Q about CPU usage with Unreal Tournament 3

I noticed half the time if not more my CPU hits 100% usage on both cores while I play UT3. Specs in my sig. Now I cant do much more with my laptop but would a CPU upgrade be somewhat good idea in this case ?

I can get T7800 (2.6 GHz core 2 duo) for like 150 bux or cheaper, but that's only 15% better than what I already have. I'm not willing to put T9500 as it will give me thermal error on my platform and therefore my laptop may not recognize thermal overheat on the CPU, which is likely when working at 100%.

shall I go for CPU upgrade?

I like the laptop otherwise, and have 50%+ overclocked video card in it. I play UT3 at 1024x768 at medium settings, and the FPS would drop to ~20.

thanks

 

Go for some Penryn CPU. Thermal sensing error can be easily fixed, check: http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...s-cap-willing-pay-solution-3.html#post6501443

 

You won't see much difference if you upgrade the cpu.

 

Are you seeing frame rate dips, or anything chugging while playing? If not don't worry about it, most games aren't optimized for anything more then 2 cores, and besides most games are GPU dependant with the odd exception.

Its not worth it to ever upgrade a laptop IMO, might aswell just buy another and have it last 3 years running med to full then another couple running med to low settings.

also a good way to make it good with a girlfriend or family member is to give them the old one, clean it off and makes a nice little gift, and the girlfriend will love it!!! Most likely better then any laptop or desktop they have and will be super happy you thought of them.

 

cant give up this one easy, it's last ot its kind ... 4:3, XP, etc. Besides, it takes me soo long to make a laptop run as I want it to run, and the vendors to develop drivers that run the machine as they should. IMO, it takes something like 1 to 2 years.

I've seen my CPU to top out only at this game so far, and that's the one that I play mostly. Thus my question poped.

I found somewhere somebody said with Penryn the temps are still reading fine, which was my prime concern. I still need to find what the deal was with undervolting with RMclock and CPUs with half multiplier .. in order to check T9300 as a cheaper option.

thanks for any responses

 

I think a CPU upgrade would help. My guess is, back then, the games were more built on the CPU than the GPU, so I guess it's coded to use lots of
CPU...? Tho, our CPUs are much better than before, so basically I guess it's some kind of bug?

 

no, it's not a bug .. it's just how the game is made, and I think it's made quite good in any ways.

also just found that RMClock still can not recognize half multipliers, so the CPU has to be either T7700, T7800 or a T9500 (expensive) in order to keep my laptop from becoming an oven, again.

I mean I got it all nicely to top at 72C both CPU and/or GPU, and now this comes. Damn.

nobody with suggestion for setFSB ?

 

What is your objective?

I can't remember entirely, but some engines are simply built to eat as many available CPU cycles as they can. Similar to a video encoder or transcoder.

If the Unreal Engine is of the type I described above, there is no way to reach your objective.

If you were looking for a higher framerate or something like that, sure, upgrading to a penryn chip or overclocking would help, but your goal is to simply bring down UT3 processor usage to something less than 100%.

At best, you will simply move the performance bottleneck over to the GPU (where it should be fairly close to already), and at best you spent hundreds of dollars for a 10% performance gain that still results in a 100% CPU utilization.

 

Well, I put T9500 in there and .. big improvement. I used to play in 20 to 25 FPS, though I've seen down to 18 at times, and now it's like 30 to 35 or more, depending on the action. All of those are with 20 or more players on the server. With nobody on the map it goes to 45 fps

I'm still hitting 100% usage on both cores from time to time, but it's not like flat region of 100% usage for long time.

overall it was worth it.

 

I told you that UT3 is more CPU-leaned