just tested other games again that use a lot more of my PC like Helldivers 2 and Elden Ring and the issue still didn't present itself. I'm wondering if it's something to do with EU4 only using 1 core or something? I don't know why the resolution change fixed it though.

It is a myth that eu4 only uses one core. It uses multiple cores for some calculations and it would be much slower if you would restrict it only only one core. But the usually the calculations on one core take longer than the calculations on the other cores so the single-core speed is the bottlneck.

I'm pretty sure that core usage doesn't have anything to do with this problem. More likely it happens because eu4 uses directx9 which is very old. The other more demanding games are probably using newer directx versions or vulkan

ooohhhhhhhhh. That would make sense. Because that's graphic backend stuff I guess the resolution fix would make more sense too.

[grotaclas]

Another workaround which you could try would be to change your desktop resolution to 1080p and back after exiting eu4.

You could also have a look at the task manager to make sure that eu4 did actually close and that it isn't still running in the background

[TheAlmightySpode]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Another workaround which you could try would be to change your desktop resolution to 1080p and back after exiting eu4.

You could also have a look at the task manager to make sure that eu4 did actually close and that it isn't still running in the background

I could try that. I did check Task Manager previously and it was not there.

[Bauce]

Yea I have the exact same issue, also play at 1080p, only fix for me outside of restarting pc after playing is to switch resolution to a lower one and then change it back, very odd.