100% CPU use at Second Life at AMD X2 4200

Hi friends,

I have an AMD Dual Core 4200 + 2 Gb RAM + Asus MoBo + GeForce XFX 6800 256/256. I don't understand why my CPU use stay at 100% in my computer when I'm runing Second Life. I had an AMD Sempron 2400 and happens the same. But I have some friends that have just 30%, 40% use of the processor at the task monitor.

I'm using Windows XP Professional with SP2 (32bits).

Can anyone help me? My computer is new, I didn't expected for this happens...

Thank you.

Hmmmm...............I don't know. I just launched SL when I read your thread and it is running between 50 and 56% CPU usage, RAM at 564 megs. Did the set affinity thing and it is just about the same...maybe 2% lower on CPU usage. I have an Intel P4, 3.06 gig dual core and 1 gig RAM.

My old computer with 1.5 gig Intel P4 used to run near 100% and my 512 meg RAM was all used up. So maybe someone can answer your question...........I'm curious too. XP Home for my OS.

Yeah, I'm very worried about it. I guess is not a problem in my PC with Dual Core processor, 'cause my other PC with a simple Sempron 32 bits have the same problem. And I saw many posts here about it, and peoples saying that is normal the computer uses 100% of CPU in Second Life, but I don't understand how can this be normal if some peoples don't use at 100%.

The idea that I'm using my processor at the maximum cap. when I could not use at this way don't sounds good to me...

I think SL using 100% of a processor is pretty normal. There's a number of other threads here in the forums about this and I believe LL said not-too-long-ago that this is expected - check the old Linden Answers forum.

If you have dual core and set the affinity so that SL only uses one of them, you'll probably see the machine using 50% or so of it's CPU power - SL is going to eat one core and the rest of the system uses the other.

Just my observation if it adds anything here: I had a PC with an AMD 64 3400+ (2.41 GHz, 1 GB RAM, GeForce 6600GT video) which always maxed at 100% CPU. I had frustrating slowdowns in the entire PC if background tasks occured such as opening a web page. However, recently I upgraded to an Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 (2.71 GHz, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 7900GS video) which averages about 40-45% or less on both cores (I have maxed all setting graphic details within the game). I can now open browser windows and check email with no slowdown in the game or PC. Note: SL seems to use 35-40% CPU use in the Windows Task Manager Processes tab.

That's about what I'm seeing too Ross. A little more CPU usage but even without setting affinity to a single core it's about the same. Maybe the geeks at LL don't like AMD? LOL
Intel P4 3.06 Dual core

Peggy, what video card do you have? It seems that video card performance is less important than CPU power (RAM is not the culprit either, perhaps). Perhaps, LL uses Intel as their primary platforms for development work for SL? It's too bad we don't have more benchmarking for various systems for SL. I'd love to see CPU charts for SL like the following from Tomshardware:

<http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=430&model2=464&chart=165>

However, I'm sure that LL will figure out how to saturate the rest of my CPU cycles when they finally get to v1.20.

After a while in game, I have noticed that even with dual core, or one core disabled. I can run into a 100% spike that lasts for a few mins, causing the game to look likes its crashed. Even windows says "Not responding", but it does come back, time is about 1min of this.

I noticed that its when I rotate through a wall. be it dodgy camera angle or an animation that goes funny, once my cam passes the wall and starts to attempt to render the contents of there as well, it becomes cripped until it renders some of it, or I manage to move my cam out of the way,

It's very strange. Well, I have a friend with Pentium 4 HT that have CPU power at 30%, 40%... but have other with other Intel processors, indluding Dual Core that have 100% of the CPU use too. So, it's really a mistery to me.

I'm saturating my processor? Well... i need to find some way to make SL runs at the better way... maybe using 1 core, like our friend said. I don't know, but I'm not happy with this situation.

Thanks everybody for the answers.

I'm using an AMD 3800+ with a gig of ram and have the same problem as you. Oddly enough, if I intentionally clock down my processor 20-30%, the game doesn't lag anymore whatsoever with the settings I use, which leads me to question why it couldn't operate at 70% when being used at full speed...

I hope you're able to resolve your problem, a computer as fast as yours certainly shouldn't need a full 100%...

My video card is nVidia 6200LE. I know the "LE" stands for "low end" LOL. But it works well for me.........256 onbord DDR. PCI-E slot. Nothing special there...........good but not the best out there. I'm no geek but maybe it's the virtual memory caching that is the difference. A long time ago I read somewhere that increasing the swap file size to near the maximum for your particular system will speed stuff up. I don't know the truth to that tip but I do do that.......I have mine set at max (as I've always done for a couple years now). Also I don't know if it's DDR2 memory that makes the difference too......my old machine just had DDR. And PCI Express is supposed to be faster too than PCI and AGP.

That's what I've heard but I really don't have the knowledge to back it up...........it does, apparently work for me though. :0

I am using a socket AM2 system (Dual core x2 5200 overclocked to 6200 on Windsor dies, 2 gigs of Corsair EPP DDR-2 ) and she too will spread across the cores evenly. CPU loads roll along at about 25% if you do not touch Secondlife.exe's processor affinity. Lock it to one core and disabling the other three will make frame rates and performance soar to the point where my FPS meter stays pinned far to the right on SLI'd BFG nVidia 8800 GTX-OC's. However, it pins that one core at 100%, never letting it rest.

This is on a systems patched with the AMD cool-n-quiet drivers and Multi-core Opteron fix for XP(32-bit). SL just simply doesn't "talk" and spread tasks evenly amongst multi-core machines of any make. Those with Core Duo's and 4-core Intel Extremes - please lock processor affinity to one core and note your performance, does it also go soaring through the roof for you too?

Gentle, I set affinity to a single core (actually tried both 0 and 1) on my dual core Pentium and I got maybe a 2% decrease in CPU usage. Since I run pretty close to 50% usage nearly 100% of the time I don't see any advantage to setting affinity on this machine.

But to answer your question........no, nothing pegs. CPU nor RAM. A small decrease in the CPU department but the RAM doesn't change that I can see. RAM seems to hover between 560 and 800 megs on my one gig.