Why Is There Such High CPU Usage When Just Waiting In Lobby?

Dude Joined: May 26, 2003 Posts: 15 Location: USA

I am sitting here watching my Task Manager. The hlpro.exe keeps jumping from 0% cpu usage to as much as 47% usage. It goes up and down. I've got a 2.4 GHz Pentium IV with 400 MHz front side buss. Someone please explain this to me. I tried a couple of searxhes in this forum and did not find anything on the subject.

Posted: Sun May 23, 2004 6:08 pm

HL communication protocol is designed for lower posible network bandwidth usage. The high CPU usage is caused due to several sorting and checking algorithms than alvays keep all server data in the memory, to save network bandwidth. When client waiting to return from the game doing nothing, so it not affecting game performance. Also it is a king of server CPU usage offload. The server only exchanging the data and doing only very basic operations.

Dude Joined: May 26, 2003 Posts: 15 Location: USA

Thanks Jiri

Newbie Joined: Sep 12, 2004 Posts: 3 Location: USA

I'd subscribe to Jiri's explanation and right it off, if it wasn't for everyone I fly with treating me like I had the plague when I described this problem. If what Jiri said was the complete problem, they would also be experiencing it, however they have no Idea what I was talking about !!!

So, I looked into it myself. I found that my Anti-Virus program (NOD32 <> NOD32.COM) was scanning all the activity flying outta the hyperlobby connection. I got lucky and made an educated guess and it turned out to be the problem. As soon as I temp. disabled NOD32 (AMON module), my high CPU usage with hyperlobby ceased. From there, the solution was simple, I set an exclusion for the hyperlobby directory. Now all is flying for me Smile

Hope this helps in any way.. It could be another program like Anti-Virus monitoring the hyperlobby data stream on your machine ?

Also, thanks Jiri, without you commenting on how much data/compressed data activity there was, I may not have though of it.

-336th_Andersony

Dude Joined: May 26, 2003 Posts: 15 Location: USA

Interesting observation and helps clarify just what is happeneing. however, your cure is more of a problem than the problem itself.

What you are doing is stopping the security program from looking at the activity that reaches you through the HyperLobby connection. I can tell you from real world experience with HyperLobby that you can be attacked, not by HyperLobby itself, but by the other computers that connect to it, so disabling that service is not a good idea. Yiri is exactly right that the CPU usage ends when the game launches from HyperLobby, so in the end, it's not much of an issue in the first place.

Newbie Joined: Sep 12, 2004 Posts: 3 Location: USA

"Yiri is exactly right that the CPU usage ends when the game launches from HyperLobby, so in the end, it's not much of an issue in the first place."

Not much of an issue?

Try putting up with Hyperlobby taking 20 seconds to switch from room to room (the General Room to the COOP room, etc) or when people are sending you messages and your tying to type back and correct your mistakes and are having to deal with 8 second pauses (about 3-4/min... leaving your system with a precious 36-28seconds to actually do something) to know if you typed something wrong, or where the backspaces you put in will end up.... and not to mention that since it's a huge (%90 +) performance hit on CPU usage, IT AFFECTS EVERYTHING on the system.

The active virus scan is not the only measure I take by any means, as I'm sure it's not yours. I fully understand what the consequences are of not 'actively' scanning the hyperlobby directory, but I will not sweat it at all.

Thanks for your concern though, it is appreciated... Sorry to hear that your system got attacked. Cheers

-336th_Andersony

Dude Joined: May 26, 2003 Posts: 15 Location: USA

Hhhmmmm, it is not impacting my PC nearly as much as you are reporting. I wonder why?

Newbie Joined: Sep 12, 2004 Posts: 3 Location: USA

Off hand, I think it has to do with how many people are online in the lobby (size of offload to my computer). If I remember right, its not as bad in the wee hours when less than 150 people are on (smaller offload). However, most of the time when I'm playing, there is a swarm of pilots online (450+ .. I remember sometimes seeing 800+).

My system is a P4 2.4. Maybe different Anti-Virus engines will perform differently. NOD32 is written in Assembly, so I generally find it extremely fast compared to others...

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archives/products.xml

Whatchu think ?

-336th_Andersony

Newbie Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Posts: 1 Location: Brasil

The tip that you posted worked wonderfully for me! I was having the same problem, very high cpu usage, like 90% of a XP2600+ 333FSB, and i use the NOD32 too! NOD32 is the best antivirus in my modest opnion, but something with it is incompatible with the HL software... I just set the NOD32 to ignore the HL folder and the problem disapear, and i was thinking about the security, NOD32 has a TCP/IP scaning module that is always active and without exclusion settings, this may solve the security hole... not?

Sorry for my poor english, i'm Brazilian..

Bis Bald!