quote:

Originally posted by Beeryus:
Have you not read the earlier responses? Many computer programs run the CPU at 100%. This is not evidence of a bug. The developers have said that CM is SUPPOSED to run the CPU at 100%.

Then they are rubbish developers.

I can understand it running at max CPU whilst it is calculating moves.

But that's not what it's doing. It's using 100% cpu on the title screen. When it's doing nothing. This is rubbish. This is the bug.

Game.exe using 100% CPU is a bug (though maybe not technically a bug per se - just extremely poor programming). And I find this very frustrating - I will no longer purchase or own any Chessmaster (I used to love the series) until this is fixed.

There's some peope here who need to learn some basic modern multi-tasking OS operations. If your Windows XP is not running any programs - your CPU should idle at or very near 0% (unless you have an antivirus program doing background scanning or something else running in the 'background'). When you run a program, it will use whatever CPU is needed (be it 20%, 50% or 100%) and then IS SUPPOSED to release the CPU to other tasks (processes). That is the purpose of multitasking. So if I start internet explorer, it will take CPU cycles to load the software, take CPU cycles to analyze my home page HTML and display the pictures, etc. Once this is complete, the CPU use will drop back to 0% (unless the page is constantly updating, or IE is doing something silly that it's not supposed to, like maybe attacking firefox code - which wouldn't be surprising considering it's MS). There is ABSOLUTELY NO reason a program should use 100% CPU when it is sitting at a menu screen. Fritz, Winboard (with engine), Arena (with Engine), and even Chessmaster 8 (I believe it was ver. 8) will only use 100% CPU when the ENGINE IS RUNNING. Please try to understand the difference. Using 100% CPU when the program is really in effect doing nothing is ridiculous. Rotating a fancy menu, or diplaying a 3d picture SHOULD NOT USE 100% OF A 3GHz!!! PROCESSOR!

If every program did this, your PC would always slow to a brutally slow crawl, because no other program could get any CPU cycles. This is virus behaviour... Picture a waiter/waitress as your CPU serving 5 customers (5 programs running in a multitasking environment). If one customer demands 100% of the waitress time, ALL THE TIME, then no other customer would get served. It is reasonable to expect 100% of the time when needed (so he/she is not talking to somebody else while you're trying to order), but if you're going to the washroom you should still not be demanding the server to be by your side servicing you... If everyone demanded 100% server time while in the restaurant (meaning the program is running) - how could the server get anything done? The whole operation would grind to a halt, and nobody would be served (except for the lucky person - in this case CM11 - that gets the 100%). But notice that nobody else gets anything... programs are SUPPOSED to release their threads.

I hope this real poor analogy helps. The whole purpose of a multitasking architecture was to allocate CPU time to where it is needed, when it is needed. And it is definitely not needed by a program displaying a fancy picture. If that were true, again - nearly every task on your PC would monopolize the CPU (sorry I am repeating myself, but I'm trying to make this clear), causing it to run at Commodore 64! speed (speaking of which - the Chessmaster 2000 rocked, but then the C64 didn't have a multitasking OS... hehe)

Anyway, back on topic. As for disabling background startup programs using msconfig - always a good idea (99% of the time they are useless garbage), but this really has nothing to do with 100% CPU use. Yes, if the program is running slowly or locking up, then maybe some spyware or antivirus scanner is interfering, or there are hardware compatibility issues, etc. BUT this has nothing to do with game.exe using 100% all the time Chessmaster is running. And yes, if you have ponder mode on, or post game analysis, then CM would require CPU, but NOT AT THE OPENING MENU, OR ANY OTHER MENU OPTION WHEN ALL PLAY HAS STOPPED.

Please try to read this and understand - I am not going to repeat this again, and I'm not going to argue. There is nothing to argue about. I just hope I was clear enough for people to learn something (esp. the Ubisoft programmers).

UBISOFT - PLEASE fix this in Chessmaster 12.

Thanks