CPU Usage / Performance

[KSALIGA]

I just licensed the GameEx, and went through all the suggestions for performance improvement, but I've still noticed that the GameEx process takes up a considerable amount of CPU, even when just sitting at the main menu screen. I'm running a P4, 3.2Ghz, 1GB RAM MCE, yet my CPU hovers between 50 and 75% usage when GameEx is running. This seems excessive for just sitting at the menu. Do you have any suggestions as to how to reduce this, or insight as to what else GameEx is doing to cause this spike in CPU?

[Michael]

I just licensed the GameEx, and went through all the suggestions for performance improvement, but I've still noticed that the GameEx process takes up a considerable amount of CPU, even when just sitting at the main menu screen. I'm running a P4, 3.2Ghz, 1GB RAM MCE, yet my CPU hovers between 50 and 75% usage when GameEx is running. This seems excessive for just sitting at the menu. Do you have any suggestions as to how to reduce this, or insight as to what else GameEx is doing to cause this spike in CPU?

i have also noticed that when gameex sits on the main menu it seems to stick on 100% cpu usage the only thing that is doing anything in gameex is the animated menu select bar, i have an LCD on my keyboard which tells me the cpu and ram usage this if it do crtl-alt-del the cpu usage drops to 0% on the lcd and shows 00 im task manager

my spec is a 4000+ amd 64 and 1gb ram

[Efe]

I too see this issue on my P4 2.8... thought that would be more than enough guts to run a menu system, but it pretty much cranks my CPU up to between 95% and 100% while GameEx is just sitting there... alt tab away from GameEx and the utilization drops to nothing. What is GameEx doing while it has focus?

With the CPU cranked, the menu system is very sluggish as are some HTPC features in GameEx like trying to view picture slide shows.

Here's some other specs just in case they are useful.

CPU: P4 2.8 GHz

RAM: 512 MB

Video: Geforce4 256MB

Sound: SBLive 5.1

OS: XP Pro SP2

All patches and drivers are completely up to date.

Any insight on this issue would be greatly appreciated...

[night]

yes i noticed that to i disabled the "Game Extender" that made the Cpu drop alot on my end dunno if its that is the troll but it just made GameEx run better here.... and GameEx startup faster as well

[Efe]

Thanks for the tip... I'll give it a try when I get home tonight. Can you tell me where in the config to find it?

[KSALIGA]

What is the "Game Extender" feature? Kind of sounds like that's the point of the program... GameEx != Game Extender ?

I, too, will try this when I get home.

[Adultery]

What is the "Game Extender" feature? Kind of sounds like that's the point of the program... GameEx != Game Extender ?

I, too, will try this when I get home.

GameExtender is the portion of GameEx that publishes what you're playing to the website. Look at the Live! link on the GameEx

website and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Hope that helps!

[hansolo77]

The GameEx extender is the feature that uploads screenshots of what you're doing to the web so people can see what you're doing.

Look Here:

http://tomspeirs.com/gameex/Live.aspx

[Ricci]

Personally, I changed a lot of registry lines so that my system runs with minimal garbage all the time. I found I had way too many things actively working, that I never use, so after stripping out a lot of programs, I then disabled a ton of services and now run with minimal services running....xp has a ton of registry hacks you can download to accomplish this.

[Michael]

yes i noticed that to i disabled the "Game Extender" that made the Cpu drop alot on my end dunno if its that is the troll but it just made GameEx run better here.... and GameEx startup faster as well

i dont have game extender enabled but still see 100% (ish) cpu usage nearly constantly

i dont see any lag or have any problems with gameex it all works Perfectly just when KSALIGA mentioned it i checked mine.

[Smiff]

the problem i have with this is that it makes my system run hotter than it needs to be - AMD CnQ cannot kick while just doing nothing on the gameex menu.

yeah, seems like it could use less cpu?

[KSALIGA]

I got home and tried that suggestion, but CPU is still high. I disabled about as much stuff as I could find. As I'm running this on a Media Center PC, most of the things included (playing videos, picture viewer, etc) were redundant - I really only need the MAME capabilities. That said, the interface itself is wonderful - it looks like I never left Media Center, works with the controller, etc. And the details (game info, etc) are great. Just trying to get the CPU down on it is all. Thanks!

[Efe]

Checked my Game Extender setting and it was alread off...

On the brighter side, things are a little better after an automatic update tonight. Also the CPU usage seems very dependant on the theme. When running the Default - Default theme CPU now hovers between 50% and 60%... but when switching to the Default - BlueEx - Arcade800x600 theme, CPU never really gets above 25% and things are nice and snappy...

[Tom Speirs]

I can understand people not reading the docs, but from the docs page.

Q: GameEx really uses a lot of the CPU, nearly or exactly 100%

A: Set NoWaitSync= True and Sleep=15 in GameEx configuration under Tweaks/Performance. You may need to reduce the sleep setting on older PC's, or you can possibly increase on faster PC's. On an Athlon 3400 64, I can use these settings without any slow down.

After running GameEx with these settings and looking at the Performance tab in Task Manager, GameEx was consistently using about 8% of the CPU while it had the focus.

Note: In recent versions, mostly GameEx uses 0-1% CPU when it does not have the window focus, regardless of these settings.

Basically by default GameEx uses the entire CPU power, but the sleep setting releases back cycles every frame. On the latest CPU's you can get it to run at about 5-10% and still smooth as silk

[Michael]

I can understand people not reading the docs, but from the docs page.

Q: GameEx really uses a lot of the CPU, nearly or exactly 100%

A: Set NoWaitSync= True and Sleep=15 in GameEx configuration under Tweaks/Performance. You may need to reduce the sleep setting on older PC's, or you can possibly increase on faster PC's. On an Athlon 3400 64, I can use these settings without any slow down.

After running GameEx with these settings and looking at the Performance tab in Task Manager, GameEx was consistently using about 8% of the CPU while it had the focus.

Note: In recent versions, mostly GameEx uses 0-1% CPU when it does not have the window focus, regardless of these settings.

Basically by default GameEx uses the entire CPU power, but the sleep setting releases back cycles every frame. On the latest CPU's you can get it to run at about 5-10% and still smooth as silk

that works fine and i cant tell any difrence other than cpu usage is barly anything.

Would it be an idea to enable this as default in gammex? or would it cause a problem for lower spec pc's?

[Smiff]

Tom

i've been trying variations of those settings for a long time, not noticed that much dropin cpu usage. i'll check again later

perhaps sleep should be on some medium value by default.

[Efe]

Tom,

Thanks for taking the time to post that section of the doc. I know it can be very frustrating answering the questions you've already taken the time to answer. I will try those setting tonight and let you know how it goes. I will also read through the doc again as it appears I obviously missed some important sections.

I do like Michael's idea of making the these setting default or if that's not feasable, maybe just a note on one of the install screens. Seems like a pretty important piece of the configuration.

[KSALIGA]

This worked great - thank you very much for the input, and I, too, appreciate you reproducing part of the docs on this forum.

[Judgelord]

Changed my configuration (Do Wait fo Vsync = Do Wait and Reduce CPU Utilisation = 15) and I notice an average CPU usage of 12% to 20%.

On the other hand, scrolling the menu was slower than before when it was consuming 100% of the CPU.

So, is it worth to reduce CPU usage and also loose performance?

[headkaze]

Wait for VSync should be set to Do Not Wait.

[Judgelord]

Thanks headkaze! This is not the first time that you help me.