High CPU while GW is running

I have played GW for allmost a year soon and for 3 days ago a problem appeared. When I start GW, my CPU increase to 100% full CPU constantly. But when Im checking my upload, its normal. This problem appears only when I start this game and its lagg like hell! I have Virus scanned and Spyware scanned but cant find a shit. Should I reinstall GW or wait until the problem is over? please need an answer! // mixxorrr^

Are you sure GW.exe is causing this?

I know GW uses all the resources it can get....

This isn't a problem. Guild Wars uses 100% CPU for me as well. So do games made in 1999. Playing games uses your CPU, it isn't a bug.

I have GW minimized right now, and although I can start other programs, browse the web, and type here as if GW wasn't running, it still shows 100% in the task manager. Your computer will give some cycles to another program if it needs it, GW just uses 100% because it can.

Incorrect. This is a bug - it was not doing it before.

Please don't post nonsense and/or personal opinion, these posts will hopefully get the developers attention and a bugsquash will occur.



If only gw.exe was compiled w/ debug symbols, one could step inside it and find where the obvious uncontrolled infinite loop was and actually post some relevant information.

Posts (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3071631) should be merged, btw

A bug? Unless you have a dual-core or HyperThreaded CPU, having Guild Wars open will result in 100% CPU usage. Even if gw.exe isn't using 100% itself, the total usage will be 100%. This issue has been brought up in so many threads on this board so many times, and the answer is always the same, and has never once been proven otherwise. It's normal behavior.

I look at my CPU usage a lot because I have run servers before. Running a server for a game, the CPU usage will usually stay under 5%. Playing the game, it is always 100%, always.

You can call it a bug for a game to use your CPU if you want, but I don't notice any slowdown from it, and I would expect any modern game to use 100% of my CPU.

Are you a developer of Guild Wars?

As OP mentioned, this started occuring roughly three days ago. I have the same symptom, roughly beginning three days ago also (around the time of the last day in the dragon festival)

From my experience. It only happens in fullscreen and minimized modes. Windowed mode is only at 100% usage is if it isn't focused.

Did people really check the CPU usage of GW before this happened? People started checking it because one person says it, and then they all see what is normal: GW uses 100% CPU, and they think "omg! it happens to me too!".

If you have a problem with the game then that is another matter, but GW using 100% CPU isn't what is causing it.

OP says the problem is only when he starts, I get lag when an area first loads as well, mainly in Kaineng City (or anywhere large in Cantha), my computer struggles. This I put down to my computer not being able to handle these high populated and more detailed areas, because it has always happened to me, before 3 days ago as well.

What I'd really like to see is a dev post on the design reason behind this, as I'm sure they have a good reason to impose such unnatural cpu usage.

If any of you can code, try and replicate it. Unless you're continually doing insane cpu intensive instructions (hashing, encoding etc) or doing mad FP math calculation loops it's pretty damn hard to get a process to sit at 100% continually.

before the dragon festival if i minimized guild wars my cpu usage would go down to almost nothing, when not minimized it was normally around 100%. Now it stays at 100% even when minimized, this is a recent developement since i've been playing for more then 13 months and this didn't happen before the dragon festical patch... I think its probably a bug since guild wars didn't used to behave this way, my game runs fine and everything i'd just like the cpu usage to go down when minimized agiain since i like to idle in guild wars a lot.

Um I had a quote and will look hard for it but it is from a anet tech to a user saying that gws does do that while the character is idling.

They noted that it identifies any problems on the system. Like running hot and over clocking.

Just because your little command line program with 50 lines of code needs hardly any CPU, it doesn't mean games are the same.

I just ran Unreal, a game made in 1998. It has simplistic graphics, and even simpler physics. Guess how much CPU it used! 100%.

And yes, games developers do have a good reason to impose such "insane" (normal) cpu usage. Believe it or not, games do a lot of CPU intensive things, they have to process a lot.

When you minimize the game, it is still running in the background. The only thing it doesn't have to do is render the scene, so your graphics card can cool down when minimized.

I'm searching around, think you could dig it up?

Flamebait. One of the many reasons I was not happy in being referred to some non-official forums.

An excellent example of pure intelligence, though.

..or the game just takes 100% control of the processor, save for inturrupts from other programs when they need it.

Why not use the processor's full power? Besides, your processor never really does two things at once ever.

Shadou, they probably referred you to community forums because it isn't an issue with Guild Wars, but if you have a problem with your computer (which is obviously what they suspected given their responses in your email), then someone here might be able to help.

Actually, yes I did check it before the festival. Back when I had a heating problem (few weeks ago), I would run GW, and then pull up a system monitor to check temps (displays cpu and ram usage also). Only when loading the logon screen, and the initial town render, would cpu jump to 100%. Checked this at work on a less powerful machine (but dual monitors so I could monitor effects with GW full screen.) and got the same result. I haven't seen the problem. But, I would like to point out that when i got the game last june I could play and listen to Winamp with no problem. Now, I play and listen to winamp and either the game slows, or the audio sometimes gets choppy. Then again Factions has close to the same system requirements as Prophecies, but my work machine can't handle Cantha as well as it can Tyria. But that's another issue...

They referred me here (see my last comments from their email) so that I might push my request to the developers. I think I made it clear to them that there was no issue with my system.

dunno if this helps, but:
amd ~2ghz 3200 64 bit on my laptop is always 99-100%
went to my familys house over 4th of july and tried it there.
they have a 3.2 HT pentium, and it ran at around 40% all the time

HT being the key operative. HyperThreaded CPU's are seen by Windows as 2 separate CPU's so the overall usage will appear lower. But there's really no point with arguing here, people believe what they want, and can't be told otherwise. See this thread for another prime example. Coincidentally, it was the exact same issue, that of course was a non-issue. On his HT computer, gw.exe ran less than 100%, on his single threaded computer it used 100%. Trying to explain it to him was pointless, even at the very end he says his AMD system had "hypertransport" which has absolutely NO relevance to "hyperthreading" on Intel systems.

No I'm not a developer, but I am someone who has been building and troubleshooting computers for the past 11 years and playing Guild Wars for the past 14 months (at 100% CPU usage on all 4 computers I've had it installed on, I might add), and most people in this forum find my advice useful, but for certain people, until they hear what they want to hear, all forms of reason are wasted on them.

As it has been stated several times, most games work like this they use close to 100% it's not an error, it's how it's supposed to be.

Mhm. Games use all the power they can get, they want to draw as many screens per second as they can, slower computer might kick out 20 FPS and use 100% CPU, then a computer that is, say, 5 times faster, draws 100 FPS and still uses 100% CPU, instead of drawing 20 FPS and using 20% CPU.

Only cases where any modern graphics intensive game uses less than 100%, is that you are a multiprocessor system (HyperThreaded, Dual Core or even 2 physical processors), where it only uses (100/amount of processors)% of CPU, max it can get from that one processor.

Oh, another case would be where another CPU intensive program is set on higher priority of the game, hogging most of the CPU cycles, leaving the game with less %, although the total CPU usage will still be 100%. :P

Yay for people who can see sense

I would usually agree with that : games use 100% CPU, HyperThreading throws CPU usage measure out of track, and so on.
But experiment says different ; on my old system (3 relative GHz AMD Athlon, single proc, no bells, no whistles) and right now (just got a game update):
- full screen, (obviously) focused : 66%
- windowed, focused : 66%
- windowed, background : 99% (course, Firefox needs a few ticks too)
- reduced : 99%

Can't remember if it has always been this way, though. I'm using W2000SP4 btw.

Just google the keywords and see that people bring the same thing up again and again, at pretty much ever game forum I ever was at some people have suddenly realized that that the CPU usage is high with that particular game and thinks something is wrong - THERE IS NOTHING WRONG... it's how it's supposed to be, dang it :/

http://www.google.com/search?q=game+uses+100%25+cpu

Ahhh... here is the reason:

Most games don't issue HALT commands thus they always use close to max cpu time

Well I am on AMD ClawHammer 3200+, the earlier gen 64bit proc, and GW has always been using 100% for me. I play in window pretty much all the time, and GW is eating that 99% when focused and while not focused when not running anything else. Only time I've seen it drop below 90% is when I watch videos alongside GW, when it's about 50/50 between the media player and GW, depending on what quality video I am watching.

I've checked the CPU usage usually when there's a thread like this, only to say what I have said each time.

Well, goes to show GW is getting old. I was impressed from the start with the way it could be windowed/reduced/full screened in less than a second on my rather old machine (try that with BfME). Intelligent CPU consumption is great too (for background progs).
Then again, it seems it's not doing so great on higher-end PCs ...

If, you paid attention to the last two lines of my last post, you see where I apologized for being hard headed. Before then I had little knowledge of HT cpu's, so when I was looking in my task manager, I had no idea what was truly going on. Yes, my saying my cpu had hypertransport had NO relevance to hyperthreading. I was not replying to what you or anyone in general in the thread said, I was making a general statment. I was not trying to link it to my Intel system being hyperthreaded. I was simply stating that my hypertransport had to be activated in the BIOS. Also to be noted, I made a few other simple short statements, just summarizing things. So please, do not use my thread as an example and say explaining something to me was pointless. Yes, I was wrong about something, and yes, I admitted it at the end, you just did not take the time to see it. I may not be as smart as you, or as smart as many others here, and I may not have as much experience, but I know quite a bit, so please, no more assumptions about me, or anyone else for that matter.

Also, if you haven't realised, the aurthor of this thread has yet to reply back about the issue. His statement in the beginning was that he was lagging extremely bad. He thought that the CPU usage might be an issue, although it likely is not. You have been negative with all of your posts towards this thread. You seem to think he is having a non issue, but he is. He is lagging bad, which, no one should truly lag, even if they are using 100% CPU. So instead of being negative, and saying, "that until people hear what they want to hear, all forms of reason are wasted," why don't you try to focus on the actual issue and try to help.

Yes, I do admit, I am bashing due to anger which I usually do not do, but I felt that this needed to be addressed. I do not care if someone uses me as an example, even if it is in a negative way. But, using me as an example and stating that explaining something to me was pointless, when It was not, angers me. I apologize to the aurthor of this thread for having done this in his thread.

Now, before anyone else makes assumptions, maybe we should all wait until he replies back with more information, and just maybe someone can think of an underlying cause to his lag.

I'm at 47% on a 3.0 Ghz HT pentium 4

Read 100% then

mine runs around 40-50% but then my new rig owns