High CPU load on laptop

remyblok · Post by **remyblok** » 15 Mar 2005 16:19

Good day,

I have a bit of a problem.
On my PC and on my laptop I have the same configurations of TTDPatch (A46). But the CPU load on the laptop is always 100% where it is 2% at my normal PC.
Of course I played a bit with the different switches. Also tried the miscmod options with the CPU-time. None of it did make a difference.

I recently installed TTD again on my laptop, the previous time was last summer.
I can't remember which version I had back then, but the problem with the CPU was not there.

I hope you can help. I really like to use it when using a battery, and that's not going to happen with such a load.

Here are the specs of my laptop:
Pentium 4 1.6 Mobile
512MB ram
20GB hard drive
Windows XP SP2 dutch
Windows version of TTD with Alpha 46 patch

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 15 Mar 2005 17:45

Are you sure this is related to TTD(Patch) and not the environment of the PC vs. the environment of the laptop? Could be your laptop is running some service that boosts CPU usage.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 15 Mar 2005 18:22

krtaylor has reported this too. No idea what might be causing it.

remyblok · Post by **remyblok** » 15 Mar 2005 18:30

No, I don't think so. Task manager clearly shows al of CPU time goes to TTDLOADW.OVL.
The only thing I can think of is SpeedStep support. But if it would be the problem other people would had problems with it.

Also, a friend of mine, with the same laptop, has the same problem. But he is running win2k. So maybe it's a hardware problem, but I find that hard to believe. There is no other program with the same symptoms.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 15 Mar 2005 19:38

Yes, that is exactly my problem. It doesn't matter whether the game is paused or not. There was a miscmods flag which Patchman wanted me to test, but I am having problems with miscmods and I cannot tell whether it worked or not. So, this is under research ATM I guess, we are hoping to find more data.

Anybody else have this trouble? Anybody looked?

Did you have this problem previously? I never did until recent alphas.

remyblok · Post by **remyblok** » 15 Mar 2005 20:14

Well, I've done some research. Just started with Alpha 1 and worked my way up. I found that 'the bug' is introduced in alpha 10. before that things ran smoothly. Can you confirm this krtaylor?
But then, it would be over a jear old. Very unlikly no one noticed it before.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 15 Mar 2005 20:55

That doesn't seem right. I regularly pause TTD and return to doing real work on my computer, such as when I'm collecting screenshots for TTD websites - I make the shot, pause the game, switch back to the desktop, edit the graphic, add it to the page, and run FTP to upload it. And this worked just fine until a couple weeks ago, when I noticed the FTP program basically seizing up. Then I researched and found 100% CPU use, which naturally slows things down, and complained.

eis_os · Post by **eis_os** » 15 Mar 2005 21:52

I don't see any perfomance problem with my version ... can you start ttdpatch with only the minimum switches and see what happens?

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 15 Mar 2005 22:24

An interesting idea. I turned everything off except of course XP compatibility, and...
...it still uses 100% CPU.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 15 Mar 2005 23:35

Well, in my case even in windowed mode TTD never uses more than 30% CPU. It's strange...

[time passes]

Ah. It turns out that the miscmods.notimegiveaway flag is actually never used in the Windows version. Instead, the piece of code that tried to test it, got the miscmods.dontfixtropicbanks instead.

So, with "miscmods.dontfixtropicbanks on", you'd get 100% CPU load, but with "miscmods.dontfixtropicbanks off", it would release the CPU if it had nothing to do.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 15 Mar 2005 23:39

Do you know if the tropic-banks miscmods switch appears in the TTDXC GUI? I just looked, and didn't see it listed, which would imply that I don't have it selected (if it's not there), and thus that shouldn't be the cause.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 15 Mar 2005 23:42

krtaylor wrote:Do you know if the tropic-banks miscmods switch appears in the TTDXC GUI? I just looked, and didn't see it listed, which would imply that I don't have it selected (if it's not there), and thus that shouldn't be the cause.

I'm pretty sure it must be there, this switch is several years old.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 15 Mar 2005 23:47

Maybe I'm stupid but I can't find which one it is. Here's the miscmods list from TTDXC. The only thing talking about banks is "Allow temperate-climate banks in other climates." Is that the one?

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 15 Mar 2005 23:56

It's the sixth entry there.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 16 Mar 2005 00:14

Which I have on. Hmm...
Sure enough, when I turn it off, I don't have 100% CPU usage anymore.
So I take it that the 100% usage is caused by a different miscmods switch not listed in TTDXC, and a bug in the Patch that caused that switch to be turned on by the tropic-banks switch? I suppose that'll be fixed in the next Patch alpha? Good to know what the trouble was. I can do without the banks until then, they aren't that important.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 16 Mar 2005 00:29

krtaylor wrote:Which I have on. Hmm...
Sure enough, when I turn it off, I don't have 100% CPU usage anymore.
So I take it that the 100% usage is caused by a different miscmods switch not listed in TTDXC, and a bug in the Patch that caused that switch to be turned on by the tropic-banks switch? I suppose that'll be fixed in the next Patch alpha? Good to know what the trouble was. I can do without the banks until then, they aren't that important.

It's fixed now, yes.

And I don't see why you would want temperate banks in the other climates anyway

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 16 Mar 2005 00:32

Graphic variety I suppose. Maybe I didn't clearly understand the TTDXC description of the mod.

The sequential loading/unloading, I don't understand why it's a miscmod - that's the way real trains are usually loaded/unloaded, so I'd think it would be the default behavior. Why wouldn't it be?

The denser smoke plumes I'm not sure I understand either, give that there is a separate smoke control switch. How do those work together?

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 16 Mar 2005 00:50

1. OK.
2. Well, passenger trains always load/unload all wagons simultaneously, and the same is true for some bulk loading facilities. It also looks nicer, you get more gradual load stages for each wagon.
3. This miscmods setting has been superceded entirely by the moresteam switch. Apparently TTDXC has the miscmods of 2.0r1, and none of the ones introduced since then. The "more steam" miscmods setting has now actually been replaced by "Vehicle messages (getting old, lost, etc.) use vehicle number instead of name".

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 16 Mar 2005 01:14

Patchman wrote:2. Well, passenger trains always load/unload all wagons simultaneously, and the same is true for some bulk loading facilities. It also looks nicer, you get more gradual load stages for each wagon.

True... I find it helpful to do the sequential loading though because it makes it easier to change older cars, or shorten a train that's too long. Maybe I should let go of this switch and see how I like it now.

But one thing I like about using this switch, is that you can (usually) tell at a glance how full a train is - how far back its cars are full. If the whole train loads at once then it's much harder to tell.

Patchman wrote:3. This miscmods setting has been superceded entirely by the moresteam switch. Apparently TTDXC has the miscmods of 2.0r1, and none of the ones introduced since then. The "more steam" miscmods setting has now actually been replaced by "Vehicle messages (getting old, lost, etc.) use vehicle number instead of name".

I think this would qualify as a TTDXC bug. I'll point it out to Andrex.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 16 Mar 2005 02:51

krtaylor wrote:
Patchman wrote:3. This miscmods setting has been superceded entirely by the moresteam switch. Apparently TTDXC has the miscmods of 2.0r1, and none of the ones introduced since then. The "more steam" miscmods setting has now actually been replaced by "Vehicle messages (getting old, lost, etc.) use vehicle number instead of name".
I think this would qualify as a TTDXC bug. I'll point it out to Andrex.

It's been pointed out often enough

(once on each the last four pages of that thread plus a few more before that...)

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