Toolset hogs my CPU?

[Legacy_Shiek2005]

                Not sure if i'm asking in the right place, but i've been having a little problem with the toolset thats quite aggravating.

I'm on a laptop thats running an Intel Celeron 900, yes, i know, it's not very great, but it runs NWN perfectly fine, no slowdowns whatsoever. While the toolset is shut down, CPU Usage hovers between as low as 4% to as high as 29% or so. This is with multiple IM clients running, Anti Virus, Google Chrome, Music Player (Clementine) and a few odd and ends. But when i'm on the toolset, CPU Usage goes over the roof and all the way into Space and beyond, it usually does not go down below the 70% range and hovers up to 100% more often then not. This causes my system to run very sluggish and freeze up constantly, music often skips and it's....well, aggravating:pinched:

For a while, i thought it's just the laptop, but it can't be...i never had any such problems with the NWN toolset, even when i was on a craptacular PC from 2003 that had trouble running NWN at anything past medium settings.

Any ideas? maybe Windows 7 is the problems? :|
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Axe_Murderer]

               You might try playing with the Affinity setting in nwtoolset.ini
Try turning off the rendering of lights, fog, & shadows and the playing of sounds in the toolset if they are on (buttons on the toolbar).

The toolset is not the best performing piece of software ever created...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ehye_khandee]

               We don't call windows BLOATWARE for nothing. '>  

Dogs crawl under fences, programs crawl under Windows. (old programming addage).

On a constructive note, have you tried reducing the things you have running on the system while running the toolkit?

Be well. Game on.
GM_ODA
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shiek2005]

               @Axe_Murderer: This is a single core CPU, so CPU affinity won't help with anything, except maybe mess something up, right?
Unless i'm working with the lighting and sounds, i have them turned off too.

@ehye_khandee: Closing off/shutting down everything and leaving just the bare-bones programs and crap that Windows uses doesn't help at all. I did notice that minimizing the toolset helps, so maybe it's due to the graphics chipset? it's a Mobile Intel Series 4, though i find it hard to believe that it's worst then the 82845G Intel Chipset i had on the PC i mentioned before.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ehye_khandee]

               I consulted my personal favorite font of electronic lore, she says:

"Toolset uses the Exclusive Direct X mode, thus while its anything but minimized it will take the sound card, graphics card, etc as its own - So how well music plays in the background depends on the multitasking abilities of the CPU and the coding of the Media player."

Consider a different Media Player perhaps?

Good luck (keep us posted please).

Be well. Game on.
GM_ODA
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shiek2005]

               So it does indeed hog not only my cpu, but my sound and graphics chipset too huh?

It does work significantly better on my desktop which runs an AMD 3800+ Dual Core and an ATI 3870 w 512 VRAM.

I prefer my laptop though, so i guess i'll just live with it '>

Thanks for the info.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Shiek2005, 19 août 2011 - 11:31 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Shiek2005]

               There's no fixing (or patching) the toolset, but the skipping music was eliminated with switching to WMP, which i hate, but guess i'll have to live with for now.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Winterhawk99]

               Have you tried giving your processor more virtual memory that sometimes makes the computer page better and worked for me when running a persistent world while playing on the same machine
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shiek2005]

               Any info on how to do that on Win 7? '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Failed.Bard]

               Your soundcard should have a toggle setting in the sound options to allow devices to take exclusive control of it.  If that's toggled on at the moment, that may be all you need to change to return to using your chosen music player.