Running the game using two cpu's? 3 speed at 5 speed lag?

[BlankJones]

I have a conundrum. A riddle if you will.

So there I was, 100 years in the game, when I'm succumb to the 3 speed at 5 speed lag. Suffering from impatience, a thought dawned ... Is it possible to run the game using two cpu's? But first here's my specs

CPU Type QuadCore AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition 965, 3400 MHz (17 x 200)
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (1280 MB)
Memory 6GB
OS: Windows 8.1

I notice that whenever I use the task manager to set the priority to high and affinity to use all four cores, the game runs flawlessly until around 100 years. My settings.txt is as follows:

graphics=
{
	size=
	{
		x=1600
		y=1024
	}

	refreshRate=0
	fullScreen=no
	borderless=no
	shadows=no
	shadowSize=2048
	multi_sampling=0
	anisotropic_filtering=0
	gamma=50.000000
}
sound_fx_volume=100.000000
music_volume=0.000000
scroll_speed=50.000000
camera_rotation_speed=50.000000
zoom_speed=50.000000
mouse_speed=50.000000
master_volume=48.000000
ambient_volume=50.000000
mapRenderingOptions=
{
	draw_terrain=yes
	draw_water=yes
	draw_borders=yes
	draw_trees=no
	draw_rivers=yes
	draw_postfx=no
	draw_sky=no
	draw_bloom=no
	draw_tooltips=yes
	draw_hires_terrain=no
	draw_citysprawl=yes
}

Or maybe my cpu is already good enough and i'm missing some special way to reduce the lag? Or perhaps the game just can't perform above 3 speed 100 years in?

Any help would much appreciated, also I apologize if this is in the wrong thread.

Thanks!
---BlankJones, Curator of the Jester's Choice.

 

[AndrewT]

Please post a dxdiag.txt (you can delete everything after the end of the "Sound devices" section for brevity) . Zip up your whole Documents/CK2/logs/ directory and attach or link that here too please.

 

[BlankJones]

Logs and DxDiag.txt

 

[AndrewT]

Hmm, well that all looks pretty much OK, to be honest. The game ought natively to use one CPu a lot and a second one to some degree, I'm not aware any further CPus are of any use. It rally pts more load on the GPU than the CPU, normally.

That's one possibility; overheating can trigger the machine to underclock. Please report the temperatures of your CPU and video (GPU) 1/ before starting the game up and 2/ after say 20 minutes' play. If your PC's vendor has given you no way of reading temperatures, install GPU-Zand CPU-Z, or SPEEDFAN.

The other potential issue I see is memory. You have 6gb but your video card can take away up to 2.8gb of that, leaving just 3.2gb for the game and Windows. While adequate it's not a lot these days - I note your memory page file is 3gb so Windows has had to swap stuff out of memory at some point. If you de-activate all DLCs except ones you actually need in your current game, does it go any better? And obviously do make sure you have no other apps running when going into CK2.

 

[BlankJones]

Sorry for the late response!

1.) I've noticed that whenever I de-activate some of the DLC's (Portrait and Unit packs) there is a very slight difference.

2.) My CPU runs usually at a warm 56°C at the fan speed is at 2344 RPM. Both when idle and running ck2. I just recently cleaned the fans as well.
a.) CPU usage jumps up from 8% to 35% upon loading up the game, however rests at 23% after loading. Sits at around 35-40% during gameplay (game is set to use all cores on my one processor on high priority)
b.) CPU temperature stays roughly the same, given maybe 2-5 percent increase after hours of gameplay (yes i'm addicted to ck2 ;c)

3.) There's no discernible difference between running ck2 without background apps

4.) I usually use AIDA64 to monitor the temperatures and such, should I get one of those programs instead?

Thanks!

 

[AndrewT]

Those temperatures are fine, it's only a worry when they get over about 70c. But =by all means try the apps I listed, they may work a bit differently.

That aside, I have to say I don't see much wrong here. You don't happen to play SWTOR or related games, do you? If so do you have an app called BitRaider running? Try killing that.

 

[BlankJones]

I don't have SWTOR sadly. If there's nothing much to be done then one final question!

If I were to buy another processor + more ram would the game actually run better? Or perhaps just the more ram?

 

[AndrewT]

BitRaider comes with other games too - worth checking your Installed Apps CP for.

You have 6gb of memory and the official minimum is 2gb (although in practical terms that's crept up to more like 3-4gb). So no, more memory won't help; I think you'll find if you alt-tab out and look at Task Manager that you are not using that 6gb.

More CPUs won't help either; faster ones can. But yours is pretty good, so I doubt that's the issue.

On doing a bit more research I might have to walk back my thinking on the CPU temps; I found this:
Maximum operating temperature 55°C - 62°C
which is surprisingly low. You could try using Speedfan to force the fans t run at 100% for a while, see if that keeps is cooler and helps the game.