Very high CPU usage on Mac OS

[brunoresende29]

Hello there.


I have been having very high CPU usage while playing simutrans on my Mac.
And when I mean high, I mean 80% and above.
I have spotted that on Windows, in this same machine, simutrans uses no more than 5% at any given playing time.


I have a MacBook Pro Retina 15", 3rd gen Intel i7 processor at 2.3GHz, 8GB of RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of memory.
I run multiple high end games with no problems at all, and this is something I haven't been able to archive with simutrans.


Any ideas of what I may have been doing wrong?


Thanks!

[Ters]

Strange. Most people report low CPU usage and low frame rate.

Could you give more information, like the size of the map, the number of vehicles, screen resolution and how big fraction of that Simutrans occupies?

[brunoresende29]

Well, this happens ever since I start the game with any map, including the one that is loaded with the initial menu. I suspect this may have something to do with the retina screen (which has 4 pixels per point, instead of the traditional 1 pixel per point scale, and 2880x1800 resolution) and SDL.

It may also be related to the built in Intel HD Graphics 4000 controller that's shipped within the i7 core (this controller is flamed by everyone, saying intel has no ability to build graphic controllers), because the computer does not heat as it was supposed to heat when using so much processing power. In this case it would be a false report, but don't really know...

Oh and about the FPS: I have a decent frame rate, and the game responds to clicks instantly.

[Ters]

I've got an i7 myself, but it's a pure Windows machine. I get about the same results as you for Windows, when running in 1920x1080. (It does however have trouble running Simutrans with the OpenGL backend, unless I force it over on the nvidia processor, but that may be a Windows driver issue.)

It might be that Mac, or SDL on Mac, simply has serious issues with 16-bit graphics.

[prissi]

The retina display (if used) will eat up CPU like crazy. Double screen size means 4 times more tiles are visible and 4 times more pixel must be drawn => 16 times more CPU ...

[TurfIt]

Please try a nightly r6458 or later. The build for macs was forcing double buffering, which if hardware support has been removed in later OSX versions, tends to slow things down.
If the nightly makes things worse, specifying the -use_hw command line option will put things back. Also, you could try the -async option, might be better, or worse...

2880x1800 is high res, but I'm running 2560x1600 no issues on my i7 machine, but win7, and a desktop i7 rather than mobile. (and with HD4000 disabled).