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Excessive CPU/GPU utilization simply by starting the game. [TMIR_GPU]

This thread has been started based on a request from Shan. You can find some previous communications on this issue by searching for TMIR_GPU in the forums.

Description of issue
We've all seen it or felt it. We start the game and get through the welcome ads. But even if you don't do ANYTHING else in the game you notice that your PC fans start to run or your mobile device starts to heat. This means we are all wasting money paying for electricity to run these devices while the game wastes resources. We can't play for as long on our mobile devices because the battery drains so quickly. There's also wear and tear on your equipment that we shouldn't have to incur.

On Windows you can see the excessive GPU load by using Task Manager.

I've been trying to get this defect prioritized by posting to the forums. I'm getting nowhere fast and I need your help. If you've encountered this problem (hey it's easy to reproduce -- you just need to start the game and wait) please add a followup post to this one indicating that you have this issue too. Maybe if enough players report they have the same issue we can get the devs to fix it and we can move on to other things.

Thanks
T'Mir

Comments

  • TMirTMir ✭✭
    SHAN: Weeks have passed. Could you please provide an update? Thanks
  • ShanShan ✭✭✭✭✭
    TMir wrote: »
    SHAN: Weeks have passed. Could you please provide an update? Thanks

    I do not have an update at this time.
    When I do have one I will provide it.
  • Shan wrote: »
    TMir wrote: »
    SHAN: Weeks have passed. Could you please provide an update? Thanks

    I do not have an update at this time.
    When I do have one I will provide it.

    Hmm. I'm interested in hearing the results of the conversation that occurred at the feedback review session.

    Perhaps you could get a fix into 8.2.0 for this issue and add it to your list of "bug fixes and quality of life changes"?

    I've also been thinking about workarounds for you if the scale of the issue is too large to address: add a setting to disable all background animations. This setting would not disable game related timers or other markers -- just the background animations not strictly necessary for game play. There is precedent for this setting as I can disable all game sounds.

    Cheers,
    T'Mir
  • Shan: It has been almost 6 weeks and the client update is coming soon. Any progress on this item? Yet?

    Cheers
  • W.W. CarlisleW.W. Carlisle ✭✭✭✭✭
    The phone and my Kindles both get hot.

    I know my mobile data is metered and Timelines eats a lot of it. I haven't played it on the phone recently, so I can't screenshot the data use, but eats it pretty fast.
    W.W. CarlislePlayed since January 20, 2019Captain Level- 99 (May 9, 2022)VIP 14Crew Quarters: 485/485Most recent/Lowest- Anbo-jyutsu Kyle Riker (1/5* Lvl 30) 5/29/23Immortalized x-866 5* x184, 4* x 490, 3* x91, 2* x62, and 1* x27Most recent Immortal - Tearful Janeway 4* 5/25/23Current non-event project- Improving my Science base skill. Retrieval Project- Mestral 1/5*
  • ShanShan ✭✭✭✭✭
    There should be improvements for the Windows 10 client but that is the only update I have at this time.
  • Weirdly enough i have this on my Lenovo legion laptop from work.
    Start the game and my fans go spinning and i do see temperatures on my GPU rise with OpenHardwareMonitor and of course the fans go full speed.
    But my personal pc with an old cheap graphics card i bought solly to have a hdmi port, runs the game much smoother.

    Legion: NVidia GeForce GTX 16000 Ti
    Old card: Nvidia GeForce 210 1gb (MSI)
  • W.W. CarlisleW.W. Carlisle ✭✭✭✭✭
    My Kindle is currently cooling down. I hope it helps with the bouncing. My Kindle 8 and phone both aren't doing space battles correctly currently.
    W.W. CarlislePlayed since January 20, 2019Captain Level- 99 (May 9, 2022)VIP 14Crew Quarters: 485/485Most recent/Lowest- Anbo-jyutsu Kyle Riker (1/5* Lvl 30) 5/29/23Immortalized x-866 5* x184, 4* x 490, 3* x91, 2* x62, and 1* x27Most recent Immortal - Tearful Janeway 4* 5/25/23Current non-event project- Improving my Science base skill. Retrieval Project- Mestral 1/5*
  • My guess is that there are no throttles on the frame rate for animations. So, if you have a better graphics card it will generate more frames per second and generate more heat doing so.
  • Shan:
    Happy to report that v8.2.0 is much better with regards to the GPU load. While I still see bursts of ~35% utilization I also see moments when the load is 0%! My fans are quiet once again!

    Please accept my thanks for getting this issue addressed and extend a hearty "job well done" to the dev(s) that developed and implemented the fix.

    I just wish we could have agreed that something needed to be done sooner rather than later. Maybe next time...

    Cheers,
    T'Mir
  • ShanShan ✭✭✭✭✭
    TMir wrote: »
    Shan:
    Happy to report that v8.2.0 is much better with regards to the GPU load. While I still see bursts of ~35% utilization I also see moments when the load is 0%! My fans are quiet once again!

    Please accept my thanks for getting this issue addressed and extend a hearty "job well done" to the dev(s) that developed and implemented the fix.

    I just wish we could have agreed that something needed to be done sooner rather than later. Maybe next time...

    Cheers,
    T'Mir

    Thank you for reporting back on this :)
  • Hey SHAN:
    I wanted to give you a heads up that GPU utilization has increased again to the point where Task Manager says GPU utilization for the game is HIGH, even when the window is not in focus and the game is idling.
  • ShanShan ✭✭✭✭✭
    TMir wrote: »
    Hey SHAN:
    I wanted to give you a heads up that GPU utilization has increased again to the point where Task Manager says GPU utilization for the game is HIGH, even when the window is not in focus and the game is idling.

    Hmm thank you for letting me know!
  • DAEDAE ✭✭✭
    Ive never seen this before. Hm??? Interesting as i had reported my devices becoming very hot in a CS ticket a few times over 1.5 years. I had reported also my kindle crashing and not working due to heat after about 3 minutes of gameplay. Basically the reply said no known reports of this. This was about Since then ive gone through 3 kindles and 3 ios devices. The battery on 2 ios devices got too hot and exploded my devices. The kindles simply wont run the game or hold a charge anymore. Sorry ive missed your important information. Might have been nice to support you. And not ruin my devices. Had i known there was an actual reason or issue with the game causing this.
  • i have played the game on the fb app on a mac mini since January. i have noticed that opening and playing teh game doesn't not affect the temperature/fan speed but the arena battles does heat up my mac. My workaround is just an additional fan outside of my mac.

    i have played other graphic intensive games on this mac mini without the substantial heat increase.
    pro deo et denny crane
  • DAE wrote: »
    Ive never seen this before. Hm??? Interesting as i had reported my devices becoming very hot in a CS ticket a few times over 1.5 years. I had reported also my kindle crashing and not working due to heat after about 3 minutes of gameplay. Basically the reply said no known reports of this. This was about Since then ive gone through 3 kindles and 3 ios devices. The battery on 2 ios devices got too hot and exploded my devices. The kindles simply wont run the game or hold a charge anymore. Sorry ive missed your important information. Might have been nice to support you. And not ruin my devices. Had i known there was an actual reason or issue with the game causing this.

    Well as it turns out, it is never too late! This game should not be consuming resources at the current rate given the level of graphics in the game -- especially when not running game features with animations. IMO you shouldn't have to worry about heat or use an external fan to play the game.

    Thanks for posting!
  • Shan wrote: »
    TMir wrote: »
    Hey SHAN:
    I wanted to give you a heads up that GPU utilization has increased again to the point where Task Manager says GPU utilization for the game is HIGH, even when the window is not in focus and the game is idling.

    Hmm thank you for letting me know!

    Hmm it has been over a month now, Shan. Any updates for me?
  • ShanShan ✭✭✭✭✭
    If I had an update I would have shared it. I am sorry but I have no news on this.
  • tytlaltytlal ✭✭✭
    as per another thrade T'mir started, and i participated, i can concur (by my research and observation)
    that at the point of "clearing gravity well" in the login process , GPE (graphics,ea) goes nuts. im guessing they are rendering all of stt 3d objects in previously allocated memory (as that dont change much in this time), while u'r waiting to be let in. cant that be cached in some way? as there are no so much new grapics every time u log in. (but i dont know nothing of the engine that runs stt, so i might just be howling into the wind)
  • tytlal wrote: »
    as per another thrade T'mir started, and i participated, i can concur (by my research and observation)
    that at the point of "clearing gravity well" in the login process , GPE (graphics,ea) goes nuts. im guessing they are rendering all of stt 3d objects in previously allocated memory (as that dont change much in this time), while u'r waiting to be let in. cant that be cached in some way? as there are no so much new grapics every time u log in. (but i dont know nothing of the engine that runs stt, so i might just be howling into the wind)

    "Thrade"? Did you mean <i>thread</i> or <i>tirade</i>? To be honest, I'm perfectly comfortable with <b>tirade</b>! :-)
  • tytlaltytlal ✭✭✭
    "Thrade"? Did you mean <i>thread</i> or <i>tirade</i>? To be honest, I'm perfectly comfortable with <b>tirade</b>! :-)[/quote]

    i ment thread,but the other one, might worked as well ;P
    anyhow, i can see no future to our promblems to be fixed.
    im experimenting more (ea unexpected user actions :P ). sometimes,canceling clearing gravitatonal well after 2-5 seconds by Xing or killing the process by task manager, the second run does it faster. but ,just sometimes,and theres no logic i can understand behind that.
  • Typically a cache is constructed on an as-needed basis. In other words, the logic always asks the cache for an element and if the cache doesn't have it already it will get or build it.

    FULLY populating a cache at app startup is somewhat wasteful as many of the cache elements may never be used. As well building the cache consumes time and machine resources. Of course it could make sense to build a very small cache of resources that are ALWAYS used if there are code paths that are performance critical. The point here is that the two extremes of fully populating a cache and not having a cache at all need to be balanced and knowing when and how to build a cache is a big part of software architecture & design.

    I don't know if that's what is going on here; I hope not. I can speculate but really the Dev team needs to look at this to sort it out. I do know that the latest problems with startup began concurrently with the release of FBB.
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