NWN maxing CPU core usage

[The Nameless Bard]

Maybe someone can help me figure out a mystery.  

I've got a fairly decent computer (2y old alienware) but playing NWN kicks it into overdrive.  I've tried putting it to a lower core, but that does matter and it still runs whatever core I put it to at 100%.  Other games (Diablo3 or Divinity don't seem to have this issue)

It's not a huge problem, it just runs the fan pretty good.

My laptop runs NWN fine without a full blasting fan.

Anyone have any ideas?  It's hard to search for these things with a game this old.

[Fire Wraith]

The problem is that NWN is over twelve years old, and was originally written back before multi-core was a common thing. It's not designed to take advantage of multiple cores - programs need to be specifically written to do so.

What you can do is assign it to a secondary core, so that it doesn't interfere with other stuff that's single core, but it'll still be on a single core.

Overall though it shouldn't be maxxing out so quickly - mine sits at about 13% CPU, and my desktop is a 4 year old Alienware. Are you sure it's the CPU and not something with the graphics card(s)?

[trylobyte]

Mine does this too, it'll max out whatever core I put it on.  Oddly, this doesn't really seem to interfere with anything.  I just treat it as a quirk of the program due to its age.

[The Nameless Bard]

My overall CPU is like 15-20, but that single core is maxed. Good to know I'm not the only one with this issue.  And yeah, doesn't effect anything really except for the noise the fan makes.  It could probably use some compressed air at any rate.


I'll have a look at the video card.  The temp really kicks up to high 70s from a low 60s as well.

[trylobyte]

I might have to do with the graphics rendering for NWN - It's so old and so unoptimized for modern systems that it might need to do a LOT of software rendering to get the game to run and display properly.