CPU staying pegged at 100% while running horizons

[Guaran]

Not sure how long it has been doing this. I had a problem the other day where I logged into horizons and couldn't move, chat nothing.I was looking for possible causes, and noticed that horizons.exe is chewing up all free cpu cycles.... Has anyone else seen this? I rebooted, changed video drivers back to 61.77, deleted entire world cache. Game seems playable again. But the cpu 100% thing is still there.

I have a 500W power supply, nforce2 chipset, 6800Gt, 1gb ram, xp2700+ athlon modestly overclocked. System is 2 years old, except for video card. Soundcard is a Hercules DigiFire 7.1, not using the onboard sound. Running in windowed mode for about the last 3 months.

Tried nvidia 61.77 drivers (which were stable for me for months), 67.66 drivers. Noticed the 100% cpu using both. In the last month and a half I've also used 66.93 and 71.25 drivers, at the time I hadn't noticed the cpu isssue, just seemed to be crashing alot more than usual so was trying different things. The crashing seemed to get alot worse after a big content patch about a month back now.

Last night I could barely play. Would try to fly and the game just ctd and then immediatly I see a message ( on the login screen) "Can't start horizons when it is already running.." forget the exact text. But it's what you see when you've logged out of the game and try to log right back in while it is still cleaning itself out of memory. (still see the horizons.exe process, and still hear the hardrive buzzing as it cleans up the gig's of virtual memory the game was using). It did that twice. Could the login screen somehow think I clicked "Login" again while game was already running, and that ctd me? I guess I could go back to running full screen, see if these problems go away.

One thing I had changed in the video settings awhile back was crakning up the video settings, after upgrading the the 6800gt. changed texture qualities to highest settings, enabled cloth simulation ( whatever that is), clicked a few other boxes. After having the problem past night, i went back in and turn cloth simulation back off, and instead of custom video settings chose the medium choice. It might be better already, will play more when I get home.

This same system ran the game for the first year with very few ctd's. I used to run 1024x768 full screen.

Anyone with similiar system can lte me know what settings they can run at without major problems?

Thanks

Guaran

[gopher65]

Horizons uses up all avalible resources of all types. Your CPU will always be at 100% when using HZ. If you had a 1 tHz machine it would still be at 100%, you would just be getting one heck of a framerate;)

[cauri_order]

3.2 GHZ P4...HZ typically takes up 50-55% of the cpu cycles.

[Guaran]

Well if alot of other people are seeing it, then it sounds typical.

Watched it tonight alot as I played and it kept the cpu pegged practically the whole time. for now I still have the 5900ultra back in. Seems to be playing just fine.

Will try the 6800gt and these same drivers again tomorrow. I haver a feeling this powersupply, which has served me well for almost 5 years, is starting to feel it's age. It's got 2 fans and I noticed today the intake fan doesnt spin. barely tries if you poke at the blades, but the fan is a gonerfor sure. The 6800gt I expect is pulling more juice than a 5900 ultra does.

My system runs 24/7, probably 360 days out of a year. Going to look for a new power supply.

Guaran

[Melianteas]

I dunno if it's the same isue, since last week the game crashes around the 6th time I recall. Before, I didnt have those problems and I could recall all as I want without the necesity of relog nor restart computer. And now when happen that I can see how the game eats my 99% of my memory.

[Larus-Fel]

i've had the same problem too... i acually went back to my old videocard that never had problems.. and i still get the lock up :(

[Guaran]

Well, problem I have noticed is with the 6800gt in, even with older known stable drivers like the 61.77's, the game must have massive memory leakage. The hardrive buzzes alot more than normal, and sometimes I can;t even get logged in without constant buzzing of the drive and then CTD'ing before the login process completes. Or if I get logged in, as soon as I try to move it's hardrive buzz then ctd. Go back to the 5900 Ultra problem goes away, or is much less pronounced. Starting to think that either the game is currently incompatible with a 6800gt, orthe power supply is getting tooweak to power a 6800gt, or that this 6800gt could possibly have a defect. Playing other games on the 6800gt work fine though, even on my current power supply.

Most likely there is some sort of bug in Horizons, one that seems to have been recently introduced.

I have a new power supply ordered, will try that first to be certain (I'm needing a power supply for another pc I'm building anyway).

Guaran

[gopher65]

Horizons is not compatible with the GFFX6000 series. I haven't read up on these cards myself, but someone else said that the card attempts to take over certain functions that HZ designates to the CPU (that most other games designate to the graphics cards). I dunno if this is true or not.

[Guaran]

Well, for a couple weeks I played Hz with the 6800 and all seemed fine. Then after a patch, like 2 or 3 patches back, the problem got pretty bad.

If there is an incompatibility, it should be at the top of the bug list. Tulga could work with nvidia to try and figure out what's going on.

Can a Dev care to respond? Are there known compatibility issues with Horizons and Geforce 6xxx video cards?

Guaran

[Dragoniade]

Horizons will always take 100% of the CPU.
Notice that those who are getting 50% usage (like me) are using P4 processor. It is because Horizons doesn't support Hypertreading, and all the load is on a single virtual processor, at 100%