Windows7 Performance Problem - long donut of death

[jzedward]

I have a dual boot laptop, Win7 SP1 x64 Ultimate and WinXP SP3 Professional x86, quad CPU/8 cores, 4Gb memory.

Running WitE in Win7 results in repeated extended 'donut of death' (windows rotating ring, the popular replacement for the spinning egg timer) on moves and saves. Maybe every 3-4 moves result in a 10-20sec delay. This means I can no longer run on my Win7 work environment, which of course considerably improves my productivity, but is frustrating.

On the same hardware, WitE runs fine on XP, with no noticeable delays (except when I displace 9 hq's in one move [8D])

I note (not surprisingly) that WitE uses only one core on Win7 (I expect it's not optimised for multi-processor)

If the tech support team want me to run some tests, provide more details, or try on different platforms I can do so (I have a range of configurations for testing). Of course, if 2by3 want to compile for x64 I'll test this too.

Thanks in advance

[Helpless]

I have no performance issues in Win7 which I use to run and develop WITE.Sometimes I run up to 3-4 WITE instances simultaneously, plus development environment, paint, outlook, Firefox, etc. My PC is 4 years old dual core with 6G RAM.

There is more than 1 thread in WITE so it is not entirely correct to say that only single core is used. However in in case of AI or logistic phase operations, there is one very CPU intensive thread which is using only one core.

Please make sure that you have the latest version. Also 1.04.xx has improvement to logistic phase - application is more responsive. Otherwise it is intentionally done that cursor turns to "wait" symbol during the logistic phase.

[jzedward]

Thanks for the update, I am running the current 1.04.16b. I have repeatedly checked taskmgr during play, but whenever I get the donut there seems to be only one core loaded, and this pause occurs repeatedly during play, rather than during the logistics phase.

I am emcountering the problem with a bare min of processes running, and no other apps.

When you are running multiple instances are these processing moves, either in an interactive session or a simulator? Multiple instances will obviously consume memory, but will have no appreciable impact on CPU loading.

[Helpless]

Thanks for the update, I am running the current 1.04.16b. I have repeatedly checked taskmgr during play, but whenever I get the donut there seems to be only one core loaded, and this pause occurs repeatedly during play, rather than during the logistics phase.

I am emcountering the problem with a bare min of processes running, and no other apps.

I don't know what you call "play" or "move", but during non-interactive session cursor usually turns to "donut" - this is done intentionally. Otherwise there should be no difference between XP or Win 7.

When you are running multiple instances are these processing moves, either in an interactive session or a simulator? Multiple instances will obviously consume memory, but will have no appreciable impact on CPU loading.

I run in many different ways. And yes, in many cases memory is more important than CPU.

[morvael]

I reported this earlier as well. Didn't expect it was connected to Windows 7 though (all machines I have access to have 7 now). During the AI turn the game becomes unresponsive. The "donut of death" is just a wait cursor for Win 7, but still a black window when I switch out to another application and back is not nice. The window repaints only after a certain AI "step" completes (I mean the numbers after AI:) and some steps take a minute to complete. Not really something I would call a pleasant experience. The rendering thread cannot be simply blocked when the AI is processing it's turn!

[Helpless]

The window repaints only after a certain AI "step" completes (I mean the numbers after AI:) and some steps take a minute to complete. Not really something I would call a pleasant experience. The rendering thread cannot be simply blocked when the AI is processing it's turn!

Yes, this is known issue.