ToA treating non dual-core laptop as dual-core

also non hyperthread.

from GalCiv2 Forums
The AIs are all set to max CPU in the AI options to increase the difficulty without false advantage.  The game is treating my machine as a multi-core.  It is later in the game and on an immense map and the game has become unplayable with the AI taking up all the CPU in the background even interfering with the music.

Dell XPS M170 Laptop

Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3

DirectX 9.0 March 2008

Intel Pentium M 2.0GHZ (Centrino) currently clocked at 800MHZ (game not running currently but BOINC grid computing is currently running but it is throttled to 50% and its processes are always low priority)

2.0 GB of DDR2 SD-RAM

Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 GTX with 512MB of RAM with newest available drivers (6/13/2006)
3,822 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The AIs are all set to max CPU in the AI options to increase the difficulty without false advantage. The game is treating my machine as a multi-core. It is later in the game and on an immense map and the game has become unplayable with the AI taking up all the CPU in the background even interfering with the music.
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The max CPU doesn't detect how much idle CPU you have, and use only that much. It simply unlocks all of the AI algorithms the game has. If you have a slow or single core CPU, that's quite possibly going to peg it. So if your hardware can't handle it, or you don't like the slowdown, don't use it.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Unchecking max cpu in the main menu options doesn't change any behavior. All the AI personalities are set to use max CPU for the current game's startup options though.

The game plays just fine once the background processing is finished, which is about 5-10min, but it is sometimes difficult to discern that until I move a ship or the like.

But isn't background AI processing supposed to be a 'low priority' sub-thread or just wait until I press the turn button if the game is running a non-hyperthreaded single-core CPU? I don't mind waiting longer for turns as a result of having a single-core.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Unchecking max cpu in the main menu options doesn't change any behavior. All the AI personalities are set to use max CPU for the current game's startup options though.
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It's the same thing. The checkbox in the options is just an override to set all the sliders to max. The AIs start 'thinking' as soon as a turn begins, and continue doing so until they've made all of their orders (which they do at the same time as you're doing yours).