Optimizing CPU Usage, And Other System Stats

[DiMono]

Inspired by a post in another thread, I decided to test out different graphics settings and see what happened. For this test I had Task Manager open on my second monitor, and I'm running AdVenture Capitalist on my primary monitor at 720p resolution, windowed. My CPU is a 2.4GHz quad-core i4770

It is known that when the game is open, if you have investments that are being displayed in $/second, how quickly that money actually accrues is tied to your graphics speed: if you're on Fastest graphics, your money accrues about twice as quickly as if you're on Fantastic graphics. For this reason, I (and probably many of you) have always been using the game on Fastest graphics, so that when I do have the game open, my income is maximized. That said, even with the graphics on Fastest, your income will still be about half what it would be when the game is closed entirely, so the best way to play this game once you get to that point is to only open it briefly to see if there's anything you can do, and then close it right away to let your investments work for you - just like in real life.

It is also known that since the game was created in Unity 3D, it's unusually resource-intensive for its size. It seems like the kind of game that would use almost no processor power or memory, but that is not the case (more on that later). Someone in another thread pointed out that after a certain graphics quality, the game switches to vsync, so I decided to see what would happen if I changed up the graphics quality while monitoring resource usage.

The first thing I noticed was that CPU usage is lower on the moon. Presumably this is because at the point I'm at in the game, Earth is being calculated per second and the moon is always waiting for investments to finish, so the calculations on the moon are less intensive. I saw about a 30-40% reduction in CPU usage on the moon as compared to on Earth.

The second thing i noticed is that the game has a memory leak! On first opening, it uses about 190MB of RAM. Switching to the moon, that goes up to about 235MB. On all subsequent location switches, the moon doesn't increase memory usage significantly, but every time switching back to Earth raises memory use by about 10-15MB. As such, I again recommend only having the game open for as long as is necessary to do what you want to do, and then closing it again right away, to preserve your system's RAM.

Now, on to the point: optimizing CPU. It turns out the breakpoint for CPU usage is the "Good" graphics quality setting, meaning there is different CPU usage for the three lower settings vs the three higher settings. At "Good" graphics and above, CPU usage is about 5-9%, with the occasional peak around 10%. At "Simple" graphics and below, CPU usage is a staggering 25-30%!

CPU usage doesn't vary significantly within those two groups of graphics settings, so given that lower quality leads to faster income when the game is open, I recommend playing this game at "Good" graphics at all times if you care about your CPU (and thus electricity) usage. I did not investigate GPU usage, but I suspect it will follow the same trend.

[AlfredWallace]

Very nice thank your for that analysis.

[Haigen]

This game is poorly programmed.
Do the grafic settings affect earth income as well, when your income resources showing cash per second and the green line is constantly displayed?

[DiMono]

Originally posted by Essah:

This game is poorly programmed.
Do the grafic settings affect earth income as well, when your income resources showing cash per second and the green line is constantly displayed?

Yes. The higher the graphics setting, the slower the income. And even at the fastest graphics setting, your income is about half what it should be.

[AlfredWallace]

I just want to say LOL

[Kabukki]

Why would graphics settings affect the income speed ???

[AlfredWallace]

Originally posted by Kabukki:

Why would graphics settings affect the income speed ???

Cause the devs sucks and work with foots instead of head.

[DiMono]

Originally posted by Kabukki:

Why would graphics settings affect the income speed ???

Probably something to do with the frequency of income calculations while the game is open. More time spent drawing is less time spent calculating, but it still wants to perform the same number of calculations, so they happen less frequently and fall behind real time. That is only a hypothesis though, and not to be taken as factual.

[MrFouffe]

Nice

[Dracian]

That game looks more and more like an enormous bad joke.

Memory leaks ? Come on devs, don't you know how to avoid something as simple as that ?