Holy crap cpu utilization.

[mikus]

So, my pc is not average, given using arch linux, dual socket, 2x10 core xeon e5v4 cpus, 40 threads, and 128gb of memory as my desktop, running in 3x 4k monitors on a GTX1070 video. Running Subnautica amazed me at the amount of utilization given nothing taxes this pc, but Subnautica does maxing out 40 threads at 70-80% utilization per thread.

Why?

Something seems wrong that you can tax this level of cpu utilization, that I can't imagine this even functioning on most standard consumer pc's.

Even loading this, the utilization is enormous. I really can't say I've seen a game, or any other application function at 2000% at anything less than a race condition, so props, but um... what the hell?

Here is a grab of the desktop with htop, gkrellm, and subnautica running in unholy usage. I've played this decently for over 20 hours, isn't great at 17fps on common at 4k, but still visually stunning on my displays at that to make it enjoyable.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LSys44p4ToqMkHWb6

I have tried this stretching it windowed across all 3x 4k displays close to native 11520x2160 resolution, and it ran at like .2fps. Sad, it would be nice as these are 3x 48" curved samsung tv displays that wrap around me at a good 150 degrees or so. I've love to play this fully across all displays at 150-180 degrees of peripheral view. I'm hoping you resolve some performance issues to allow this eventually.

[Wylie28]

Terrain. Voxelation.

This is why nothing but minecraft rip offs have it and why terraforming was removed. Its also why NMS is so taxing. They were smart enough to utilize the GPU for it, but add large scLe PCG into the mix all gains are negated.

[TheTool]

Originally posted by Wylie28:

Terrain. Voxelation.

This is why nothing but minecraft rip offs have it and why terraforming was removed. Its also why NMS is so taxing. They were smart enough to utilize the GPU for it, but add large scLe PCG into the mix all gains are negated.

[Laofse]

Doesn't seem to exceed 20% on my R5 2600, but I only play at 1920x1080 resolution as that's the most my screen supports. My RX560 GPU runs close to 100% though, but that's not surprising, it's not a very beefy GPU.

[thenoble1]

I have an 8700k and randomly (usually while looking towards the storage end of the pod you start in), CPU will jump to 100% and stay there. It's definitely Subnautica as ending the process will drop down to ~6% utilization. Makes it very frustrating to play.

[Joelius]

I don't know if you ever got this resolved, but holy crap, I have a 3900x (24 threads) and I had exactly the same problem as you.

This solves it!
https://gamestoday.info/ps4/subnautica/no-spoilers-warning-more-than-4-cpu-cores-threads-has-a-negative-performance-impact-on-subnautica-fix/

This person shows that if you change the affinity to just 4 cores, subnautica uses less CPU overhead, and the frame rate shoots up! For me, 3 cores ended up being the sweet spot, but the article suggests 4. My framerate went from the 40's to 130 on max settings, and my GPU usage shot up to nearly 100% from 30. The CPU total usage goes way down as well, obviously.

[miklkit]

It works. Go to Nexus and get the mod for this. It's Performance Booster 389 and it adds a line to the options to set the cores for Subnautica only.

[bartekltg]

Originally posted by mikus:

So, my pc is not average, given using arch linux, dual socket, 2x10 core xeon e5v4 cpus, 40 threads, and 128gb of memory as my desktop, running in 3x 4k monitors on a GTX1070 video. Running Subnautica amazed me at the amount of utilization given nothing taxes this pc, but Subnautica does maxing out 40 threads at 70-80% utilization per thread.

They ** up multiprocessing. The game spawns more thread the more cores you have, (most of the time it is a good thing to do:)), but the game does something strange with them, maybe all threads do the same calculations, or the synchronization eats most of the cpu time.

Try to limit cores available to the game process. On windows, you can do it using task manager, go to details of the process, right click, set affinity, just unclick checkboxes; on linux get the proces pid (run >top and look what process eats cpu) and run >taskset -a -p 55 _pir_number_ (55 is a mask in hex, means 1010101, so 4 cores, leaving hyperthreading cores out).

On Ryzen 2700x (so 16 cores) and 1070ti the best results I get leaving 4 cores for the game.



BTW, the effect more cores - worse performance is identical on windows and linux. Use taskset command to limit to ~4 cores (bu sure to now take logical cores working on the same physical core).

[Mardoin69]

Exactly what DaBa said. You are running a server. Those are server cpu's. Games don't typically run well on server's even though you can get them running well with some tweaking to your system and config files in a lot of games. Games are programmed to run on home user PC's typically running MS Windows. There-in lies your second problem. While you CAN get a lot of games to run well in a Linux setup, it is problematic a lot of the time. And, you have to consider you have multiple apps running in order to run that game on your system configuration. Whereas in Windows, you'd not need those extra apps.

Aside from that, games and apps are usually programmed to take advantage of available resources. So, for instance, your cpu(s) may run it at 70% utilization while a lesser cpu may only run it up to 70% also. The reason is the game downgrades it's usage of the given cpu so that some is left for operating system tasks. Otherwise, it would crash the system.

Also, those cpu(s) actually aren't spec'd that well really. Another thing about games.... they usually can't make use of anything more than 4 cores but, also, they want higher frequency like 3.0 GHz and above.... not 2.2 GHz... which may lead to higher cpu utilization. Newer games are getting better at using more cores as Dev's are doing better to make use of them in their coding. But, it's not typical... yet... let alone multiple cpu's.

[Aius]

You're using Xeon processors for one, they are not designed for gaming, you should know this as you have 2 of them. I run a basic R5 3600 and a 2060 and have only hit 60% CPU usage in severely cluttered areas or where a lot of objects are colliding, aka, stalkers grinding their face on the ground.

And as almost everyone else has said, you're running a singleplayer game on SERVER HARDWARE. Stuff that isn't intended to be used to play videogames, have you tried just building a normal rig with an I9 or Ryzen 9? You definitely have the money for it seeing as you can afford a dual processor mobo.