[GS] Extreme CPU usage

[ddd123]

Did anyone experience such a problem ?
I am very uncomfortable running a game that make my CPU fans run so fast.
Also this happens pretty early in the game in standard maps so nothing huge to handle.
And it goes even when tabbing in my turn so really there should be no calculation at all...

Is there some graphics setting to lower down to solve it? I already reduce shadows and some other but nothing changed.

 

[Dedrytus]

Graphics settings won't help because you have problem with high load of CPU. You can check in task manager what "eats" processor time and if it is related to civ. Another question is this only civ or other apps too? You may have dirty radiator and/or fan too. There can be lot's of reasons.

 

[Prester John 2]

Yep. Same here. It seems to stem from the graphics. I disenabled the leader animations. That helps a bit.
For me it only happens with civ. And it's even a gaming notebook.

 

[ddd123]

Graphics settings won't help because you have problem with high load of CPU. You can check in task manager what "eats" processor time and if it is related to civ. Another question is this only civ or other apps too? You may have dirty radiator and/or fan too. There can be lot's of reasons.

I don't play that many high end games right now but surely I don't recall anything stressing this much the CPU.

I still don't get why the CPU should work that much while the game is paused.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I don't play that many high end games right now but surely I don't recall anything stressing this much the CPU.

I still don't get why the CPU should work that much while the game is paused.

Do you have like CPU-z or some other program that can monitor your processor speed/temp/etc? I was curious about mine too, because a fan inside kept kicking into high and making a ton of noise. It turned out it was the video card. It wasn't that hot though, I think the fan is just noisy or going bad.

The CPU was maxxing out a lot though. I think the game is general just more CPU-intensive than GPU.

 

[Gorbles]

Have you checked your fan, like Dedrytus asked? Plenty of issues caused by hardware don't crop up in all games, and aren't always relative to the specific demands of that game.

Do you have / feel comfortable sharing something like a screenshot of your Task Manager whilst Civ. is running? Not everyone is okay with sharing that amount of info, I understand. But at least, maybe the % of your CPU Task Manager says its using? And the specs of your CPU as well?

 

[Victoria]

It is the GPU in my case. Even though my graphics card is 50% used and my CPU is 50% used it is the GPU fan that comes on in my case.
If you turn on monitoring (perfmon inbuilt in task manager is great and CPU Z is free for GPU detail) you will see your CPU is spiking while your GPU stays steady as it continues to render whatever you are seeing. Turn off shadows and night/day helps, any background imaging is really what is killing it if as you say it stays idle and fanning early in the game also indicates this ... it is not the logic, it is those pretty waves crashing against the shore which are the same from start to finish.

I have a sort of dusty environment and vacuuming inside frequently helps a little.

 

[ddd123]

Have you checked your fan, like Dedrytus asked? Plenty of issues caused by hardware don't crop up in all games, and aren't always relative to the specific demands of that game.

Do you have / feel comfortable sharing something like a screenshot of your Task Manager whilst Civ. is running? Not everyone is okay with sharing that amount of info, I understand. But at least, maybe the % of your CPU Task Manager says its using? And the specs of your CPU as well?

In the highest load moment it was 50% which is strange because with 4 cores if it uses only 1 should be capped at 25% if it uses multi core should go toward 100%.
That's one strange thing.
My PC is pretty good, 1060 6 gb and a skylake i5, should be more than enough to play in full HD.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

In the highest load moment it was 50% which is strange because with 4 cores if it uses only 1 should be capped at 25% if it uses multi core should go toward 100%.
That's one strange thing.
My PC is pretty good, 1060 6 gb and a skylake i5, should be more than enough to play in full HD.

Yeah, that's weird. Mine used all 4 cores to 100% from time to time.

 

[Gorbles]

In the highest load moment it was 50% which is strange because with 4 cores if it uses only 1 should be capped at 25% if it uses multi core should go toward 100%.
That's one strange thing.
My PC is pretty good, 1060 6 gb and a skylake i5, should be more than enough to play in full HD.

So there could be a few things here. In a decreasing order of likeliness:

1. Game is defaulting to integrated graphics instead of your 1060. I've seen this reported across a variety of games, seemingly at random, especially with nVidia cards. This link might help with that (still valid, as far as I'm aware): https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/72576
2. Your OS just isn't distributing load correctly. Often happens when you have a lot of things running as a lot of things seem to be scheduled by default to the primary core. There is a trick to change this (see the end of my post), but will need doing every time you run the game, so this isn't a fix. The fix would be seeing if you can cut down on any running services, especially apps that always start when Windows does that you don't actually need.
3. Heat / temperature / dust issues.
4. Drivers not being up-to-date. Especially if you get your GPU drivers through Windows Update (can sometimes be a bad version, or incorrect for your device). GeForce Experience is more reliable, aside from looking the latest version up online.

The trick to 2 is setting the core affinity via Task Manager. Prior to Windows 10 (or 8, not sure) you can do this by right-clicking on the process and selecting "Set Affinity". In Windows 10 (at least the build I have), it's under Details, and you have to find the executable a bit more manually. Try deselecting the first core (Core 0) and see how it runs.

 

[Cerilis]

I dont have problems in game (well leader screens could load a bit faster), but I have veeeery long loading screens. And after I exit the game the pc will still be in slow mo for a few minutes. This only happens with civ and I feel like it got worse with GS.

It's putting me off civ a bit. :/

Whats my issue?^^

Edit: Now that I think about it, while the loading screen with the leader is still long, what really is new is the black "Please wait" loading screen before the leader being way longer now. Maybe it has to do with leaders after all?

 

[Gorbles]

@Cerilis - sounds like disk read ( / write) issues. Complete guess on where the fault is (the game vs. hardware), but particularly on older drives, or drives with lower speeds (sub-7200RPM). Even SSDs can see occurrences like this, due to technological constraints and assumptions around things like a page file.

 

[Disgustipated]

Make sure it's not a bug with the launcher. The launcher has a known bug with trying to run video advertisements.

It's called QTengineprocess or something similar in task manager.

 

[Aristos]

I dont have problems in game (well leader screens could load a bit faster), but I have veeeery long loading screens. And after I exit the game the pc will still be in slow mo for a few minutes. This only happens with civ and I feel like it got worse with GS.

It's putting me off civ a bit. :/

Whats my issue?^^

Edit: Now that I think about it, while the loading screen with the leader is still long, what really is new is the black "Please wait" loading screen before the leader being way longer now. Maybe it has to do with leaders after all?

GS loads a lot more than R&F and vanilla, look into the modinfo file for the expansion and you will see.

Did anyone experience such a problem ?
I am very uncomfortable running a game that make my CPU fans run so fast.
Also this happens pretty early in the game in standard maps so nothing huge to handle.
And it goes even when tabbing in my turn so really there should be no calculation at all...

Is there some graphics setting to lower down to solve it? I already reduce shadows and some other but nothing changed.

Install MSI Afterburner, setup On Screen Display, and while in game, watch your loads. If your machine is well balanced (Especially CPU vs GPU), you should see the GPU usage higher than the CPU usage. Share a screenshot of the OSD while in game, and we can judge from there.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Yeah, game loading and starting a new game seem longer, but in-game is much faster so an overall win in my book.

 

[ddd123]

https://imgur.com/a/nK94tfX

 

[Aristos]

https://imgur.com/a/nK94tfX

Holy, I have never seen such temps in my CPU, not even close... usage seems OK, CPU ~65% and GPU close to 100%, what I would expect in a system where the CPU is NOT a bottleneck.

But those CPU temps... did you check if your fan is really working? Did you assemble the machine? If you did, perhaps you need to check cooler, and/or thermal paste...

 

[BTSeven7]

I have a beast of a machine with a 1080ti and a slightly OC 8700k @ 4.8 GHZ (Yeah my other hobby is flight sim). 32 GB of Ram and top of the line M.2 HD and I noticed GS gets this thing going a lot harder and faster than R&F. My temps are well tested under heavy load but I’ll have to check the usage.

Obviously with that hardware the game is still pretty fast but my first game went well into turn 350 on a standard map with 8 civs bc I was messing around more. Things started to lag way more than in the past. The fans come on a lot earlier than with R&F but I think overall a much heavier load is being put on the machine. I am curious how people with a more reasonable machine are doing in the late turns. Feels like it could get slow.

 

[Victoria]

I’m really confused to what the issue is. This is not a web server with 10,000 very short requests.
This is a roughly 36 thread app where the key thread (thread0) uses more than the others amd naturally will reuse the same cpu after interrupt due to caching.

 

[ddd123]

Holy, I have never seen such temps in my CPU, not even close... usage seems OK, CPU ~65% and GPU close to 100%, what I would expect in a system where the CPU is NOT a bottleneck.

But those CPU temps... did you check if your fan is really working? Did you assemble the machine? If you did, perhaps you need to check cooler, and/or thermal paste...

Yeah, how long is the paste supposed to last ? Maybe I need to add a new one.