Launcher uses stupid amounts of CPU

[PrBlahBlahtson]

While I'm remembering it, someone gave the source code for FFXI-Boot on the old forums. That will ultimately be quite useful in addressing this issue, or even troubleshooting it.

Code is in attached txt file.

[bluekirby0]

Well at least one suspicion that the issues only apply to either older or AMD CPUs has been cleared with an i5 in the mix. For the record I'm running an AMD Phenom II x6 1090T Thuban clocked at 3.8 GHz on my main rig. I see there is a 1055 in the mix as well, which is rather surprising since it has the same core as my 1090 without the bells and whistles. Its possible I don't notice when issues do occur on my machine (max a single-thread process will list is 17% CPU usage and would have very minimal impact on my computer as a whole), but I have actively tried to duplicate the issue (with a close eye on that CPU usage) without any success.

[PrBlahBlahtson]

Experienced this today using mXI on W7 Home with an AMD Athlon II X4 640 (3 GHz quad core.) mXI was taking about 25%. Accidentally had an idle mXI launcher open, with a second launcher hosting a client.

I also have an intermittent issue where the client gets stuck connecting on the last step (Acquiring data) and times out, but only on the first execution since Windows has been started. Not sure if the two are related. I've just assumed something doesn't go quite right with port bindings

Edit:
Hmm, interesting. Was experiencing this with just an idle mXI launcher, and ended up downloading Process Explorer and Wireshark to see if I could find anything going on. I got slightly sidetracked from that, and when I came back, the launcher had settled down.

[Flunklesnarkin]

I notice that my processor usage goes up a ton whenever I run near bird's like Carrion Crows in the Sarutabaruta's or Zu's in Buburimu Peninsula.

I've started to avoid fighting near those birds and trying to run around them to avoid the spike in processor / memory usage.


I'd imagine any bird similar to zu's and carrion crow's cause the same issue.

[Nubbsolo]

AMD athlon II X2 250u 2@1.6
ATI radeon hd4270 mobility
Win7 64bit
3gb ram
i dual-box for hours on my local server using both mxi and ffxiboot to run each box and i dont have any of those problems..

[Makina]

I'm having the same issue as well. While I was able to run the game just fine until recently (as well as retail, but been over a year since I've played there), after a short amount of time things begin to freeze along with sound lag/music looping the same few notes. Specs are:

Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3
AMD Sempron 140
GeForce 8400 GS
2GB RAM

Already reinstalled both FFXI and Playonline to try fixing the issue, no dice.

[keener31]

chiming in to say that this issue occurs for me as well. - it definitely occurs with mXI, i did not use ffxi-boot (on its own) long enough to notice it happening.

w7 pro x64
intel c2d

[keener31]

chiming in to say that this issue occurs for me as well. - it definitely occurs with mXI, i did not use ffxi-boot (on its own) long enough to notice it happening.

w7 pro x64
intel c2d

annnnd i was able to pin the issue to draw distance in the windower (in my case at least).

looking for others to confirm this.

get your process manager or processxp open and watch the CPU usage of mXI. turn the camera to face the bulk of a larger zone and watch the CPU usage rise. if you are near a zone line, face the camera to the zone line (so its facing basically nothing) and watch the CPU usage drop.

also, open the windower console and set the draw distance to 1 ("drawdistance set 1")... cpu usage should fall assuming you are looking at a large area and it is in the middle of a rise. then set the draw distance to 5 or above and you will see it rise back up (again, be sure you have the camera facing the bulk of a large zone).

it does not take into account geometry between the camera and the objects (i.e. it doesnt matter if you are behind a wall, it will be rendering and calculating on mobs and landscape at the set distance).

in this very short, informal test, there appears to be an upper limit of cpu usage that tapers off as you raise the draw distance (likely due to engine and server). over draw distance of 5 there isnt much gain per level. each step belowe 5 there is a noticeable improvement.

looking for feedback to confirm this... as well as to maybe get the ball rolling on a fix. - thanks.

edit: the other night that i was playing im pretty sure i had usage over 30% for mXI - so far it has only reached the 30s - so there may yet be other things going on - or perhaps there is a compounding of the same issue. - will need to keep an eye on it.

[keener31]

edit: the other night that i was playing im pretty sure i had usage over 30% for mXI - so far it has only reached the 30s - so there may yet be other things going on - or perhaps there is a compounding of the same issue. - will need to keep an eye on it.

i definitely spoke too soon. mXI just hit over 50% (and consistently). it happened right after i let the FFXI window lose focus (to tool around with browser windows for a bit). edit: the most recent time it happened had nothing to do with switching windows. happened out of the blue while resting in a zone.

having processxp open i noticed that the major issue that happened is that mXI started a whole new thread, and this thread was what was taking all the cycles. - i messed with draw distance while it was occurring and the performance impact was negligible.

here is a screen of the threads after the cpu jump. that high TID (2nd) thread of mXI was not there upon originally launching the game or before the performance hit - to my knowledge.

(the thread selected/in blue is the original thread)

[keener31]

here is a shot of the threads before the performance hit (fresh launch). all 3 mxi threads are visible, and are there from the start, contrary to my initial observation. you can clearly see, however, that the 2nd and 3rd thread are almost inactive.

also of note, once that one thread begins to freak out, it stays at maximum usage even after exiting FFXI (as long as the mxi window is still open). its usage %s also point toward it possibly pegging one CPU/thread and not gaining access beyond that - but the performance hit WAS split across both cores for me as reported in taskmanager.