CPU running high in SPH/VAB in 1.1.3

[thereaverofdarkness2]

Ever since I installed version 1.1.3 I have been having all 4 cores of my CPU running up to around 45% while in the VAB or SPH regardless of what I'm doing or how many parts are on screen. It's making the processor heat up and the fan spin wildly. I have been unable to find a solution to this problem--apparently not very many others are experiencing it. I have already reinstalled the game and that did not help. I have also restarted my computer, tried going out of fullscreen mode, tried exiting other programs, but nothing works. I seemed to have it briefly solved once when I ended the largest svchost process on my computer but the bug came back later. I've tried adjusting the graphics settings all the way down and the game performs about exactly the same as with them turned all the way up.

I recognize that I might need to get my heat sink worked on, but there is no reason the game should be using so much CPU in the VAB/SPH while I'm not doing anything and have no craft loaded, when it doesn't use half as much during flight with a large vessel with all the graphics settings turned all the way up.

 

I'm using:

Kerbal Space Program - 1.1.3.1289 (WindowsPlayer)

OS: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601) 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU W3520 @ 2.67GHz (4)
RAM: 16382
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (3072MB)
SM: 30 (Direct3D 9.0c [nvd3dum.dll 10.18.13.6510])
RT Formats: ARGB32, Depth, ARGBHalf, Shadowmap, RGB565, Default, ARGB2101010, DefaultHDR, ARGBFloat, RGFloat, RGHalf, RFloat, RHalf, R8

(copy+pasted from KSP.log)

I am not running the Steam version of the game.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/f2mr67evzzqvj8c/output_log.txt?dl=0

link to output_log.txt

If you want to download the file without visiting Dropbox, change the "dl=0" at the end of the URL to "dl=1".

 

Edited June 27, 2016 by thereaverofdarkness2

[sal_vager]

Hi, please take a look at the 1.1.3 release notes

Quote

Quote

* "Ground Crew" option now toggles off all animated components of VAB/SPH. Fixes increased CPU Load and Temp.

If the editor is using a lot of CPU for you try disabling the space center crew.

[Corona688]

10 hours ago, thereaverofdarkness2 said:

I seemed to have it briefly solved once when I ended the largest svchost process on my computer but the bug came back later.

You need to find out what svchost was running, svchost is a container for a lot of things from windows update to printer drivers.  For one person on this forum svchost CPU use was actually due to windows update but YMMV.

[thereaverofdarkness2]

29 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

You need to find out what svchost was running, svchost is a container for a lot of things from windows update to printer drivers.  For one person on this forum svchost CPU use was actually due to windows update but YMMV.

My brother found that post and thought that may have been the issue. He says he disabled Windows Updater but it did not solve the problem.

 

Ground crew movement could have easily been the problem--there are not little animated objects milling about outside of the VAB or SPH. However I'd like to point out that if this is indeed the problem, it needs to be fixed because 45% of my quad core CPU is far too much for models simple enough that they should, quite frankly, run fine on an old Pentium 1 processor with SVGA graphics card.

 

I've been running the VAB for a few minutes now with the ground crew turned off, and my CPU usage is stable at ~13% usage from KSP. Seems to be an effective workaround but I'll be waiting eagerly for a proper solution! Is there a bug report on the tracker corresponding to this? I'd like to watch it.

Edited June 27, 2016 by thereaverofdarkness2

[Corona688]

3 minutes ago, thereaverofdarkness2 said:

My brother found that post and thought that may have been the issue. He says he disabled Windows Updater but it did not solve the problem.

svchost is used for almost everything.  Your problem with it is almost guaranteed not to be the same as his.  When you catch it in the act, you need to dig deeper and find out what svchost is actually running.  How to do this depends on your version of windows but some versions of task manager let you peek.

Edited June 27, 2016 by Corona688

[thereaverofdarkness2]

Just now, Corona688 said:

svchost is used for almost everything.  When you catch it in the act, you need to dig deeper and find out what svchost is actually running.  How to do this depends on your version of windows but some versions of task manager let you peek.

I didn't catch it in the act of anything. Often Windows will run excess junk in the background which, according to Microsoft, helps your computer run faster, but it is clearly seen that shutting these processes off almost always has a positive effect on performance and causing no errors beyond minor annoyances. But in this case, the svchost process was using no CPU, only hogging (read: accessing) well over a gigabyte of memory. Shutting it off when it gets so large--same with shutting off Mozilla Firefox browser when it gets large--seems to allow the processor to run cooler because it's just one fewer thing running in the background, but it does not have a major impact on performance. As I understand it, these programs primarily access so much memory because it's available, not because they need it. In theory, having this memory pre-accessed should make the program itself run slightly faster. In practice, the negative impact on the system as a whole outweighs the positive impact on the individual program and is especially noticeable when you run several programs at once for long periods of time without restarting the computer. All in all the real problem is that Windows is poorly optimized for PC gamers despite the fact that it's our favorite operating system. We should all be on Linux but we don't seem to realize that.

[thereaverofdarkness2]

1 hour ago, sal_vager said:

Hi, please take a look at the 1.1.3 release notes

If the editor is using a lot of CPU for you try disabling the space center crew.

I didn't see it in the patch notes when I checked before. It would have been a lot easier for me to find it if it were on the known issues page!

[sal_vager]

Just now, thereaverofdarkness2 said:

I didn't see it in the patch notes when I checked before. It would have been a lot easier for me to find it if it were on the known issues page!

Not a bad idea, though the format of the page is poor since we lost the goto tags :/

[Corona688]

1 hour ago, thereaverofdarkness2 said:

I didn't catch it in the act of anything. Often Windows will run excess junk in the background which, according to Microsoft, helps your computer run faster, but it is clearly seen that shutting these processes off almost always has a positive effect on performance and causing no errors beyond minor annoyances. But in this case, the svchost process was using no CPU, only hogging (read: accessing) well over a gigabyte of memory.

You're not exactly wrong, but...  svchost is a container process which windows uses to run a lot of other things.  What it's actually doing is seldom obvious because they run as the name svchost, rather than -- for example -- audiosrv, dhcp, wlansvc, or the 10 million other things it's used for including printer queues.  One person solved svchost problems by messing with windows update.  Another did so by reinstalling their printer drivers.  etc.

If you don't know which svchost you killed, it could be really worthwhile to find out.  It doesn't have to be mysterious, and sometimes isn't even Windows screwing up at all but just something someone installed somewhere along the line which happens to use svchost to launch it.

One way

Edited June 27, 2016 by Corona688

[thereaverofdarkness2]

I'll keep that in mind! My brain is tired of dealing with this but maybe later I'll try looking that up, and if I find anything I'll post back here about it.