CPU being overclocked by my TerraTech game, please help (renamed)

[SUPERMECHM500]

So... I have the performance of task manager open because my game is running like absolute crap (8 fps)... and I see this:

So why is my CPU being over run (which has no horse power) instead of my new graphics card that I paid approx. $600 for?
(TerraTech in the background, couldn't screen shot both)
I tried to switch the game to use it, but I can't seem to get it working.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

So why is my CPU being over run (which has no horse power)

(1) What CPU you running?

(2) What's going on in your world? (Upload a save if you want to compare with other people's PCs.)

(3) What graphics settings you on? (I'd assume highest.)

TerraTech is not (generally) GPU bound at all. It's almost always CPU bottlenecked by physics interactions and I think even additional light sources at night can be a CPU load. It's down primarily to how the Unity engine works, etc.

Expensive GPUs are for cranking out crazy high resolutions/FPS in highly optimised AAA titles, which notably do very little physic simulation.

 

[SUPERMECHM500]

I. MSI Millitary Class Motherboard
*Processor: AMD A10-7850K Radeon R7, 12 Compute Cores 4C+8G 3.70 GHz
*64 Bit OS, x64 Based processor

II. I have an Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070, but no matter what graphics settings I use, TerraTech makes no use of it.

III. I'm on "1. Fast", with all graphics enhancements from the Graphics menu

 

[ZeroGravitas]

Processor: AMD A10-7850K Radeon R7

Huh.... Oh, it's an APU with CPU and GPU integrated on one chip. Not seen much about them in desktops.

So that's a 5 year old chip, fast at the time apparently, but pressumably not as strong as a discrete CPU. It appears to have just over 1.3rd the total processing power of my 2 year old Ryzen 1600X, on passmark, so not terrible.

I have an Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070, but no matter what graphics settings I use, TerraTech makes no use of it.

"(2)" was world file..? But for this have you been checking that other games use your discrete GPU card? I pressume you have your monitor plugged into the port on the GPU and not the motherboard's back plate (next to the USB ports)?

I'm on "1. Fast"

Don't use this setting, in general. It uncaps the frame rate, currently, so overworks your hardware to produce unnecessary frames. Use 2 (good), or could try even 3.

 

[SUPERMECHM500]

But for this have you been checking that other games use your discrete GPU card? I pressume you have your monitor plugged into the port on the GPU and not the motherboard's back plate (next to the USB ports)?

I play Fortnite just fine with it. Yes, my monitor is plugged into the GPU.

Don't use this setting, in general. It uncaps the frame rate, currently, so overworks your hardware to produce unnecessary frames. Use 2 (good), or could try even 3.

2 and 3 both occasionally generate black paint (which I seen on the steam community as a bug). Fast is supposed to render fast frames, hence the name. I'm getting 8 fps when my latest artillery station (Featured on reaperx1's showcase thread) is rendered. Even when not rendered, I get 80 fps, and I don't mind anything higher than 50 fps. If it's making 300 fps, great. High Quality speed. Point is, NOT MY GPU.

 

[SUPERMECHM500]

@ZeroGravitas World file:

 

[kae]

Hey there, we use the CPU to calculate physics, when playing with mega techs or a large amount of smaller techs the CPU goes under a huge amount of stress with all the calculations it needs to do for each block. You have both a mega tech and quite a few medium sized techs scatter around the same area on that save game attached above, it's not uncommon to have the CPU max out in these situations, especially on older CPUs.

The 'black paint' is a bug that occurs with ambient occlusion at specific times of day, we should have this fixed soon, but there may be issues which the fix does not cover. If this happens to you again please immediately save the game and upload it so I can take a look at

Cheers!

 

[ZeroGravitas]

'black paint' is a bug that occurs with ambient occlusion

Oh, we've been telling people to try disabling anti-aliasing, oops... (Apparently that just makse it less visible or something. But not had great feedback on that and can't test it myself as I don't get it.) So disabling ambient occlusion stops it then? Right.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

Oh and yeah, that save has the biggest multi-tech turret I've seen. That is some bigly techs! I get about 11fps as saved, 1-4fps deployed. But opposite problem (which is common, we've talked about his a bunch before) my AMD Ryzen 1600X stays reporting below 50% the whole time:

 

[SUPERMECHM500]

AMD Ryzen 1600X stays reporting below 50% the whole time:

According to my GPU app, TerraTech wasn't running under the GPU.
My CPU is older than yours, right? That would make since then.

Hey there, we use the CPU to calculate physics, when playing with mega techs or a large amount of smaller techs the CPU goes under a huge amount of stress with all the calculations it needs to do for each block.

Can you use the CPU do do the calculations, render the output in a virtual environment, then have a dedicated GPU run that output? It would most certainly help with rendering.

 

[Sdarks]

According to my GPU app, TerraTech wasn't running under the GPU.

It sounds here like your APU/CPU is being used to render the game instead of your GPU. This means that all of the work is being done on your CPU instead of it being split between CPU and GPU. Usually (especially with laptops) you have an option for which GPU to use to run a program, so you'd want to set it to your dedicated GPU. This post from Ubisoft is a good guide for how to get it using your actual GPU https://support.ubi.com/en-gb/faqs/000027100/Switching-to-the-laptop-s-dedicated-GPU/

 

[Sdarks]

Can you use the CPU do do the calculations, render the output in a virtual environment, then have a dedicated GPU run that output? It would most certainly help with rendering.

If I'm understanding what you're trying to say that's exactly how games work and have worked for many years. The CPU runs physics and gameplay logic to work out where everything is, then it sends this data to the GPU. The GPU then calculates all the shadows, lighting, reflections and all that stuff and renders the final result to the screen.

 

[SUPERMECHM500]

This post from Ubisoft is a good guide for how to get it using your actual GPU https://support.ubi.com/en-gb/faqs/000027100/Switching-to-the-laptop-s-dedicated-GPU/

That link sends me to a status code 404 on Ubisoft (doesn't exist)

 

[Sdarks]

That link sends me to a status code 404 on Ubisoft (doesn't exist)

Seems to have broken since I posted it, here's a google cached version https://webcache.googleusercontent....op-s-dedicated-GPU/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

 

[SUPERMECHM500]

@Sdarks Although I can't get to my PC now, I feel like I have done that before. I went to run the game after and it still was never used. Either way, would this help with framerate and performance with larger techs? Or overall?

 

[Sdarks]

@Sdarks Although I can't get to my PC now, I feel like I have done that before. I went to run the game after and it still was never used. Either way, would this help with framerate and performance with larger techs? Or overall?

Overall, the game is just not going to run well at all if it's running on your integrated graphics.

 

[SUPERMECHM500]

Overall, the game is just not going to run well at all if it's running on your integrated graphics.

I meant would it run better on dedicated graphics?

 

[Sdarks]

I meant would it run better on dedicated graphics?

Yes, every game will run better on dedicated graphics with your system.

 

[SUPERMECHM500]

Yes, every game will run better on dedicated graphics with your system.

If and/or until I get TerraTech to use my dedicated GPU, that should be all I need to know. Thanks!

 

[-=ROOSTER=-]

Not sure if this will help or not, but I had an A10 for a little while and If I remember correctly, I had to uninstall the Catalyst completely, and force load the initial standard driver that wndows uses on a clean install, reboot , then set the "boot to PEG" graphics option in the bios. Then when you get back into windows Install your NVIDIA drivers first then run the ATI installer last' That way Catalyst will detect PCIE graphics has precedence and configure accordingly.

Incidentally, as a bonus of turning those cores off that chip will have little better TDP and gain some O.C. headroom also. You can get 5ghz out of it if you want to bad enough. I'm no expert on that chip though, just what I figured out in the short time I had before I loaned that machine to a chick, and never saw it again. LOL