How to reduce frame rate?

SE5 doesn't really run enough instructions to use up 100% of the CPU; run other apps and they will both perform fine. Its just as true now as it was when I posted it 6 months ago in that thread you linked. The frame rate is primarily dependent upon the video card, not the CPU, anyways.

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Agreeing with Fyron. I just launched SE:V and while it eats most of one core (~40% usage total), it is very happy to yield cycles to other running apps. Interestingly, my video card appears to be idling -- but Vista has funky issues with SE:V, who knows.

I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but most 3D games consume 100% of the resources available, regardless of it's needed or not. I can only think of one or two first person shooters that, for whatever reason, hard-code in a framerate cap of 30 and 60fps.

I just dug through the guts of my nvidia drivers with the help of some 3rd party apps and see no option, obvious or hidden, that'd have the drivers force an FPS cap. I might've missed something, still. Glanced at my other comps Catalyst drivers, ditto.

There is one thing you can do, but it's not for casual use. Hop in to your BIOS before you go gaming, and chop the multiplier back for the CPU and experiment with a lower vCore (CPU core voltage). Then download your video card tweaking application of choice, I prefer RivaTuner, and underclock your video card. Tweak settings to achieve whatever minimal level of performance you desire.

When you're done gaming, return above parameters to normal. That could cut the waste heat down, but if you think turn times are long now... I've been there, done that. This is standard operating procedure for me with laptops to extend battery life and reduce heat, but it's a performance killer.

Edit: DISCLAIMER: If you tweak something and your computer is never again stable and is beset by blue screens, not my fault! Achieving stability after overclocking and underclocking uses half science and half the Dark Side of the Force. Underclocking is inherently less risky, but still. It's also a "gateway drug" to overclocking.

Also, avoid the urge to tweak the RAM. Mileage may vary, but in my experience RAM is the absolutely most difficult component to get stable at non-stock speeds; depending on the BIOS, there are literally a dozen or more settings, each with a different effect on stability. Maintain FSB, RAM settings and vDimm, just chop multipliar and vCore.

I'd advise against undervolting/clocking your hardware... especially as a temporary measure inbetween bouts of playing a video game and doing normal PC stuff.

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Umm, underclocking your CPU will only reduce the TOTAL number of CPU cycles, thus failing to achieve the purpose of freeing cycles for other applications, though it will still slow down the PC and probably cut down its power consumption and heat generation

~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

If your processor is getting too hot then you need to turn your attention to adequate cooling and not fiddling with the processor usage of independent games and applications.

Hey, I don't generally recommend it either, and it will slow down everything, I think it's a bad solution. It's not dangerous if you've been overclocking since the Pentium II days like I have, dropping the multy and vcore is exactly what SpeedStep for example naturally does on its own when not loaded, but it would be if he wasn't familiar with all the options he'll see in his BIOS.

But, the OP did cite heat as a concern, so there you go, that's all that can be done. As people have already noted, SE:V happily yields those CPU cycles to any other app that wants them, so I can't imagine that being his primary problem. If for some reason it's not yielding, Task Manager can be used to set its priority lower.

At least I'm trying to offer him up something! There is no real solution, simply patch-jobs like underclocking.

Edit: Speaking of SpeedStep, whatever throttling mechanism your CPU has probably will have to be disabled in BIOS. I suggest Googling for underclocking or undervolting, or visiting Hardforum.com and seeking information there if needed.

Heh, I wish I could get *more* FPS sometimes - I can never seem to get it much above 30

P.S. You're not the same Rollo who took over the Devnull Mod for SE4 during Devnullicus' absence, are you?

~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

SE5 is not stressing your hardware or doing anything untoward. So what if the frame rate is 89 FPS? That doesn't mean the game is at all stressing your video card (or CPU for that matter); very far from it. Its not filling up the video ram with gigantic textures, its not rendering horribly complex scenes like a top of the line shooter game. Stop worrying about it and get back to playing.

And trust me, you absolutely do not want to try playing the game with 10 FPS, much less 25...

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SE5 falsely reporting 100% CPU usage will do exactly nothing as far as alleged "global warming" is concerned... If you are really concerned, you should throw your beast of a machine away and build a power-efficient micro-atx compie with a laptop CPU.

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On a tangential note, do you know about the Windowed SE4 tool?

SE5 has its own built-in mechanism for running in windowed mode; its under the Video Mode selection in the Setup utility.

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How about activating/forcing VSync and setting the monitor refresh rate to 60hertz?

Whilst it is true most games these days will use 100% of the CPU when they need it, many games also relinquish that usage when the game is minimised. SE5 doesn't - it still uses 100% of a core even when minimised, whether it is processing a turn or not. That in itself is "wasteful" of CPU time.

I don't believe changing the fps will in any way reduce CPU usage. Partly because the two are unrelated, and partly because of the above - SE5 is determined to use 100% of a core.

Of course, as has been stated many times, SE5 relinquishes CPU time when other programs need it. It's not really running enough instructions to use all of the CPU's silicon...

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Except that doesn't help my CPU's power management system. It's still using 100% of a core, and therefore my CPU doesn't self under-clock (I just checked), which it usually does when the CPU is under-utilised (AMD - Cool N Quiet).

For people with laptops this would do a good job of flattening batteries faster.

have you left you ever turned your computer on and let it idle? guess what, your using 100% of your computer's processing power. why do you think when ever you try and do something after your comp has been on for 4 hours that is seems to lag a bit. cause its waking up? the ram was slow? there is nothing slow about a computer. even when you experience 2 FPS because your playing a game doesn't mean that your computer just slowed down for no reason. it has to process information, calculate trajectories, DRAW EACH SCREEN ONTO YOUR MONITOR, realign pointers, erase variable, create new variables, read from numerous arrays, data files, DLLs, .bats, i mean what do you think a computer does? your computer never idles unless it "hibernates". if you think your wasting all of this so called power, give you computer to me so i can waste it so you can feel better.

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kromaticor - Ok, you clearly don't understand much about these things. Your thinking is literally black and white. Either all on or all off. This is also incorrect. The power consumption of a machine is variable based on the load it is processing. Sitting on the desktop doing nothing uses practically no CPU (assuming you don't have a bunch of junk anti-virus software installed ). Processing a SE5 turn uses all of your CPU for as long as it takes to process. Don't believe me? Go do some research - this might help you start - http://www.google.com/search?q=power+usage+CPU&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

That's not quite what I was talking about. I meant have windows forcibly lower the maximum rate the CPU can run at, even under "100%" load. Its a good strategy for prolonging laptop battery life in general.

Speaking of turn processing, doesn't a well designed game try to process as quickly as possible, using as many CPU resources are available?

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Apparently I'm not being clear. Sorry.
I accept that the game should be using 100% CPU for turn processing, and didn't mean to imply otherwise. It's when the game is minimized and NOT processing a turn (or ostensibily, doing anything) that I think it shouldn't be using 100% of one of my cores. I don't think it's Dx's fault because I have other DX games that don't used CPU when minimised (though admittedly there are also other games like SE5 that do use all of the CPU all of the time, but by no means all).

On the matter of manually under-clocking - Well for one thing, it's not something a lay-person is likely to do, even in Windows. Heck, I have no clue how to underclock in Windows and I'm something of a "power user".

Note that I'm not using a laptop, I simply chose to use them as an example. There's no reason to waste energy on un-used cycles, which was my original point.

Also consider that those other games are made by big teams of professional graphics designers/coders, and Aaron is a newbie at DirectX... Gotta cut him a little slack, right?

I'm not talking about underclocking at all (thats a bios firmware procedure to manually change various bus speeds in the hardware), but just using the built-in, easy to use power management of Windows to take advantage of the power-stepping features of modern CPUs. Vista at least comes with 3 power plans, one of which is labeled "Power Saver" and set to limit maximum processor state to 50%. I'm not sure if XP allows such fine-tuned controls, though; never had a power-stepping CPU in a XP box.

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But we don't know if the cause is actually DirectX. It could simply be that his main loop doesn't know how to relinquish control, and he's certainly not a programming newbie.

XP doesn't have those features. I am currently using "Minimal power management", which is necessary to have the cool'n'quiet stuff working.

i know exactly what i'm talking about. DL a power monitoring program, run it, let it idle for 1 hour. then, run a game your computer can barely run. like crysis or something. check out the differences. better yet, run your comp in safe mode (assuming you have windows) then run it in normal mode. post the stats on this thread when you do. then i will post my stats after running my comp in safe mode and then after i run crysis.

kromaticorb is stuck in 1994, where there is little power scaling in consumer level computer chips.

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of course i am. 850w power supply. i should prolly go back to a 350 and see if my comp will run more efficiently