CPU load 100%

[VashCZ]

Hello people, I have a little problem.

With my i5k ivy bridge 4,2GHZ I have 100% CPU usage when playing the game. Well, maybe I haven´t noticed while growing the city but... week ago I didn´t think it was so much demanding. When I zoom in and go through city´s streets I am getting up to(well, down to) average 25FPS(and no it´s not cause of graphics).

Is it normal to have 100% CPU usage with 150 000 people city?
Is it caused by some new patch that came through steam?
Any way I can do anything to run game smoother(except buying new hardware :-D)?

Thank you guys for future answers and sharing experience. Also I wonder how is this game going on FX 8xxx ... is it well optimized?

edit: Oh, without mods it is +10 fps, 35FPS average. Actually the minimal average. Without zoom it is around 50FPS. And CPU usage 90%. What is going to happen with 200 000 people? :-D

 

[bluespottedhors]

Hello people, I have a little problem.

With my i5k ivy bridge 4,2GHZ I have 100% CPU usage when playing the game. Well, maybe I haven´t noticed while growing the city but... week ago I didn´t think it was so much demanding. When I zoom in and go through city´s streets I am getting up to(well, down to) average 25FPS(and no it´s not cause of graphics).

Is it normal to have 100% CPU usage with 150 000 people city?
Is it caused by some new patch that came through steam?
Any way I can do anything to run game smoother(except buying new hardware :-D)?

Thank you guys for future answers and sharing experience. Also I wonder how is this game going on FX 8xxx ... is it well optimized?

edit: Oh, without mods it is +10 fps, 35FPS average. Actually the minimal average. Without zoom it is around 50FPS. And CPU usage 90%. What is going to happen with 200 000 people? :-D

I don't have any slowdowns at all with this game. Do you have a screen shot ?

 

[Jenkins87]

Is it normal to have 100% CPU usage with 150 000 people city?

Yes, CSL is, after all, a Simulator, and simulations are usually very taxing on a CPU, regardless of how new and great it is

Is it caused by some new patch that came through steam?

No

Any way I can do anything to run game smoother(except buying new hardware :-D)?

Make sure you are only running Steam and Cities while playing, any other programs will make it a fraction slower with each program that is open.
I usually limit myself to steam + cities + mediamonkey, my music player of choice.
Update drivers, use CCleaner to clean all the junk off your PC, that's about it really, not much else you can do without upgrading hardware.

I wonder how is this game going on FX 8xxx ... is it well optimized?

Probably not much different when the processing power is similar. The difference would most likely be unnoticable ingame, except you might have more $$$ left in your RL wallet if you bought an AMD cpu lol.

What is going to happen with 200 000 people? :-D

It will lag more and more, and get worse and worse as your population (and the simulation) increases.

I find with my i5 + GTX660 + Samsung SSD that 3x is playable and smooth up to about 75k cims. Then 2x is only smooth from about 75k to 100k cims. From 100k to 200k, only 1x is smooth (approx 30fps). 200k + and the hardware I currently have (build mid 2013) starts to struggle with not just CPU lag from the simulation, but also GPU lag due to the amount of polygons onscreen, and also with the Ultra quality settings that I like to use.

It's really hard to put into words how complicated a game like this is. On the surface it may not appear to be very complicated, but the amount of "simulating" the game is doing every millisecond is intense to say the least...
The game tries to simulate mostly every cim and their daily lives. This is why "teleporting" becomes more and more of an issue the bigger your population gets. The game engine is despawning, or teleporting these objects/cims to allow for CPU calculation headroom (as I understand it). Simulating the "pathing" of all the cims is the #1 cause of the CPU lag. Everything you add has a 'ripple' effect on the whole population, and you might find at times that you have to wait several real life minutes, or in-game days, in order for your new road additions or changes to "update" across the city, and for the cims to calculate a new path using your new/changed roads.
The sheer amount of these calculations is what I think degrades the speed of the game over time, and the more cims = more lag, plain and simple, no avoiding this.

Even if you went out and spent 4 grand on a new pc with the latest and greatest CPU/GPU combo, even then this game would bring a super PC like that to it's knees from the ever increasing population, eventually.

 

[Tropod]

What is going to happen with 200 000 people? :-D

EDIT: guess I should add lol.....
I have;
Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz
8GB ram
GTX750 4GB ram
Current city: 45K, using 25 tiles unlocked.
And CPU flutuates but doesn't run 100% 100% of time.

 

[TotalyMoo]

Which mods are you using? Maxing out your CPU at that population doesn't sound normal running vanilla.

Are you using the 25 tiles mod?

 

[VashCZ]

@Jenkins87 Thank you for long answer.

@Tropod I must say lol too, 4GBs for GTX 750 is optimistic .
Your 50k up to 100% CPU usage and my 150k up to 100% ... it is quite equal.

@TotalyMoo Yes, you are right, I was using it. But I have only 7 tiles bought.
Actually I have game borrowed from my friend through Steam sharing and do not play it that often so... . But if you all hold on, I am going to upload short video with commentary in several days.

PS: goddam people doesn t want to move into my city! :-D ... gotta lower taxes to test 200k

 

[bluespottedhors]

I have all 25 unlocked and my game has not slowed down.

 

[Jenkins87]

I have all 25 unlocked and my game has not slowed down.

PC Specs?
Population?
# of tiles filled with city?

This is a seriously intensive game once you get up around 200k cims. Having all 25 empty tiles unlocked is very, very different to having 25 tiles FULL of city. (Either are not officially supported)

Also, just like other city builders, the game runs fine on 1x speed for much longer than it does on 2x or 3x speed. That's when I start to get CPU lag, is while using 3x speed, and only past approx 75-100k cims. Then 2x is the last smooth speed until about 150k cims, then from there only 1x speed is smooth, so technically the game hasn't slowed down much, but I have to adjust the simulation speed every 50k cims or so.

Cities XL has this exact problem too, only magnified by the fact it doesn't have large address aware (only supports max 3gb ram) and no support for multicore...

 

[bluespottedhors]

That's useful info to know, ty. I don't know any real world city that is FULL of city...there are parks, green spaces, parking lots, valleys, rivers, airports, etc, etc that cannot or are not built on so these would not be computationally intensive on a CPU.

 

[Jenkins87]

That's useful info to know, ty. I don't know any real world city that is FULL of city...there are parks, green spaces, parking lots, valleys, rivers, airports, etc, etc that cannot or are not built on so these would not be computationally intensive on a CPU.

True, but even if you filled 25 tiles with suburbs and quiet areas and what not, the population is the key factor, no matter how far apart your "city" elements are (I use 'city' as a general term meaning just buildings and cims, it is a city builder after all)

The population is what cripples the processing speed of this game. The more cims you have, the laggier it gets, there are no 2 ways about it.

It's like saying the more water you have in a glass, the more full it is. You can have a huge glass, with fancy colours and all the bells and whistles, but the more water you pour into it, the more full it will become. There is no way to avoid that apart from band-aiding the problem and either removing water, or using a bigger glass. But eventually, even the biggest glass will still fill up if you keep pouring more water (cims) into it

Don't get me wrong though, I am in no way bad mouthing this game. This is quite possibly the best city builder ever made, and one of the most efficient ones too, because the level of detail on a micro scale balances out the fact you can't have a population of millions and millions of people, it's just not feasible with current consumer computer technology or with this much detail in a game world.

 

[AustinPowersFas]

But i read somewhere that population that is simulated (moves actively through the city by pathfinding etc) is set to a max on 65k. Meaning from that point, the systems responsible for that wont increase cpu usage. Logically speaking.

 

[Jenkins87]

But i read somewhere that population that is simulated (moves actively through the city by pathfinding etc) is set to a max on 65k. Meaning from that point, the systems responsible for that wont increase cpu usage. Logically speaking.

Also true, but from what I understand, that won't descrease the amount of "attempts" the CPU will do to try and simulate however many cims you have, even if it surpasses the 65k...
The game still needs to "try" to simulate them all, in order for the game to receive a "there's too many of me to simulate" message from itself. So technically the more cims you have, the more calculations the game tries to do, but the shelf of 65k cims forces the game to calculate "what" to despawn, which isn't as taxing as simulating the entire population's pathing, but it still will add to the overall processing throughput.

That's my best understanding of my 170 hours of observation of the game anyway, plus previous game development experience I have (not Unity though)

I would like to see just how "smooth" this game can be with a properly filled map. By the sounds of it, populations of 300-500k or more start to really lose immersion because of the amount of vehicles and objects the game is despawning to match the 65k shelf, even if you have the greatest super computer some mad scientist built with 20 grand (ala Large Pixel Collider), the game would still crap out with that high of a population (not lag, but visually strange), it might look very very pretty in screenshots, but I gaurentee the user isn't having a wonderful experience due to the limitations put in place by CO to save your computer from catching fire, like @Tropod aptly posted

It's interesting though because I haven't noticed the 65k limit, all I've noticed is each map gets laggier and laggier the closer I get to reaching 250k population. I've read stories though about deserted areas that are far away from a main city that has a thriving cim population, due to the 65k limit favouring the city cims instead of rural ones

 

[bluespottedhors]

True, but even if you filled 25 tiles with suburbs and quiet areas and what not, the population is the key factor, no matter how far apart your "city" elements are (I use 'city' as a general term meaning just buildings and cims, it is a city builder after all)

The population is what cripples the processing speed of this game. The more cims you have, the laggier it gets, there are no 2 ways about it.

It's like saying the more water you have in a glass, the more full it is. You can have a huge glass, with fancy colours and all the bells and whistles, but the more water you pour into it, the more full it will become. There is no way to avoid that apart from band-aiding the problem and either removing water, or using a bigger glass. But eventually, even the biggest glass will still fill up if you keep pouring more water (cims) into it

Don't get me wrong though, I am in no way bad mouthing this game. This is quite possibly the best city builder ever made, and one of the most efficient ones too, because the level of detail on a micro scale balances out the fact you can't have a population of millions and millions of people, it's just not feasible with current consumer computer technology or with this much detail in a game world.

I don't see why it should be based on population because it's not something we can see. I can understand vehicle count, etc, but again...one only sees these when close enough. I think this is called Level of Detail (LOD). It's like this the further one zooms out the less detail ones sees although one can see a larger picture or portion of your city.

 

[V10lator]

It doesn't matter if you see the cims or not, The 3D scene is rendered on your GPU anyway but this is a CPU problem: Each Cim has it's own AI, it follows its path (to work, shopping, parks, ...) no matter if you see it or not. Also many (all?) Cims have cars or who do you think is driving all of them in your city? The only way to stop the population from growing is to stop you from building new things.

 

[AustinPowersFas]

If every sim would have a car, and there are still like 18 people (4 families) living in a detached house, no wonder traffic clogs up that much if so much people need to go to the same spot.

 

[FireFlowerist]

Disable broadcasting, it puts 25% load on 8 cores when streaming 1080p @ 3.5Mbps

 

[Shiggs]

I don't see why it should be based on population because it's not something we can see. I can understand vehicle count, etc, but again...one only sees these when close enough. I think this is called Level of Detail (LOD). It's like this the further one zooms out the less detail ones sees although one can see a larger picture or portion of your city.

You can actually see this happening if you have fps tracker or something to track your fps. Zoom in really close, fps goes to shit, zoom out all the way, smooth as butter.

 

[bluespottedhors]

You can actually see this happening if you have fps tracker or something to track your fps. Zoom in really close, fps goes to shit, zoom out all the way, smooth as butter.

Thank you for your post, this supports what I said earlier. There is a relationship to what is rendered on the monitor bases on the camera view, i.e. zooming in or out.

 

[bluespottedhors]

Disable broadcasting, it puts 25% load on 8 cores when streaming 1080p @ 3.5Mbps

What is broadcasting ?

 

[FireFlowerist]

What is broadcasting ?

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6730-TOAK-6497

Steam overlay streaming for your friends or public. By default it is on for your friends but actual streaming starts only when your friend from your profile clicks "Watch game" then you will get message in steam overlay: "User has joined to your broadcast" (Mine is Finnish so dunno actual translation)