SL using 90 to 95% of cpu cycles!

First computer specs out of the way.

Intel P4 2.4ghz, ATI 9600XT, 1gb Mushkin CAS2 PC2100 Ram, Intel D845EPT2 motherboard and Audigy soundcard.

So the problem. With out SL running my CPU runs at about 3% to 5% (or less) with the system idling. When I load up SL my CPU spikes to 100% and stays there! I look at processes and it is using 90% or more of the cpu consistently. I have talked with other people and their systems are not using anywhere near the cpu cycles SL is using on mine with comparable SL settings.

Does anyone have any idea why SL is doing this?

Thanks, Trisha

If SL isn't using all available resource to give me as smooth and pretty an experience as possible... I want to know WHY.

Don't try to calculate pi to 50 trillion places, or search for aliens in radio telescope recordings, or render chromakeyed video of you and your sigificant other making woopie on the beach... or all of the above, while playing SL. 3D games need as much processor power as you can give them, or you are just not seeing it at it's best.

most games will take all the cpu cycles they can and hold them in case they need them. See that System Idle Processes thing in your process list? that's windows sending null commands to the processor. Games basically do the same thing take everything, replace it with an idle command when they don't need everything. set second life's priority down one notch. It won't hurt it and it'll let other things run along side it much better.

Wow! How'd you get yours as low as 95%?!

I've noticed this too, and found that if I'm running SL in a window (which I do 90% of the time so I can have the Wiki handy in the background) then I really can't do anything useful in any other app while the SL window is open.

I have, however, found a reasonable work-around that has stopped me from smashing my PC in frustration. If you minimize SL, then it will stop using processor time (or at least drop to a much lower level). Then you can do whatever else you need to, and just pull up the SL window again when you're ready.

If you really want total control on what program can and cannot run...

Download Priority master, been using for it for years and love it. I control who gets my cpu cycles, like virus etc, low priority, while cd writer, highest priority. So this mean I can play SL and burn a CD without making a coaster.

Not an ad (I make nothing..lol), just really like this program for controlling those hogging cpu apps.

(www.prioritymaster.com, if interested).

I adjusted the priority of SL down one step to below normal. This solved my problem. It still takes up all the CPU cycles which is fine but what was annoying the crap out of me was that it wasnt releasing them to any other apps so i couldn't really do anything else. Dropping the priority has solved this so I can now run photoshop and webbrowsers and things with reasonable response. Thanks for the suggestion.

Trisha

you run photoshop in the background

that's a memory hog and SL likes to have as much memory as it can.

Hehe, I do that too.

Hehehe... I do Photoshop too from time to time, but usually only when I want to post an image to the forums.

Because prims are client-side mesh generators with potentially arbitrary resolution, in principle the SL viewer can easily take all the CPU you throw at it. That said, it doesn't actually try to do that, but instead has some heuristics built in that limit the the generated prim poly count in accordance with distance, prim size, etc.

Once the bulk of all downloads have completed and one is just keeping up with background object updates, there is the opportunity to release CPU back to the system occasionally, since not every frame will require a high-CPU update. This will become even more so in the not-too-distant future one would assume, once SL begins to make more extensive use of programmable shaders.

With the Linux client coming out early next year, this should become more visible because it's entirely normal to be running multiple things concurrently on Unix-type systems so apps are rarely coded with busy-waiting loops that waste CPU. That said, the 3D apps that I have running on my Gentoo system are split about 50/50 between those which only use CPU when 3D objects move and those which hog the whole lot regardless. From looking at the code, there seem to be two schools of thought on it --- maybe the full-CPU crowd is more used to coding PC clients, which historically have tended to run only one big app at a time and therefore not worry about anything else needing CPU.

Morgaine, one phrase:

"Local lighting"

I don't know of a single consumer-level graphics card that can handle more than eight light sources at a time, and a typical SL build might have 30-40 light sources. SecondLife needs the CPU to compute lighting information, before it can pass the results off to the graphics card to render.

I happens... Sl is designed to suck as much CPU as it can! if you have a 1000 to a 3600 same thing 90ish %!

Very interesting, thanks.

That's not something I've looked at. I'd better dig the books out, or better, play with lighting myself.

But what effect do you see as a result of the extra 2600MHz used?

If there is no discernible difference then one possible explanation is that the SL viewer is one of those questionably designed 3D apps that employ a busy-wait loop instead of using CPU only when events arrive, as I mentioned in my previous post. They're pretty common.

Is the high cpu usage for the sake of laptops, which detect cpu usage and shut down if it isn't up there? Actually, I'm used to being wrong, so don't believe a word I say. I, too, frequently run Photoshop and SL. Bad seed!

This is why it is good for some of us to have CPUs with hyperthreading.