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Game using only 1 of 6 cpu cores

CPaul2
Beginner
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I know it's not the right place maybe to ask, but I wanted to get some helpful information from Intel professionals on this issue.

There's a game made by Sega/Creative Arts, Rome Total War 2 that was released exactly a year ago and it was basically unfinished and in a beta stage on release, they seemed to have released it just to meet a deadline, and since release they've already had 14 major patches to try and fix it, I'm no gamer but I'm pretty sure you'll never find another major game title release and have 14 major patches in it's first year. And for a lot of people the game is not much better than it was on release day, and the reason for that and for this thread is this.

The processor and graphic card performance is ridiculously bad no matter how high end your hardware is, and a lot of people have complaints about the game not utilizing neither CPU nor their GPU's fully. Me for example I have a i7 3930k 6 core CPU, and I will post a video link right here below at the end of the thread where I turn the game on let it run for a few minutes and shut it off to display the processor usage at the 1:50 mark, where you clearly see one single core overloaded to 100% while the other ones sit doing absolutely nothing. I've repeated this test with many different variations and different monitoring software, always the same result.

So my question is what do you guys think ?

The moderators on the game's official forum pretty much refuse to even acknowledge that there is a problem deeply rooted in the core of the game itself because that would be admitting they released the game incomplete, so they just keep reiterating generic statements on how they will continue to polish and improve the game etc, etc...

And now this is the part that will literally insult your intelligence, because they worked in close co-operation with the Intel guys to make sure this game was properly optimized for "low and high end hardware alike" those were their own words see video below, so to see a game perform this badly even on higher end Intel processors like I said literally insults your intelligence

 

 

here is my video (see the core usage at 1:50 mark)

 

 

 

 

 

and as an added bonus here is the video directly from the Intel Software you tube channel where they discuss just how hard they worked to make the game run very well

 

 

 

 

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Jose_H_Intel1
Employee
593 Views

Hi ChrisCP3, thank you for sharing your inquiry.

As far as I can see the game does not seem to be lagging. Still, you may try running the Windows* Experience Index and monitoring the cores usage when the processor is being assessed. /docs/DOC-22484 Windows Experience Index for Windows 8.1

If all cores are being used then it probably is a software application issue; otherwise I would suggest verifying that all cores are enabled in BIOS as well as in Windows* msconfig; the option "number of processors" should be unchecked, as it is by default in the Boot tab. There is also a way to check if the game is allowed to use all cores with "Set Affinity", when you right click the (exe) process of the game in Task Manager

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CPaul2
Beginner
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Hi Joe, about the lag, well actually in that first video I managed to keep the game around 30fps which is still nowhere near where it should be because it's only using 1 core. But what usually happens if I play more than 10 minutes and I guess the core just gets overloaded is I get FPS drops down to below 10 at times which makes it unplayable.

Now I appreciate all your suggestions but those were some of the first ones I tried, I've done basically all the core tricks including affinity, priority and even parking to try and force this game to use more than 1 core, none of it works. I mean not that I should even have to resort to doing things like that, the game should work out of the box normally as is.

 

Also the system is running perfectly fine, everything in order as I can max out my benchmarks in various programs and get well above average results, for example in 3dMark FireStrike Extreme test I score around 10k which is really really good, that all means my machine is running in perfect order if I'm scoring super high on tests like that and other games as well.

A lot of us on the Rome 2 forum would love to get some answers from the actual Intel guys who worked on this game, because Sega/Creative Assembly simply refuse to acknowledge the issue even existing. We have been waiting a year for the game to be properly playable and after 14 patches still a lot of work to do, I mean the game doesn't even have working Anti Aliasing and on release dual GPU setups SLI/Crossfire did not work, it took them well over 6 months to have working dual gpu and even then it's still half broken because nothing is getting utilized properly, neither CPU nor GPU's.

Here is my other video that shows what sort of FPS drops I get the longer I play, notice around the 2:40 mark the FPS drops drastically making it unplayable on a $600 six-core CPU

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CPaul2
Beginner
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So anyone got anything to add at all ?

I also just realized that the game's newest patch 14 broke my Crossfire support, so now I don't have working crossfire either... not that it matters since crossfire doesnt make a bit of difference anyway

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Jose_H_Intel1
Employee
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I have searched online about this game and I can understand your claims.

Hopefully the developers will fix the issues in the near future as it seems they have indicated in the official forums. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War:_Rome_II# Technical_problems_and_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War:_Rome_II# Technical_problems_and_controversy

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