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jessalex

Join Date 10/2023

GPU Usage Constantly at 100% - Need Assistance!"

Hi everyone, I've been experiencing an issue with my GPU where it's constantly running at 100% usage. This seems to be causing some performance problems in Galactic Civilizations III. Has anyone else encountered this and found a solution? Your help would be greatly appreciated! A world of modified WhatsApp experiences with GBGenie https://www.gbgenie.com/

galactic civilizations iii

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zichella1

DrJBHL

Join Date 04/2002

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Yes, one other post on this:

https://forums.stardock.com/523580/page/1/#3907331

Please post your system stats and especially your video card's. Run winver.exe and post your W10/W11 version, please.

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Publius of NV

Join Date 08/2002

+210

I noticed a big drop in my GPU usage when I lowered the Anti-Aliasing setting in the game Options window.

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Quoting Publius of NV,

reply 2

I noticed a big drop in my GPU usage when I lowered the Anti-Aliasing setting in the game Options window.

I had not looked at the perf stats before I read this thread.

My GPU is constantly bouncing from ~80 right back to 100% while I sit taking no actions and the screen is 'stagnate'. Even after I turned anti-aliasing from 4x to off.

I'm guessing GC4SN is offloading AI math to the GPU??? My CPU(s) and RAM seem okay. Whatever the cause, it seems like some of the load needs to be shifted onto the CPU(s).

Specs are in the task manager screen capture, video card is top far right of image.

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I just noticed this thread was for GC3.

My previous post was about GC4SN.

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If a game is set to run uncapped FPS then very high gpu usage would be normal unless the game is CPU bound.

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Quoting Neil Banfield,

reply 5

If a game is set to run uncapped FPS then very high gpu usage would be normal unless the game is CPU bound.

I reset the graphic options in game to 'low' preset and made sure anti-aliasing was off. Rebooted the computer and loaded the game in progress. (I'm on game turn 231 with 2 sectors and a large galaxy, min stars/planets, only 11 civs left alive.)

Took a new screen capture of task manager with the CPU high lighted.

You can still see the GPU at 100% while the CPU is at ~25%.

Plenty of RAM unused and no disk activity.

The performance bottleneck certainly seems to be the GPU.

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And finally, I thought perhaps the 2nd monitor I was using might be part of the problem.

I disconnected the 2nd display, rebooted the system and brought the game up.

GPU is still ~100%, CPU still ~25/27%, etc.

So output to the big monitor was not the issue.

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Here is a baseline capture with just a web browser open after a reboot.

GPU is 1% and CPU ~4%.

Nothing going on, solid baseline, as expected behavior. In other words the computer is not broken or overloaded with background tasks, antivirus, etc.

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Quoting zichella1,

reply 8

Here is a baseline capture with just a web browser open after a reboot.

GPU is 1% and CPU ~4%.

Nothing going on, solid baseline, as expected behavior. In other words the computer is not broken or overloaded with background tasks, antivirus, etc.

Is your game or drivers set to use VSync?

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Same situation here. CPU utilization is at ~ 15-25 %, while GPU is 100 %, unless zoomed out significantly. Tweaking video settings both in game and in nvidia panel have no effect, setting vsync on\off, capping fps at 60 didn't do anything either. Medium lvl zoom, which is most used by me, gives about 40 fps, while zoomed out gives 70+. It looks like a bad coding\optimisation at this point.

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Quoting Neil Banfield,

reply 9

Is your game or drivers set to use VSync?

Vsync is not checked, so I think t means it is off. Driver settings are default and I do not have a manager loaded. Device manager shows default settings.

I keep resetting the preset to 'low' but after a restart it goes to the following settings; I'm guessing it is the resolution that makes it 'custom'.

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Quoting zichella1,

reply 11

Quoting Neil Banfield,

reply 9

Is your game or drivers set to use VSync?

Vsync is not checked, so I think t means it is off. Driver settings are default and I do not have a manager loaded. Device manager shows default settings.

I keep resetting the preset to 'low' but after a restart it goes to the following settings; I'm guessing it is the resolution that makes it 'custom'.

If vsync is off then you are asking the game to render as many times per second as possible. This means GPU will hit 100% or thereabouts unless CPU limited.

Enabling that will set it to run up to your screen refresh rate which will reduce GPU IF your frame rate was above that.

So I would certainly turn that on.

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Quoting Neil Banfield,

reply 12

So I would certainly turn that on.

I turned it on and it did not make much difference.

I'm going to start a new game with the same game settings and see what that looks like early on.

If this is just a graphic issue I think it will be max right away, but if the GPU is partly due to AI 'math' then I think it should start out lower and climb as the game progresses to a point where things slow down.

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Rebooted and started a new game with the same settings.

Turn 2 I took the task manager screen capture.

Things are a little better GPU 92% spikes to 100%

CPU is about the same as turn 220 in the last game ~25% so plenty of CPU power.

Memory is in the same area also ~7-8 GB used of ~30 GB RAM

Hard drive is at rest.

Graphic setup is the same as last screen capture with vsync checked.

In summery the GPU gets hit pretty hard from the start (+92%) and after awhile hits and stays at ~100%.

Last game around turn 60-75 or so I noticed longer wait times and overall slowdown. By turn 150 I started multitasking while waiting for my turn.

Now I know I have plenty of CPU and RAM so there is no value in getting another system. Other people have reported the same GPU issues, so I'm interested in finding out what the Developers know about this concern.

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Output from WINVER.EXE shows;

Windows 11, Version 22H2 (OSBuild 22621.2428)

Home operating system.

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Quoting DrJBHL,

reply 1

Yes, one other post on this:

https://forums.stardock.com/523580/page/1/#3907331

Please post your system stats and especially your video card's. Run winver.exe and post your W10/W11 version, please.

Looks like the other report is on a GeForce 1050 ti with 4GB Vram?

Mine is a Radeon as seen in the task manager info. So the GPU concern spans multiple video chip makers.

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I rebooted and started yet another new game but with different settings.

3 AI civs plus me = 4 total civs. Tiny galaxy, 2 sector, min star/planets.

Turn 1 task manager.

CPU is at 15%

GPU is ~93 spiking to 100%

So CPU dropped from ~25->15%, but GPU is only a tiny bit better than the bigger galaxy with 27 total civs on turn 2 above.

Here are the system requirements from :https://www.galciv4.com/faq

These might be outdated (?), but they are currently up.

Min and Rec graphics are both "1 GB Video Card". I have 2 GB dedicated, the other person listed a 4 GB card.

I see the other info might need updating also, I think the minimum storage is around 20 GB now.

I captured the top of the faq also that shows this is for GC4SN.

Minimum

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Quad-Core Processor
Memory: 8GB RAM
Storage: 14 GB
Direct X 11
Graphics: 1 GB Video Card
Resolution: 1920x1080

Recommended

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Quad-Core Processor
Memory: 16GB RAM
Storage: 14 GB
Direct X 11
Graphics: 1 GB Video Card

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I have the same situation, also with VSYNC=ON and Antialiasing=OFF

Edit: With VSYNC=ON the GPU Load drops to 50%.

Edit2: My GPU is a NVIDIA 3080 TI

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Hi,

I updated to the latest 2.01, rebooted started a new game.

Turn 52 the game came to a stop for about 5 minutes on the Festron Hunt's turn.

I pulled up the task manager and CPU was fine, but GPU was maxed out again. Also I had no issue pulling up task manager and a web browser while the game was 'thinking'.

Are there any non graphic related calls to the GPU, for AI math or something? I did not think the GPU would cause the game to pause for so long to update graphics. If the GPU is only used for graphics, Is there a setting or hidden command to turn off all the screen background movement? I don't need to see the ship icons rotate/burn/smoke, or the galaxy clouds roll, etc. I tried turning off soft particles and trails, etc. unchecking particles got rid of the black holes .

Also a way to fix the planet icon and names 'under everything', I don't want them on top of everything and need to move them to see what's under them, plus that has to eat up some computer resources. Previous versions of GC did not have this 'feature' and the map was more like a tabletop representation.

What are the specs the developers use? Are they the recommended ones in the FAQ or are they considerably more?

I tried logging the perfmon/task manager but I think that only works on 'work stations' not home versions (been years since I used logging for it). I was hoping to log a full game session.

I noticed during setup the the requirement was 12 GB / 4 core, and no matter how many sectors I selected it stayed the same, only changing the galaxy size changed the requirement. I meet the requirements so I maxed out the sectors to tryout the new version.

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As i see it at this moment, the game is actually very gpu heavy. It has a lot of small moving objects on the map, like planets, moons, asteroids etc. For example, there can be several asteroid belts in one system, each containing a lot of small asteroids that are constantly rotating and when you (or ai) start mining them, another element is introduced on top of each small asteroid depicting actual mining. And there can be hundreeds such asteroids in just one sector. Starbases have a lot of small ships\drones flying around them, and there can be too a lot of them in just one sector.

With that in mind there are 2 things developers could have done:

1. Optimize the game better, e.g. split the load between cpu and gpu or something else in that direction, because right now it runs horribly (being slow right from the start and progressively getting slower) on a machine that exceeds "recommended settings".

2. Make it an option to turn off certain features to reduce gpu load (like reduce\turn off animation of small objects for example).

Certainly developers should have informed potential byers via minimal\recommended system requirements in Steam that the game is very gpu heavy and they need a good moden gpu to play it comfortably. Instead they listed "Graphics: 1GB VRAM Video Card", which is ridiculous given how demanding galciv 4 to gpu.

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What are the specs the developers use? Are they the recommended ones in the FAQ or are they considerably more?

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