100% cpu usage when running Sins (any version)

You should know that the game is also very slow on an Intel Core i7 975 processor, although much better than on my old Phenom 9500 (which really was unplayable slow).

The biggest problem is, that even with multicore CPUs you cannot use that CPU feature although the game is advertised as multicore. The game simply does use one single thread for most of what happens in the game...and thus any modern multicore CPU simply is almost idle but has one core maxed out - and Sins slow as hell. Graphics cards don't help either. I've got a nVidia GTX 295 but it's pretty much idle.

It's a shame what they did, but it looks like you don't need to write about it. If you want, you could write an email to support, but should not expect any help on this problem. If the game doesn't run although your machine is way over required specs, return it. I'm pretty sure there are laws against such things in almost every country.

Indeed that is what I am considering. I've got almost 18 months of warranty left and it's illegal to advertise product properties which are not available. Furthermore there are more than a dozen bugs in the game which are not being fixed but hurting my game experience. If nothing happens, I'll probably keep playing until Blizzard finally manages to provide me with a good replacement game and then I'll get my money back for this one. Well...might not sound nice, but they didn't play nice either, and if they won't fix it, that's the best I can do in return. If they fix it, well, I'll happily keep this copy and even purchase entrenchment.

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I'm still using an "old" AMD dual-core 5000+, 3.5G RAM w/ 32-bit Vista, but with an nVidia 9800 GT, and I'm running it with no problem.   I'm surprised to hear it ran slow on a Phenom, let alone an i7; something's going on.

It's possible that Sins chooses one of the cores to run on and that other programs could be running on that same core.  I suggesting clearning off one of the cores for no program other than Sins itself and to set Sins to have high priority.

The fun thing is that I can run other programs, even such using GPU acceleration, on a second screen without slowing Sins down any further.

Sins is even maxing out a single core (12 to 13% load for the entire CPU) when it's paused and switched to background. Really, I do not understand what's going on there. If the game is paused and in background, why is it causing any CPU load at all?

The funny thing is that I've got RAM in 1333 mode with speed settings which make it comparably fast to the CPUs 3rd level cache, thus I've not also got a very fast CPU, GPU but also very fast RAM and the game still is slow later into the game on medium sized maps (but playable, at least, if you call 1x speed and slightly degrading framerate playable - I always play in 2x mode or faster while with the Phenom 9500 system I got less than 1 fps in 1x mode).

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I've pretty much concluded that Sins is just a CPU hog.  If they ever make a Sins-2, they will need to make it truly multi-core.

i dont have this problem and i have a Toshiba Qosmio with an Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.0 ghz each with an NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GTS and 3 gigs of RAM running Windows 7 64 bit. btw this game is designed to use multi-core no matter how powerfull your single core is. also i often run that game at 8x mode to get through certain battles  and other things more quickly with only a slight drop in fps. as i said its designed to run on dual core machines not single core no matter how fast that single core is.

This game is only advertised as being multicore. The game does only use one thread, thus it's not possible for sins to make use of more than one core.

However I do fail to understand why you're not experiencing massive slowdowns on medium sized or larger maps in single player mode. I've had sins on two very different machines installed and it's been showing that problem on both systems. Does your system also show permanent maximum CPU load while the game is paused?

Even with a Core i7 975 I have to reduce speed to 1x many times while playing a medium sized map, especially when battles occur and still notice bad FPS.

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no i top out at 64% when running Sins. taking into consideration that i am running xfire along with SoaSE and on the game i am running the volumetric explosions and damage mod so those probably slow it down a little more. but with all that running i top out at only 64 percent. i dont know what to tell ya man. maybe stardock tech support could help you out.

Do you get Sins to use 64% CPU or 64% CPU load at all? 50% for sins would equal a 100% CPU load on your dual core. I do get 12-13% CPU load on my 975 and that means it's 100% CPU load on a single core. Opening the task manager, it's also easy to see. Sins only does use one core at constant maximum load, even when the game is paused!

That's also what tech support says. They use one thread for loading textures, one thread for loading sounds and one thread for everything else. The very bad news is, that they don't want to modify that.Funny thing is that a harddrive that went asleep does cause the game to pause until the drive did spin up and the worker thread for loading did finish.

>>From a previous email: "We've mentioned several times on the forums dating starting back to 2007 that Sins is multithreaded in 3 areas. The main thread, textures, and sound. We have verified in several tests over the last few years that they are indeed working as intended and we won't be adding new multithreading options. The following is a very brief description of why.
 
There are fundamental reasons why the majority of RTS's cannot use multithreading in the same way an FPS, MMRPG, Racing, Shooter or Fighting game can and it has to do with several factors including determinism, synchronization, network architecture and simulation vs rendering. The slowest part is basically the simulation (physics, AI, gameplay etc) and since RTS's do not have free reign in this area the only areas open to multithreading are the nondeterministic areas (user input, audio, rendering etc). Rendering is usually the worst of this category but it isn't even close to a bottleneck in Sins so we didn't need to add it as a separate thread. In other words if we added all sorts of new threads for say particles, ship rendering, planet rendering, and whatever other rendering components you can think of, it wouldn't make a dent in the overall cost of running the game - i.e., you wouldn't see much difference. Sound and textures needed to be threaded because they need to be pulled off the h.d in real-time. Not doing so would have been a bottleneck and the lag would be atrocious.<<

Looks like they also do not want to invite programmers to fix that code for them or make this an open source thing so that players finally could have a working version of sins. It's pretty much a shame. If they at least would make AI decisions multi threaded, they surely could gain very much without having to do complex changes.

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Pentium 4 is old, and was never that well designed to start off with. My laptop has a  2 year old mediocre T7250 2 ghz dual core and it runs sins without issue or lag (unless you are talking about end game hughe multi start map). I am freely able to alt tab out and browse the internet, and can run itunes in the background no problems.

Its probably time to switch to a newer CPU. You would need to upgrade the motherboard too but the rest of the components could probably be retained.

mine is a T7350 dula core at 2.0 ghz each. 64% is the TOTAL load i get when running Sins. that means each processor is running at 32%. then again it is a gaming laptop

It would be more helpful if you'd provide real info, not some you made up.

1) If your total CPU load is 64% that means that's much more than 32% per core. Both cores with 32% load would equal to 32% CPU load total. That's why with my processor the Sins processes on their own cause a measily 12-13% CPU load but the game still stays slow, as that little amount means 100% load for one core. That's also the reason why I could use graphics acceleration and CPU heavy tasks additionally to Sins without Sins slowing down any further. Sins simply can't use multiple cores.

2) Noone would expect, would Sins be multithreading for gameplay, for it to ever use multiple cores with perfectly equal load. That's almost impossible to do. It's even more difficult for a game that's not supporting multiple cores.

Thus, please, fire up the taskmanager and let watch it while playing sins. I'm pretty sure that it will either show a 100% load on one core and almost idle load on the other or permanent load hopping between the cores, thus having a spike shown for one core and idle load for the other and then switching permanently between which core will have the load and which will be idle.

As to all those who say: "buy a faster CPU", well, can you tell me a processor that is faster than an Intel Core i7 975? AFAIK it's the fastest desktop CPU available on this world, but for medium sized maps without any mods, it's speed could only be considered "minimum requirement" for this game.

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i didnt make anything up. i told you what it says on on my computer. it says Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7350. and last i checked 64 divided by 2 equals 32. i know my total load is 64% and each core is 32% because i have a drive monitor and a cpu meter telling me what the processor activity is. unless my computer is lying to me *sarcasm*

If each core had 32% load, your whole CPU would have 32% load. If 2 cores with 32% each would sum up to 64% total CPU load, your CPU would have 200% load when it's entirely busy. See? You didn't check it or your tool is stupidly wrong. Use task manager and have a look of what's going on!

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Not going to happen.  Software companies guard their source code like Coke guards their recipe.  Most people in the company don't even get enough source code to do a full build.   And even if they did, multithreading is something you have to plan for in the pseudocode.   To multithread an existing app, 99% of the time that would require a complete rewrite.  But yeah, you would think the AI would be multithreaded.

I have an older dual core--the AMD 5000+ x2 and while sins does use a fair amount of my CPU up (last time i looked in process manager it was at anywhere between 45-65% on the cores) it does seem to split the load onto both cores...or I'm reading the process manager wrong. The graphs for each core spike at the same points, although it puts more load onto the core0 vs core1 (usage of that core is always higher) it seems to at least offload some stuff onto the second core.

bxturtle,

SINS does use an additional core to do "texture-caching", but my understanding is that's where multi-core support ends.

the_Monk,

Thank you for clearing that up for me! Each game runs differently and I am still learning how Sins does (or does not!) use resources.