Everything that uses directX is very CPU intensive. It's perfectly normal. Even my athlon XP 2800+ jumps to 100% when a 3D screensaver is active. Since you don't use any other apps while using a directx app this is no problem.
For a laptop however it is far more usefull to simple switch of the screen after a few minutes instead of using any kind of screensaver. Allows hardware to cool down (so fans won't turn on), saves the backlight & power,...
Thanks for the info, guys. I guess that explains why nothing I tried changed the situation.
I definitely find this annoying, though. Won't constant full processor use drain the battery? I like to keep a card/board game minimized while I do other stuff, but I guess that won't work since even the simplest games grind my PC to a halt.
Thanks for the tips godim, I'll have to give the battery optimized settings a shot. Do DVDs still play fine with the power optmized settings?
So it appears that what's happening is that DirectX does everything it can to maximize frame rate. Is there any way to specify that I don't need more than, say, 60fps for my blackjack or mahjong game?
If you go into advanced display settings you can set the powermizer performance to "battery optimized" when running on battery. This will put the GPU at 120 Mhz, while to slow for heavy games it is more than sufficiënt for simple games that use directx. You can also set the power settings to max battery forcing your cpu in the 500 mhz position. If the game in question is simple and not too cpu intensive you should be able to do some other work. In these settings the laptop remains cool & quiet and has a very long battery time. At reduced performance of course. I always use this setting on the train when playing kyodai (a simple directx 3D tile game). Works like a charm
No, DirectX will always try to optimize the performance of your game. Some games allow to set a maximum framerate but even then they usually eat up the entire CPU. Not only directx is eating power. The games AI and other logic may require a lot of power as well.
When my laptop is at max battery I can do nearly anything from simple 3D games to DVD watching.
At the lowest settings a pentium-M runs at 500-600 Mhz which is just fine for DVD's and even some Divx/Xvid movies. With these settings I got up to 4.5 hours out of the main battery (no second one)!! While continuously working, gaming or watching movies.
Jamesjr2
36 Posts
0
January 8th, 2004 23:00
godim
507 Posts
0
January 9th, 2004 08:00
Everything that uses directX is very CPU intensive. It's perfectly normal. Even my athlon XP 2800+ jumps to 100% when a 3D screensaver is active. Since you don't use any other apps while using a directx app this is no problem.
For a laptop however it is far more usefull to simple switch of the screen after a few minutes instead of using any kind of screensaver. Allows hardware to cool down (so fans won't turn on), saves the backlight & power,...
bert33
3 Posts
0
January 9th, 2004 10:00
I definitely find this annoying, though. Won't constant full processor use drain the battery? I like to keep a card/board game minimized while I do other stuff, but I guess that won't work since even the simplest games grind my PC to a halt.
bert33
3 Posts
0
January 13th, 2004 14:00
So it appears that what's happening is that DirectX does everything it can to maximize frame rate. Is there any way to specify that I don't need more than, say, 60fps for my blackjack or mahjong game?
Thanks again.
godim
507 Posts
0
January 13th, 2004 14:00
godim
507 Posts
0
January 20th, 2004 07:00
No, DirectX will always try to optimize the performance of your game. Some games allow to set a maximum framerate but even then they usually eat up the entire CPU. Not only directx is eating power. The games AI and other logic may require a lot of power as well.
When my laptop is at max battery I can do nearly anything from simple 3D games to DVD watching.
At the lowest settings a pentium-M runs at 500-600 Mhz which is just fine for DVD's and even some Divx/Xvid movies. With these settings I got up to 4.5 hours out of the main battery (no second one)!! While continuously working, gaming or watching movies.