High CPU usage in Age of Empires 2 HD?

Jul 8, 2013
41
0
0
Hello.
I have an i5-2500k(not overclocked) and have been often getting low framerate in many games due to a CPU bottleneck. In every one of these games the apparent bottleneck according to Process Explorer is the CPU. Games that never lagged on my old dual core Pentium processors would go to full CPU usage on my i5-2500k (depending on how many cores each game used) and they'd drop below 60 fps.

But I was never really bothered by it until I decided to play Age of Empires 2, and noticed the framerate constantly reaching 50fps, sometimes lower. Of course I thought it was some game bug, but no, I checked CPU usage and it turns out it was using slightly above 26% of the CPU, and since it is a game made for 1 core, then 25% of a 4-core CPU means it is running at max CPU usage.

I tried to check the internet for Age of Empires 2 CPU related problems, but apparently the internet still didn't exist when this game came out, so no help there.

Anyone got any ideas about what's going on?

Specs:
i5-2500k
AMD 7970
8 Gigs RAM
 
Last edited:

Veliko

Diamond Member
Feb 16, 2011
3,597
127
106
Try reseating the heatsink and fan. I've had to do this a few times due to dust clogging things up.
 

Fardringle

Diamond Member
Oct 23, 2000
9,184
753
126
Age of Empires will always use as much CPU as it get, as games should. Try setting the CPU affinity so the game doesn't use CPU 0 (the one that Windows is using). It might help a bit.
 

theevilsharpie

Platinum Member
Nov 2, 2009
2,322
14
81
It sounds like either your CPU clock frequency is lower than you expect, or you system is generating an excessive number of interrupts. Perfmon can verify both.
 
Jul 8, 2013
41
0
0
It sounds like either your CPU clock frequency is lower than you expect, or you system is generating an excessive number of interrupts. Perfmon can verify both.
No it's running at 3.4 GHz according to GPU-z.
And where do you download Perfmon? I mean a SAFE download you have tested yourself (I already formatted yesterday after downloading a trojan) ?
 

Fardringle

Diamond Member
Oct 23, 2000
9,184
753
126
Have you changed the BIOS settings for the CPU? Default clock speed for an i5-2500K is 3.3 GHz. Granted, 3.4Ghz isn't much of an overclock, but there might be something wrong with the BIOS settings that is making it unstable.

Having said that, I fired up AOE II on my wife's i5 laptop and played for a while to get some large armies built up. I didn't notice any FPS lagging (but then the 50fps you mentioned is easily more than what is needed for AOE) but the CPU was almost constantly at 100% usage on one core because, as I said earlier, AOE was designed to use whatever CPU power it can get. Did you try setting the affinity to not use the CPU 0 as I recommended? Some older games that are not multi-core/multi-CPU aware don't play nice when running on the same core that the operating system is using in a multi-core system.

To answer your other question, you don't download PERFMON. It is part of Windows.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490957.aspx
 
Last edited:

Throckmorton

Lifer
Aug 23, 2007
16,830
3
0
WTF is it using all that CPU power for though? If it's running at 50fps, obviously it's not just maxing out frames per second. The game engine can't just use unlimited processing power. If an i5 at 3.4ghz gets maxed out by the engine, how did the game run on Pentium 3s at more than a crawl?
 

Fardringle

Diamond Member
Oct 23, 2000
9,184
753
126
I don't know why it does that. I have just read in Google searches after reading this post, and seen in my own experience that it does. I don't think any FPS issues the OP is seeing (or thinks he is seeing) are due to CPU usage since as you mentioned, the game ran just fine on old Pentium 3's.
 

railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
6,604
561
126
These kind of games, from my knowledge, tend to suck CPU power because of all their calculation for the AI.

There is a reason these kind of games scale wonderfully with CPU clocks.
 

Blitzvogel

Platinum Member
Oct 17, 2010
2,012
23
81
Back when my first experience with AoE2 (yes the old CD-ROM version) was on a Pentium M 1.6 GHz in 2005, a large scale game would eventually bog down the CPU as all sides, including yours, were building larger and larger civilizations with ever growing populations. I attribute that as to why the slow down is happening.
 

StinkyPinky

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2002
6,761
777
126
Back when my first experience with AoE2 (yes the old CD-ROM version) was on a Pentium M 1.6 GHz in 2005, a large scale game would eventually bog down the CPU as all sides, including yours, were building larger and larger civilizations with ever growing populations. I attribute that as to why the slow down is happening.

Yeah but a sandy bridge core is going to destroy a 1.6GHz Pentium M. It's not even a contest.
 
Jul 8, 2013
41
0
0
Hey everyone, it turns out that the Age of Empires II HD Edition is a scam. It's exactly the same as the original, except that all it does is add a high resolution patch (which was already available as a free fan-made mod long ago) and it causes the game to use 50 to 100 times more CPU power than it should. I tested the original on my modern PC and it worked flawlessly and delivered more than 1000 fps.
It's mind boggling how many suckers (me included) were reeled in by these "developers". They are probably laughing their asses off right now, seeing they've managed to make millions of dollars while doing absolutely zero work, nothing, nada. (Actually they did manage to achieve something, they managed to make a 15 year old game run at 10 fps on modern CPU's, even though they changed absolutely nothing in it except stealing the fan-made high-res patch and selling it for $20 on steam).

This is just a heads up for anyone who might get tricked and pay for this scam like I did.
 
Last edited:

maevinj

Senior member
Nov 20, 2004
928
11
81
Hey everyone, it turns out that the Age of Empires II HD Edition is a scam. It's exactly the same as the original, except that all it does is add a high resolution patch (which was already available as a free fan-made mod long ago) and it causes the game to use 50 to 100 times more CPU power than it should. I tested the original on my modern PC and it worked flawlessly and delivered more than 1000 fps.
It's mind boggling how many suckers (me included) were reeled in by these "developers". They are probably laughing their asses off right now, seeing they've managed to make millions of dollars while doing absolutely zero work, nothing, nada. (Actually they did manage to achieve something, they managed to make a 15 year old game run at 10 fps on modern CPU's, even though they changed absolutely nothing in it except stealing the fan-made high-res patch and selling it for $20 on steam).

This is just a heads up for anyone who might get tricked and pay for this scam like I did.

Where were you 3 days ago!! j/k
At least I only dropped 9.99 for it.
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,044
41,733
136
Hey everyone, it turns out that the Age of Empires II HD Edition is a scam. It's exactly the same as the original, except that all it does is add a high resolution patch (which was already available as a free fan-made mod long ago) and it causes the game to use 50 to 100 times more CPU power than it should. I tested the original on my modern PC and it worked flawlessly and delivered more than 1000 fps.
It's mind boggling how many suckers (me included) were reeled in by these "developers". They are probably laughing their asses off right now, seeing they've managed to make millions of dollars while doing absolutely zero work, nothing, nada. (Actually they did manage to achieve something, they managed to make a 15 year old game run at 10 fps on modern CPU's, even though they changed absolutely nothing in it except stealing the fan-made high-res patch and selling it for $20 on steam).

This is just a heads up for anyone who might get tricked and pay for this scam like I did.

Scam? lol