Morphues + Gamespy = bad

[silverpig]

I was checking out the forums, updating my CS server list in gamespy, and downloading a few things via Morpheus, when I felt my computer become sluggish. The internet slowed right down, and my apps were very slow in responding. I opened up task manager (XP Pro), and found that gamespy was using 147 Megs of my ram! I killed the process, and the apps started doing better, but the internet was still slow. Killed Morpheus, now everything is poifect. Weird.

 

[RSI]

Weird indeed. I suggest removing the Windows XP Virus from your computer.



-RSI

PS: Run RTCW and check your memory usage. It should be at about 275MB just for the game. :Q

 

[perry]

I noticed that eDonkey2000 really killed my system performance. Made doing anything else feel really slow. Finally pissed me off enough that I uninstalled it.

 

[Balt]

The problem is this I think:

When you update from the master server (or refresh all of the servers on your list) for some reason Gamespy likes to store ALL of those servers' info in RAM. I guess this makes it so that you can click on a server and immediately see who is playing and the server cvars, etc.

I think when they came up with that strategy, the popular game out there was still quake. Nowadays you have THOUSANDS of Half-Life servers running, and it stores the stats for each of them in RAM just like it did back in the old days when there were only a couple hundred servers.

What I do is refresh all the servers, immediately exit gamespy (because that dumps all the extra server info) and just enter the app again. Otherwise, if you keep gamespy running without exiting, your game is going to run pretty damn slow (assuming you don't have a gig of ram or something).

 

[silverpig]

That's probably what it is actually. I left it running for a while, and updated my list 3 times... Makes perfect sense.

 

[LuDaCriS66]

Why would you want to use GameSpy for CS servers anyway? I never quite understood that. I just use the in game server selector.
Are there any benefits to using GameSpy?

 

[duragezic]

Balt: I thought that was true when I first noticed Gamespy used 150mb+ of ram, but when you launch the game, Gamespy goes down to 5-10mb of ram.

Otherwise I'd have a lot of really smooth running games if it was in fact using such a large amount of ram all this time and I started shutting it down.

 

[silverpig]

I use gamespy because I can find friends on it who are already playing. Just use the find player feature. Also, while the list is refreshing, you can do something else for the 3 or 4 minutes instead of just sitting there...

 

[RSI]

How do you get all these problems with such simple programs? I don't understand. I've never once had any problems with any of the programs mentioned. Furthermore, my friend (Ultima on here) said that Miranda ICQ would lag his system horribly. WTF? It's like a 300KB free downloadable ICQ client. It's very light, and very fast. I don't get it.

-RSI

 

[Balt]

<< Balt: I thought that was true when I first noticed Gamespy used 150mb+ of ram, but when you launch the game, Gamespy goes down to 5-10mb of ram.

Otherwise I'd have a lot of really smooth running games if it was in fact using such a large amount of ram all this time and I started shutting it down. >>




Perhaps you are right, maybe when you launch the game it moves all the extra data to virtual memory? I know of at least one time when my performance in-game absolutely sucked and I realized Gamespy was leeching all my memory but I suppose that could have been a fluke.

 

[duragezic]

I don't know what it does with the data in ram (from the servers), or if it just doesn't need it anymore and is basically thrown out. I don't have Gamespy (D2X for me!) so I can't see if I does move it to virtual mem, although I don't think it does. I'm not sure if it could even tell what is virtual memory, because it should be exactly that to a program. I don't know if a proggie can tell what is VM and what isn't (unless it tested the speed or something ).

 

[RSI]

More reasons to get a few gigs of ddr memory..

-RSI

 

[silverpig]

I've got 384 of PC133 CAS2... Not shabby, but it was stressed with 3 full server refreshes from gamespy (as well as a few other apps).

 

[Balt]

<< I don't know what it does with the data in ram (from the servers), or if it just doesn't need it anymore and is basically thrown out. I don't have Gamespy (D2X for me!) so I can't see if I does move it to virtual mem, although I don't think it does. I'm not sure if it could even tell what is virtual memory, because it should be exactly that to a program. I don't know if a proggie can tell what is VM and what isn't (unless it tested the speed or something ). >>



Blah, I don't know either. The server info still remains though after you've entered the game (you can highlight a server on the list and get its info). There doesn't seem to be a lag in having the server info displayed even then, however, which seems unusual if it really is dumped somewhere else.

Not really worth speculating over I guess. It is a bit annoying though.

 

[silverpig]

It could write it all to a temp file... I do notice a lot of disk access when launching from gamespy and when exiting CS (of course some of that is loading up halflife etc, but still...)

 

[duragezic]

Yah I'd get massive disk access when I closed Half-life then Gamespy. You are right in that some is from HL, but HL closes really quick w/o Gamespy but if you try closing Gamespy right after it just keeps on accessing the disk pretty hardcore for a bit.


<< Not really worth speculating over I guess. >>


C'mon, we're on Anandtech. Of course it is.

 

[Tyrant222]

ya its gamespy but like mentioned before you should get the list, exit and reenter. Gamepsy just hangs on me with too many servers so I have to delete bad pinged ones immedietly.

 

[DanFungus]

DUDE!!!!
Are you game? wit da tiger! It's great, realtime http server info, search for playas on CS, HL, TFC, and other games. It's awesome.