Latest build causes extreme CPU/fan-spin

[Ace83]

Hi,

Regarding gzdoom-g2.3pre-306-gd36993a.dmg.
I have a MacBook Air (OS X), and everytime I begin to play the left fan spins extremely - Almost like the game required 100% CPU!
No other problems though, and can't believe I played through whole Doom 1 before realizing it was an alpha (?) all the time!
Initially I thought the problem was something else.

However, later on I found the thread announcing the official releases, and now it seems to run like the wind!
Along the way I googled through lots of threads only to discover I was lazy enough to miss the "Use at your own risk"-Disclaimer .

Hopefully everything's cool (pun intended) with my new computer.

Regards,
Ace

Edit: Just to make clear, the official version 2.2.0 works fine (realized "run like the wind" could've been interpreted as something negative in this context, lol.)

[_mental_]

Could you please try this build?

[Ace83]

Check, works fine now!

However, my saves aren't accessible now. It says different version.
Only one older save (probably from the previous build) seems to have got through of some reason though.
Not the end of the world, but maybe you wanted to know.

[_mental_]

Here is there list of macOS devbuilds. Could you please find the version in which CPU load issue appeared first?
No need to check them all, just use dichotomic search.

Format of saved game was changed recently so it's normal.

[Ace83]

It was the latest (9th nov). I wrote the version number in the first post here.
Not sure I understand though.. Are you trying to reproduce the bug? You had no problem with this upon testing? I can understand if this appears a bit strange though if you didn't experience this yourself, as it's something that would be very noticeable to say the least.

[Ace83]

Oh, and I might add that I'm new to GZ. I haven't tried anyone else on that list besides the 9th nov version, at least.

[_mental_]

Yes, I didn't experience any problem with the latest build. But I don't have MacBook Air to do an exact test. What's the model and OS version by the way?

[Ace83]

All right, it could've just been a temporarily glitch for that particular install just for me then. I'm no expert.

MacBook Air 13" (Early 2015)
El Capitan 10.11.6

[_mental_]

So, what about other builds between those good (the oldest) and bad (the newest)? Try this one for example.

[Ace83]

Seems like there was a misunderstanding going on here quite early - I thought you were sharing a more current build than 9th nov in your first reply in this thread, but it was older? LOL

OK. I'll look into this and come back.

[Ace83]

All right, good news: I just tested the latest build (9th of nov) and there are no problems at all. *Thumbs up* Seems like it was just a corrupt install (or something) after all. But you can keep the thread open for a while, in case something happens again after I've run some longer play-sessions.

[Ace83]

GZ Doom was running perfectly around a week now (since my last post here), the computer didn't get hot / excessive fan-spinning what so ever. But then suddenly I have this very same problem again now and then, sometimes I'm lucky. I've uninstalled and re-installed a few times now, the two latest builds and also the official version. Same problem with all of them.

The Macbook gets hotter and the fan begin to spin successively more and more during the gameplay. So the only way to reproduce this is to play the game for a while. The fan will cool down successively upon terminating GZ Doom. Even pausing and browsing options or something similar in GZ Doom will also cool down a bit. Only the gameplay will cause it.

GZ Doom is using only 5-15% of CPU when I check this in the activity monitor, and also while the battery is 100%.
It doesn't make any sense.

[Ace83]

I downloaded iStat Pro to check this more in depth. So I took some screenshots on the results, which are collected in one image down below. GZ Doom was in the background a couple of seconds (CMD + Tab) while taking the orange and red states.



Edit: When I'm running Logic Pro which takes twice as much CPU, the computer is still cool and no fan spinning at all.

[dpJudas]

GZDoom is a single threaded application, and I'm assuming your laptop is a dual core with hyperthreading based on the screenshot. And since you said its a Mac I'm assuming its an integrated Intel GPU. 100% CPU usage on a single core means 25% CPU shown in such applications, because they show the total amount of CPU available if all cores are busy doing work at the same time.

But more importantly in your case, because its an integrated GPU, all the cores and the GPU share the same die on the motherboard. That means if the GPU is doing a lot of work the CPU temp rise and visa versa. In your case, it is probably your GPU working really hard and one of the CPU cores too. The heat builds up slowly and after a while the fans start because it is getting too hot.

So what can you do? Enable vsync if it isn't already. That makes it a lot cooler because once it hits 60 FPS, the CPU and GPU relax until it is time to render the next frame. If that alone isn't enough, the next step is to lower the graphical settings so that they need to do less work. Turn off multisampling, fxaa, lens distortion, bloom, etc. Maybe lower the resolution (if its a retina mac, use half the retina resolution). What I usually do is to find a sweet spot where I can still stand the graphics but where my GPU fan does not begin to spin.

Of course, there's always the chance that your laptop simply doesn't have the ability to run GZDoom fanless. The above things is what can help make it stop if its at all possible.

[Ace83]

Thank you for explaining, Vsync is and was always on in the options.
There are still some things I don't fully understand, but I have some interesting news today.
Please take a look at the results below from my new play session today.



I didn't experience anything weird this time and could run the game as long as I wanted it seemed! As I stated earlier, the issue appears to happen some days and some days not. But I was running with the same mod and on the same level etc as yesterday, so it can't have anything to do with that.

I switched to window mode right before taking screenshots, so it seems like GZ Doom occupy rather around 50 % CPU at the most (yeah, one core used probably as there are still lots of unoccupied CPU in total). Moreover, as you can see in the second column, everything else is like the previous results more or less except for the fan rpm which is WAYYY lower and barely audible this time. I also thought the computer wasn't as hot, as it was yesterday with the previous testing.

Does this make any sense to you, if so, how can I continue like this?
The thing is that I'm worried the issue might return, like it did before.