Confused about the 100% CPU usage whining...

[Karta]

Wouldn't you want your CPU to use most or all of its resources when running intensive games? AC Origins is a very CPU intensive game, what do you expect your CPU usage to be, 50%?

I see plenty of reviews about people crying about their 100% CPU usage, but there are also a lot of people playing the game at the moment, and the positive reviews outweigh the negative reviews by a LOT. So this can either mean:

1) Your PC isn't as good as you think it is anymore to run modern games.
2) You just feel the need to blame Ubisoft for their previous poor performing games (e.g. AC Unity)

What also sucks are the reviews with people saying "I will update my negative review when it gets fixed" but most of them never actually do it. And what's freaking hilarious is that I noticed that the hours-in-game of mostly every single negative review I've read are increasing. So... you're playing the game even though you claim it's unplayable? What?

[Szaby]

Waste of resources is always bad. Not the game that's using all the CPU threads at 100% but the game+DRM, and the DRM part takes away precious CPU resources from the game which produces FPS drops and stutters...
So yeah... all the "whining" is justified. Why should paying customers face with a faulty DRM implementation ?

I bought the game, but really hope they crack it soon so there will be pointless to use 2 DRM methods simultaneously.

[Lord_WC]

So, according to you people should buy a new CPU so ubisoft can run more DRM?
That's like you should buy a new engine in your car so it could pull a cart of lawyers with it who make sure you are using your car the way the manufacturer wants it.

No thanks.

[ssjZhugeLiang[with fan]]

This has to be the most shameless, ignorant, pathetic endorsement of poorly implimented DRM I've ever seen. A perfect example of Mental Gymnastics.

[Karta]

Originally posted by Lord_WC:

So, according to you people should buy a new CPU so ubisoft can run more DRM?
That's like you should buy a new engine in your car so it could pull a cart of lawyers with it who make sure you are using your car the way the manufacturer wants it.

No thanks.

I'm saying maybe DRM isn't impacting performance much at all, considering 20k people (approximately) are playing it at one time and don't seem to complain.

Plus people with negative reviews are still playing it, so I'm saying their argument that DRM affects perfomance THAT much doesn't hold.

[Dopamiini]

I booted the game up, Noticed the great amount of CPU it's using.
Won't be playing until they fix it.

[Johnny Deep]

Originally posted by Rordon Gamsay:

Originally posted by Lord_WC:

So, according to you people should buy a new CPU so ubisoft can run more DRM?
That's like you should buy a new engine in your car so it could pull a cart of lawyers with it who make sure you are using your car the way the manufacturer wants it.

No thanks.

I'm saying maybe DRM isn't impacting performance much at all, considering 20k people (approximately) are playing it at one time and don't seem to complain.

Plus people with negative reviews are still playing it, so I'm saying their argument that DRM affects perfomance THAT much doesn't hold.

Granted your probably a troll, but I'll still explain..
Not everyone is having this issue, but a lot are. Then you have to account for the people who are playing and have no idea that their cpu is cooking. Given how smart the avg person is I'd imagine thats alot of cooking cpus.

[gamertaboo]

No you don't want your CPU to ever be at 100% while in a game. In other programs that need a ton of CPU, like rendering videos or something it's perfectly fine.

In gaming however, your CPU and GPU work together to render the game. The CPU sends draw calls to the GPU to render scenes, and it does this many times a second.

When your CPU usage gets maxed out to 100% however, the GPU usage will then start to slow down and have to wait on the CPU. This is going to lead to lower framerates, stuttering.... bad stuff. Not a good experience.

This is the literal definition of a CPU bottleneck, and a game shouldn't be doing that for you. I mean the game is using some people's i7 7700k's at 100%, causing them to have bad framerates. The 7700k has been the best gaming CPU money can buy for the last year.

You might start to see why all the whining about 100% CPU usage is very very relevant. If you have an Intel core i5 or i7 from the last year or two paired with a balanced GPU you should be fine in games and not experience ANY significant CPU bottleneck.

(i.e. not an i5 6500 paired with a GTX 1080 ti, as that's very unbalanced. But an i5 6500 paired with a GTX 1060 would be just fine. As well as an R7 1700/1800 or i7 8700k with a GTX 1080 ti would also be balanced)

[fish]

There's no way the game is supposed to be using the amount of CPU cycles it is. If it was how on earth would it run on an xbox one or PS4 which have much slower CPUs than a good desktop PC has.

Also the question has to be asked whether the high CPU usage is causing the poor framerates.

There's nothing in ACO that would cause higher CPU usage than any of the other AC games. They all have tons of NPCs, and Syndicate has way more buildings. Dropping settings doesn't seem to help so it doesn't seem to be GPU related.

[Roquen]

Originally posted by gamertaboo:

No you don't want your CPU to ever be at 100% while in a game. In other programs that need a ton of CPU, like rendering videos or something it's perfectly fine.

In gaming however, your CPU and GPU work together to render the game. The CPU sends draw calls to the GPU to render scenes, and it does this many times a second.

When your CPU usage gets maxed out to 100% however, the GPU usage will then start to slow down and have to wait on the CPU. This is going to lead to lower framerates, stuttering.... bad stuff. Not a good experience.

This is the literal definition of a CPU bottleneck, and a game shouldn't be doing that for you. I mean the game is using some people's i7 7700k's at 100%, causing them to have bad framerates. The 7700k has been the best gaming CPU money can buy for the last year.

You might start to see why all the whining about 100% CPU usage is very very relevant. If you have an Intel core i5 or i7 from the last year or two paired with a balanced GPU you should be fine in games and not experience ANY significant CPU bottleneck.

(i.e. not an i5 6500 paired with a GTX 1080 ti, as that's very unbalanced. But an i5 6500 paired with a GTX 1060 would be just fine. As well as an R7 1700/1800 or i7 8700k with a GTX 1080 ti would also be balanced)

This is 100% correct.

[bobbie424242]

Originally posted by fish:

There's no way the game is supposed to be using the amount of CPU cycles it is. If it was how on earth would it run on an xbox one or PS4 which have much slower CPUs than a good desktop PC has.

Also the question has to be asked whether the high CPU usage is causing the poor framerates.

There's nothing in ACO that would cause higher CPU usage than any of the other AC games. They all have tons of NPCs, and Syndicate has way more buildings. Dropping settings doesn't seem to help so it doesn't seem to be GPU related.

Except on PC, ACO is not capped to 30 fps (unless you force it in settings). Assuming it simulates the world every frame, this is more taxing. I'm capping fps to 30 and core usage never goes above 70% on an old core i7 860 from 2009.
Also, the amount ACO has to siulate is crazy, which I really realized flying Senu above Alexandria from highest position possible. I'm not surprise at all this game is CPU heavy. MMOs tend to be this way too. For example, Elder Scroll Online is CPU limited and it is very difficult or impossible to reach stable 60 fps even at 1080p.

[gamertaboo]

Originally posted by bitowankenhobitt:

Originally posted by fish:

There's no way the game is supposed to be using the amount of CPU cycles it is. If it was how on earth would it run on an xbox one or PS4 which have much slower CPUs than a good desktop PC has.

Also the question has to be asked whether the high CPU usage is causing the poor framerates.

There's nothing in ACO that would cause higher CPU usage than any of the other AC games. They all have tons of NPCs, and Syndicate has way more buildings. Dropping settings doesn't seem to help so it doesn't seem to be GPU related.

Except on PC, ACO is not capped to 30 fps (unless you force it in settings). Assuming it simulates the word every frame, this is more taxing. I'm capping fps to 30 and core usage never goes above 70% on an old core i7 860 from 2009.
Also, the amount ACO has to siulate is crazy, which I really realized flying Senu above Alexandria from highest position possible. I'm not surprise at all this game is CPU heavy. MMOs tend to be this way too. Fo example, Elder Scroll Online is CPU limited and it is very difficult or impossible to reach stable 60 fps even at 1080p.

Ya but how do you compare this game to an MMO in any way?

I would agree that this game may be more intensive because it's a little different than previous AC games. Due to having Senu it may need to render more at the same time than any previous game has I suppose.

But in my mind this still doesn't lead to the game needing 100% of an i7 7700k, or in my case 70% at times of my 8 core 16 thread, Threadripper 1900x. That is A LOT of CPU usage for a game. There's no other game in my library that needs this much. AC: Origins isn't that different, or better looking, or really anything that could reasonably make this game need that much CPU.

[bobbie424242]

Originally posted by gamertaboo:

Ya but how do you compare this game to an MMO in any way?

I would agree that this game may be more intensive because it's a little different than previous AC games. Due to having Senu it may need to render more at the same time than any previous game has I suppose.

But in my mind this still doesn't lead to the game needing 100% of an i7 7700k, or in my case 70% at times of my 8 core 16 thread, Threadripper 1900x. That is A LOT of CPU usage for a game. There's no other game in my library that needs this much. AC: Origins isn't that different, or better looking, or really anything that could reasonably make this game need that much CPU.

Open worlds generally tend to be really taxing for hardware due to their dynamic nature and the amount of stuff to simulate. IIRC, When Witcher 3 was released, it was impossible or very difficult to run it at 1080p 60 fps. While today it is probably a tad easier.
To get back to ACO, I suspect it simulates a lot more than what is immediately visible, mostly because of Senu. Speaking of which, such detailed open world were you can zoom out that much instantly is probably a first.
As long as CPU usage never reach 100%, high cpu usage is not really a problem.

[Karta]

Originally posted by gamertaboo:

No you don't want your CPU to ever be at 100% while in a game. In other programs that need a ton of CPU, like rendering videos or something it's perfectly fine.

In gaming however, your CPU and GPU work together to render the game. The CPU sends draw calls to the GPU to render scenes, and it does this many times a second.

When your CPU usage gets maxed out to 100% however, the GPU usage will then start to slow down and have to wait on the CPU. This is going to lead to lower framerates, stuttering.... bad stuff. Not a good experience.

This is the literal definition of a CPU bottleneck, and a game shouldn't be doing that for you. I mean the game is using some people's i7 7700k's at 100%, causing them to have bad framerates. The 7700k has been the best gaming CPU money can buy for the last year.

You might start to see why all the whining about 100% CPU usage is very very relevant. If you have an Intel core i5 or i7 from the last year or two paired with a balanced GPU you should be fine in games and not experience ANY significant CPU bottleneck.

(i.e. not an i5 6500 paired with a GTX 1080 ti, as that's very unbalanced. But an i5 6500 paired with a GTX 1060 would be just fine. As well as an R7 1700/1800 or i7 8700k with a GTX 1080 ti would also be balanced)

Okay I was ignorant on that part then I admit. But my point was maybe people's systems themselves aren't well optimized like you mentioned, might have unbalanced CPU & GPU combinations right?

[Karta]

Take this one review i just saw for instance. Posted a week ago, complained about poor performance. Fella has 50+ hours in game. I check his/her profile, they are currently in-game in AC Origins.

I don't get it? If you claim the game is frying your system why the hell are you playing it? It's stuff like this that makes me question people's honesty on this whole DRM issue.

[gamertaboo]

Originally posted by bitowankenhobitt:

Originally posted by gamertaboo:

Ya but how do you compare this game to an MMO in any way?

I would agree that this game may be more intensive because it's a little different than previous AC games. Due to having Senu it may need to render more at the same time than any previous game has I suppose.

But in my mind this still doesn't lead to the game needing 100% of an i7 7700k, or in my case 70% at times of my 8 core 16 thread, Threadripper 1900x. That is A LOT of CPU usage for a game. There's no other game in my library that needs this much. AC: Origins isn't that different, or better looking, or really anything that could reasonably make this game need that much CPU.

Open worlds generally tend to be really taxing for hardware due to their dynamic nature and the amount of stuff to simulate. IIRC, When Witcher 3 was released, it was impossible or very difficult to run it at 1080p 60 fps. While today it is probably a tad easier.
To get back to ACO, I suspect it simulates a lot more than what is immediately visible, mostly because of Senu. Speaking of which, such detailed open world were you can zoom out that much instantly is probably a first.
As long as CPU usage never reach 100%, high cpu usage is not really a problem.

No the Witcher 3 was never ever impossible to play at 1080p 60fps, it had a few issues at launch but nowhere near anything like this. And it's one of the best optimized games ever.

And I suppose you can say as long as CPU usage isn't 100% that high usage doesn't matter, it's true that my 1900x at 70% usage isn't bottlenecking my GPU. But people aren't complaining about 70% CPU usage, they are complaining about 100% CPU usage which is causing their GPU usage to go down, and their framerates to suffer.

And perhaps most importantly it's happening to GOOD CPUs. Not just lower end or older CPUs, we are talking about brand spanking new i5's and i7's that can run pretty much ANY other game on Steam just fine. Hell, even the newest i7 8700k with 6 cores and 12 threads and probably the fastest IPC on the planet right now is being used up to like 70-80% lol.

I just don't get why people are trying to turn this around. Why stick up for a multi-billion dollar corporation that have even done shady things in the past. This game has optimization issues, possibly caused by the 4 layer DRM sandwich it has going on but we have no confirmation for as of yet, period. And the complaints are relevant.