CPU overheating in game

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CPU overheating in game

nicky002
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Post by nicky002 » Fri Oct 22, 2021 1:13 am

Hello everyone I'm new in this forum,

Let me first say that I use my computer to play every day and that I have a real-time program that detects the temperature of my CPU.
1)Whenever I use a game, such as The Witcher 3, Doom or other games that require high specs, the temperature usually does not exceed 80-85.
2)Games that are less hardware demanding and therefore a little dated usually the temperature varies between 50 ° -65 °
3) once i stop playing, in idle, it settles at 40-45 °.

However, when I do a clean install of X-Wing Alliance and then install the full upgrade, the game plus the upgrade arrives, during the game session, at 90 ° :irre: !!!
How can be possible that this game that has a graphics inferior to The Witcher 3 and although all updates it is still less than a ps2 graphics, can bring the temperature of my CPU up to 90°?!?!?!? No mention the FPS drops in the middle of nowhere...

It's a wonderful update but the improvements do not justify the fact that is more CPU demanding than CP2077 level graphics ULTRA.

Am I doing something wrong? there's something to be set up that i do not know??

Thank you all in advance for any suggestion

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Forceflow
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Post by Forceflow » Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:01 am

The problem simply is that the game engine is so old that it doesn't utilize your GPU like modern games do. So it is in fact a lot more CPU heavy than Witcher 3 for example. It's also an issue that it doesn't really uses multiple cores, so again it's putting a very high and unusual load on your CPU. So I am afraid that this behavior is quite normal. I suggest to limit the frame rate of the game in you GPU settings and also to lower your desktop resolution before playing. (The game will run at your native desktop resolution no matter what you set in-game! So if you have a 4k monitor it will run at 4k unless you reduce that in the windows settings)
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nicky002
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Post by nicky002 » Mon Oct 25, 2021 1:30 am

And there is no way to reduce the load for CPU? is absurd that I'm gonna fry my CPU at these temperature for a 20y old game... and why FPS sometime drop down drammatically...in some level it seems that it run a 10fps

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m0rgg
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Post by m0rgg » Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:22 am

If you don't want to "fry your CPU" you can always put some hardware clock limits or undervolting :-)

The game is indeed not optimized, but for me what is "absurd" is to expect the same performance than in an AAA game from few years ago. Optimization is not magic, it's a lot of hard work. Any contributions are very welcome. I'm working to improve the SteamVR part myself, you don't need to be part of the XWAU team.

I believe there are ways to reduce the load for CPU, but it would require reverse engineering the game 3D engine and creating hooks to replace the heavy calculations with optimized versions using modern GPU APIs. And I'm not even sure if it is really feasible.

If you have the skills and time to try it, I can give some pointers on where to start. Although probably @blue_max or @JeremyaFr would know much better than myself. The source code is available.

As you indicate yourself this is a 20 year old game. The fact that there is such a great community of people working to improve it and make it work in modern hardware, in VR, with vastly improved graphics, completely new features missing from the original and lot of bugs fixed is a miracle in itself. If you come to the forums complaining that it overheats your CPU it can be a bit discouraging and even offensive for the people that put thousands of hours of work into getting it at the state it is now.

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blue_max
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Post by blue_max » Sun Oct 31, 2021 5:55 pm

m0rgg wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:22 am
... what is "absurd" is to expect the same performance than in an AAA game from few years ago...
Right. Also, I actually bought this to help me with the overheating problem:

https://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-Breeze-Mo ... 135&sr=8-3

nicky002
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Post by nicky002 » Tue Nov 02, 2021 10:38 pm

m0rgg wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:22 am
If you don't want to "fry your CPU" you can always put some hardware clock limits or undervolting :-)
If you come to the forums complaining that it overheats your CPU it can be a bit discouraging and even offensive for the people that put thousands of hours of work into getting it at the state it is now.
Hey!
Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough or my tone was misinterpreted...

XWA with this upgrade is an absolute masterpiece, thank you 1,000,000 for all the effort you or your team put into that; I didn’t question it.

However, gratifications aside, which you all deserve...I asked if there is any way to reduce load for CPU since is a very old game, and your answer was more than exhaustive, namely "there is no solution".

Thank you again

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Post by Bman » Wed Nov 03, 2021 5:57 am

You might want to check your heat sink compound too on your CPU chip. My PC starting shutting down too when CPU was overheating. Reapplied compound and it's running fine now. Assume you have muffin fans et al installed for cooling your machine.
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