CPU issues

[conejeitor]

I guess there should be a pinned discusion for bug listing.
This one concerns the CPU use. I hope they fix it, because it is a current problem in Lego the Movie, but not in Lego Marvel Heroes (not sure why). The issue is that the game insists on using one CPU core to its fullest, and only when is saturated, it uses the remaining cores (I have a FX8350, 8 cores). Then, for most of the gaming one Core is at 99% use while the others are at 30% or even 0%. This heats up the CPU a lot, unsafely, and unnecesarily, since several cores are free. As I said, this is still an issue in Lego the movie, so I hope they fix it for this game, as they did with other Lego titles, where this is not an issue.

[Alcom (I'm trans, lol!)]

Probably because Marvel Super Heroes is more optimized and requires less CPU use than The LEGO Movie Video Game. The latter was a bit of a rush job.

LEGO Worlds has some of the best multithreading I've ever seen in a game. I don't know if it's an AMD issue, but on my i5-4690k the game runs all cores at 80-90% evenly.

If using up an entire core heats up your PC to an unsafe level, there's definately something wrong with how you cool your PC. Are you using a stock cooler or overclocking?

[Tt_Toby]

We do have a discussion board for bug reporting:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/332310/discussions/4/

As Alcom Isst says the game does support multithreading when it can, so please do make a post on the Bug disscussions with your computer specs, windows version, dxdiag etc. (more details the better - the pinned post in the Bug forum has info on this) so that we can look into it.
Thanks.

[conejeitor]

Originally posted by Alcom Isst:

Probably because Marvel Super Heroes is more optimized and requires less CPU use than The LEGO Movie Video Game. The latter was a bit of a rush job.

LEGO Worlds has some of the best multithreading I've ever seen in a game. I don't know if it's an AMD issue, but on my i5-4690k the game runs all cores at 80-90% evenly.

If using up an entire core heats up your PC to an unsafe level, there's definately something wrong with how you cool your PC. Are you using a stock cooler or overclocking?

Thanks. I actually have a vertical cooler 12 cm fan, coolermaster, and my CPU is not overclocked. The issue though is clearly that one core is used way over the others as I can check in MSI aftb. May be it is a AMD issue. I´ll report the bug.

[Dave A]

"The issue is that the game insists on using one CPU core to its fullest, and only when is saturated, it uses the remaining cores (I have a FX8350, 8 cores)."

- Which core is being used is chosen by the operating system, not by the software. Lego worlds splits up it's workload as best it can into parts that can be run on separate cores, but which core it gets to run it is not chosen by us.

"for most of the gaming one Core is at 99% use while the others are at 30% or even 0%. This heats up the CPU a lot, unsafely, and unnecesarily, since several cores are free."

- Again, it's down to the operating system as to which core runs the code, running a core at 100% is only unsafe if you have insufficient cooling on the CPU. Many windows programs will run a core at 100% as they only have one task to do and require lots of CPU to do it, Again it would be down to windows or the OS to swap this task onto a different core but it would favour keeping on the same core as it is more efficient. It would certainly not consider the temperature of the CPU as a deciding factor on where to run code.

[conejeitor]

Originally posted by Dave A:

"
- Which core is being used is chosen by the operating system, not by the software. Lego worlds splits up it's workload as best it can into parts that can be run on separate cores, but which core it gets to run it is not chosen by us.

I find that very hard to believe, and I wonder if you understood what I said (it might be my bad english):

1) Lego Super Heroes: Very balanced using the cores, four of them used at 50% each. CPU at 60 degrees.
2) Lego The Movie: Very unbalanced, one core at 100%, the rest at 10%. CPU at 75 degrees. which imo is unsafe.
Same OS. Same PC.

So how is task distribution per core a decision of the OS? How the OS defines using more cores in one game than the other, given how similar they are? It´s hard to believe that windows decides "bad" on some games and "well" on others.

Wouldn´t that be related to bad game programing, may be related with bad workload spliting? bad optimization? I don´t know about programing, but if this would be an OS issue, all games would have it, not just Lego the movie and Lego Worlds. Coincidently, those two games are the only ones that heat up my CPU unsafely (I have playded about 70 games with this rig, most look more demanding than Lego).

Please explain, thanks.

[davepoo]

"So how is task distribution per core a decision of the OS? How the OS defines using more cores in one game than the other, given how similar they are?"

Well, modern computers are very generic, a machine may have 1 core, 2 cores, 4 cores, or even multiple procressors with multiple cores. So it has to be up the the OS to try and use the resources it as best it can.
This really is the function of the OS, without it, an application would have to be redeveloped for every different type of processor and memory configuration.
To use another similar example: the game also cannot choose which memory stick the game is stored on when it is loaded. The game asks the OS for some memory and the OS gives it. Whch chip it is stored on is not known*, so is the game heating up one chip too much by using memory in one chip rather than multiple chips?

*or even if it on a memory chip at all!!!

[conejeitor]

Originally posted by davepoo:

"So how is task distribution per core a decision of the OS? How the OS defines using more cores in one game than the other, given how similar they are?"

Well, modern computers are very generic, a machine may have 1 core, 2 cores, 4 cores, or even multiple procressors with multiple cores. So it has to be up the the OS to try and use the resources it as best it can.
This really is the function of the OS, without it, an application would have to be redeveloped for every different type of processor and memory configuration.
To use another similar example: the game also cannot choose which memory stick the game is stored on when it is loaded. The game asks the OS for some memory and the OS gives it. Whch chip it is stored on is not known*, so is the game heating up one chip too much by using memory in one chip rather than multiple chips?

*or even if it on a memory chip at all!!!

Ok, so then, why some games use all cores evenly (i.e. Crysis 3) while others overload one of the cores (i.e. Lego the movie)...? If the issue is fully in the OS, how is that some games are well distributed and others are bad distributed...?

[CommanderRed]

I believe a lot of this has to do with DirectX. With DirectX 11 and before, the application doesn't have much control over how the multiple cores on a CPU are used. Usually with these versions of DirectX, one core is used for most of the work. This is not the case on the latest version of DirectX (DirectX 12), however.

To answer your question, I'm not sure why some of your games are working better than others; all of those games are on DirectX 11 or before. Some applications can be more multi-threaded than other applications, but the developers only have a certain amount of control.

Like the others above me stated, it is natural for games to tax one core more than the others. So, if your processor is overheating, than there must be something wrong somewhere. It's possible that your processor is staying on its turbo frequency. I have a very different configuration than yours -- a laptop with an AMD APU -- but it's still AMD and my processor will overheat if it stays on its turbo clock for a sustained time.

[conejeitor]

Originally posted by CommanderRed:

I believe a lot of this has to do with DirectX. With DirectX 11 and before, the application doesn't have much control over how the multiple cores on a CPU are used. Usually with these versions of DirectX, one core is used for most of the work. This is not the case on the latest version of DirectX (DirectX 12), however..

Do you use MSI afterburner to check the cores? It´s hard to believe that I´m the only one with a couple of games that use mostly one core while most games use 4, some 6 and some 8. I usually check all my games with MSI aft. Do you?

And I guess I´ll say this again: The only games that heat up my CPU too much are those that use mostly one core. That is the evidence I have (I´ll take a comparative picture next time I play).

[CommanderRed]

I'm not sure how accurate this is, I used Window's Resource Monitor because I don't have MSI Afterburner. I watched my different cores percentage while I played LEGO Worlds in windowed mode. Sure enough one of my cores was used more than the rest. However, this core never reached 99% and the other three cores had a fairly high percent of work.

I'm not sure if this would matter, but are drivers up to date?

[Vyvyvn]

You could always use programs that unlock the cores manually. ASUS has one, And I believe there's Intel and other ones as well. I had to do that as my system was only ever using two of the six cores at a time. :P

[Dave A]

"Ok, so then, why some games use all cores evenly (i.e. Crysis 3) while others overload one of the cores (i.e. Lego the movie)...? If the issue is fully in the OS, how is that some games are well distributed and others are bad distributed...?"

Well a program can try and split its work up into different parts to run on sperate threads. In these cases the OS will probably choose to run them at the same time on different cores (although it can choose to run them in sequence on the same core! i.e. Your machine has only core!).
However, doing this in a video game is something that is hard to do with every task that needs to be performed, and different games can have very different requirements which can affect their ability to have work going on at the same time. Even if two game look the same and do very similar things, their requirements under the hood can mean they use the procoessor differently.

[conejeitor]

Originally posted by Dave A:

However, doing this in a video game is something that is hard to do with every task that needs to be performed, and different games can have very different requirements which can affect their ability to have work going on at the same time. Even if two game look the same and do very similar things, their requirements under the hood can mean they use the procoessor differently.

Right, yeah, that is what I thought, thanks for the straight answer. So summing it up: It has to do with how the game is programed as a whole (I understand that many times this does not mean "bad programing", it just means that for the nature of the tasks the game cannot use all the cores, despite how refined it may be. And I know programers do the best they can with the tools they have for certaing game or another, and some games just don´t let further improvement). Thanks.