CPU usage at 100% when downloading a game

[PartyCat]

pretty much title, this just started happening today, anyone know why this might be happeneing?

AMD phenom x4 995
8gb DDR3
windows 7
6850HD

[Adam2034]

Ok, I just resumed one of my game updates to test this for you and my cpu usage went from 6% to 30% which was a surprise. I am downloading at 4.6mb/s. I guess downloading at those speeds has a pretty high system impact. I am only learning this now. My AVG shield and the steam app both has fairly big jumps in CPU usage.

But like I said I would ask the folks at tomshardware.

[Mc Intire]

Okay, I might be able to shed some additional light on this. I cleaned my Steam folder, safe for the steamapps folder and the steam.exe. Restarting Steam let me download the missing files without any CPU usage UNTIL I reached the point where the latest update would be applied.

Steam also suggested right off the bat that I should convert the data of some of my games to a more effective format (funny how Steam seems incapable of marking games still using the old format, I thought I had already converted all of them). As you may know the initial check of the old game does not download a significant amount of data from the servers and mostly moves around some of the files in my steam folder. THIS process produced the same amount of CPU usage a download via Steam did before.

This leads me to the conclusion that the fault does not lie with Steams downloading function, but rather with the way it writes data onto my harddrive. I will now move around data manually from and to the affected drive in order to exlude a Hardware problem on my side.

[Adam2034]

Sounds like you have it under control :)

If it doesn't fix it then you know where to go ;)

[Mc Intire]

I might have found the cause. Copying from any of my HDDs to another causes a rise in CPU usage about... 3%. Moving data from my steam disk uses up 25% CPU use and clogs one CPU instantly. This is probably my HDD dying on me. A shame, really, as it is only 1 year old... well, at least this means I can get a replacement (hopefully). Will try checking the ♥♥♥ for errors, potentially formatting first, though.

Looking forward to reinstalling 700GB of steam games :S.

Combined with the 20 to 30% rise you claim the dl produces it's no wonder my PC sung the melody of dying.

[Adam2034]

Glad you found the problem. And I had to reinstall 270 Gb of games so I know the trouble. But at least you have a fast connection. Imagine downloading that at 400kb/s.

[bloodraven43]

yeah 60 celsius is really 140 degrees fahrenheit...and its all blowing into your case and out...so is all your other hardware to some extent...that heat will cause all kind of hardware issues...just a thought

btw stock heatsinks are no good...if you buy a new one look into the enclosed liquid cooling applications...they move that cpu heat right out of your case and are easy to install

what i would really try is
letting it cool down, taking the sides off your case and see if its still doing it
if it isnt,you have to much heat in your case and its melting stuff...its like you sitting in a 140 degrees...you wouldnt be to comfortable either...lol

[[☥] - CJ -]

For the hell of it, whens the last time you updated your Network Card Drivers?

[Mc Intire]

Publicado originalmente por bloodraven43:

yeah 60 celsius is really 140 degrees fahrenheit...and its all blowing into your case and out...so is all your other hardware to some extent...that heat will cause all kind of hardware issues...just a thought

btw stock heatsinks are no good...if you buy a new one look into the enclosed liquid cooling applications...they move that cpu heat right out of your case and are easy to install

what i would really try is
letting it cool down, taking the sides off your case and see if its still doing it
if it isnt,you have to much heat in your case and its melting stuff...its like you sitting in a 140 degrees...you wouldnt be to comfortable either...lol

I've been running this rig in this (hardware-)setup for two years now, and never had any heat problems. I can partly thank my twenty year old steel bigtower casing for that, it has lots of space between the components and permits air to circulate properly. Just for clarification, GPU and HDDs are 15C lower in temperature, even under strain.

Also, gaming and other strainous tasks work normally even now. It was just those pesky steam dls, and even those are not the issue anymore, as I moved my steam install temporarily to another Harddrive. Right now I'm just salavaging as uch data from the drive onto other drives until I can figure out the problem and/or get a replacement.

09.2011 was when I last updated... now that you remind me, I could take a look whether there are more recent drivers for the card for good measure.

[Tusken GA]

Publicado originalmente por Mc Intire:

That is the main reason I am posting here: In the processes tab there are only three processes producing "mayor" CPU usage: Steam: 2%, taskmgr.exe (the task manager itself):1% and HWMonitor (used it to check on the temps): 3%.

However, if I go to the Performance tab it tells me that CPU3 is at max capacity while the others run normally.

I tried reproducing this CPU clog with other programs, but all other programs distributed their CPU usage over all cores and avoided lag. Running Steam games and other programs simultaneously also works without lag, like it did before yeterday.

Sounds like you haven't told Task Manager to show processes from all users to me. Could be wrong, but check Task Manager's Processes Tab for a small check box at the bottom. If it's empty, check it and it should show you the culprit process.

[¤☣wing☢zeяo☣¤™]

Download Process Explorer[technet.microsoft.com] to have a good look around, load it right click on Steam go to properties then to the Threads tab, look at Steam.exe like a container and inside there are say 40 threads one will be the culprit, Task Manager does'nt tell you anything really just let's you end process not what's going on in the process.

[Mc Intire]

@Tuskan GA: I've done that, but even with all system tasks and tasks from "other users" showing it did not add up to what I saw in the Perfromance tab.

@wingzero: Thx for the program, ever since I uninstalled Spybot I was lacking something to look at my running processes properly. Will try it out.

Moving Steam to another HDD resolved my problem. I am currently examining the old HDD for errors, hoping it's just a broken cable or something like that. I don't know whether Shadz managed to resolve his problem, hope he didn't mind me hogging this thread :p.

[bloodraven43]

@Mc Intire...all that and its a bad hard drive...♥♥♥♥♥

[PartyCat]

Hey geys OP here again, so havn't been on but read through all of this(thanks for input btw) But idk what to say, just tried downloading a game again and cpu shoots up to 100%. My task manager looks normal but core graphs are maxed. Once again this ONLY happens with downloading games on steam. I am soooo confused =\

[Adam2034]

Could you give some details of your processes when you are downloading on steam? Maybe give us the top 5 processes with their percentage CPU use?

[Tusken GA]

Publicado originalmente por Shadz300:

Hey geys OP here again, so havn't been on but read through all of this(thanks for input btw) But idk what to say, just tried downloading a game again and cpu shoots up to 100%. My task manager looks normal but core graphs are maxed. Once again this ONLY happens with downloading games on steam. I am soooo confused =\

You could also try using Resource Monitor (if you're on Vista, 7, or 8). It will allow you to show disk usage, network usage, RAM usage, and CPU usage by Service and CPU.